Net neutrality rules aim to ensure a level playing field for all by preventing Internet service providers from speeding up, slowing down or blocking access to particular sites or services. On a neutral internet, ISPs would not be allowed to charge customers extra fees to stream Netflix, for example. In 2015, under the Obama administration, the Federal Communications Commission effectively enshrined the principles of net neutrality into U.S. law with the Open Internet order, to “ensure that Americans reap the economic, social and civic benefits of an open Internet now and in the future.”
Two years later, however, new FCC chairman Ajit Pai began efforts to dismantle those rules, a process that ended in June 2018 following a 3-2 vote in favor of deregulation. The FCC asserted when Pai announced his departure in late 2020 that the move led to US communications networks being “faster, stronger and more widely deployed than ever”, although this has been the subject of a debate. Other reports claimed that the FCC had “significantly overestimated” the broadband deployment figures and used erroneous and inaccurate data in other reports.
Now the pendulum has started to swing the other way. In one decree signed today, US President Joe Biden, Obama’s vice president, you may remember, called for the reinstatement of net neutrality rules.
“Large providers can use their power to discriminate against or slow down online services,” the order says. “The Obama-Biden administration’s FCC passed ‘net neutrality’ rules that required these companies to treat all Internet services the same, but that was rescinded in 2017.
“In the Order, the President encourages the FCC to reinstate the Net Neutrality rules overturned by the previous administration.”
Even though Biden only “encourages” the FCC to take further action on net neutrality, it seems likely that something was going to happen on that front anyway. The interim FCC chairperson, appointed by Biden in January, is Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat and staunch net neutrality supporter who called for the decision to overturn her “a stain on the FCC“and said the agency exhibited” cavalier contempt “for the public,” contempt “for citizens and” contempt “for popular opinion. Declaration 2018 following a US Senate vote to restore net neutrality, she said the FCC was “on the wrong side of history” and pledged to “continue to make noise in support of net neutrality. net”.
Rosenworcel of course expressed strong support for Biden’s executive order, praising efforts “to strengthen competition in the U.S. economy and the nation’s communications industry,” as FCC Commissioner Austin Bonner did: “I applaud the attention support of President Biden on these important issues, “he said in his own declaration.
The other two FCC commissioners, however, are much less enthusiastic. Adam Cassady said net neutrality “would be best accomplished by a bipartisan effort in Congress, while Brendar Carr said that the order “embraces a retrospective view, The Obama-era approach to Internet regulation“A solution that would give lobbyists for Google, Facebook and Amazon the regulatory protections and price controls they have long sought without doing anything to counter Silicon Valley’s threats to free speech and an open Internet.” “
Pai, who retired in January (after making the internet worse six times), hinted on Twitter that Biden’s order violates the independence of the FCC.
Pai, a former deputy general counsel at Verizon, was a known opponent of net neutrality regulations when he was appointed chairman of the FCC by then-President Donald Trump. When the regulations were passed in 2015, he wrote a long protest calling the decision “an unprecedented attempt to replace [internet] freedom under government control ”, and predicted that the courts would not allow“ this illegal takeover ”to continue. In fact, the courts of appeal confirmed the FCC Net Neutrality Rules in their entirety. Despite this, and polls showing that the vast majority of US citizens wanted to maintain net neutrality rules, Pai signaled his intention to dismantle them almost immediately after his appointment as president.
In addition to calling for the restoration of net neutrality, Biden’s executive order also calls on the FCC to prevent ISPs from entering into exclusivity agreements with landlords that limit tenants’ choice of services; restore information that was being developed under the Obama administration and require service providers to report prices and subscription rates to the FCC; and to. Place limits on “excessive early termination fees” charged to customers for switching ISPs The Federal Trade Commission is also “encouraged” to establish new rules “on the monitoring and accumulation of data by” Big Tech “platforms.
