It’s déjà vu for net neutrality all over again.
On Thursday, the FCC voted with a Democratic majority along party lines to adopt an order that would largely restore the agency’s net neutrality rules from a decade ago. The move reignites the long-running political fight over internet regulation, and cable and telecom companies are expected to file a legal challenge to the FCC’s net neutrality order.
More from Variety
FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel (pictured above) said net neutrality rules – which prohibit internet providers from blocking or degrading access to users – are crucial to ensuring the internet remains “fast, open and fair” and secure.
The new order, called Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet, is largely based on the Open Internet Order rules that the FCC adopted under President Obama in 2015 before being overturned by the Trump administration in 2017. Similar to the original net neutrality rules, the 2024 version reclassifies broadband as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act of 1996, giving the FCC regulatory oversight over Internet service providers. In the absence of net neutrality, ISPs are regulated as providers of Title I information services (outside the agency’s jurisdiction).
The approval of the net neutrality measure comes after Democrats, led by Rosenworcel, achieved a 3-2 majority on the commission, with Biden appointee Anna Gomez confirmed as the FCC’s fifth commissioner last year.
“Broadband is now an essential service. Essential services – the services we rely on in every aspect of modern life – have basic oversight,” Rosenworcel said Thursday during the FCC open meeting. “This is common sense. But in a world where up is down and down is up, the last FCC overruled this authority and decided that broadband didn’t need oversight.”
Rosenworcel said the original net neutrality policy “made it clear that your broadband provider should not have the right to block websites, block slow services or censor online content.” She said these were “wildly popular,” citing surveys showing that 80% of Americans supported the FCC’s net neutrality policy and opposed its repeal.
Rosenworcel emphasized that the Title II reclassification will not result in the FCC regulating broadband rates.
“This is not about rate regulation – no how, not in any way. And we will not undermine the incentives to invest in networks. In fact, broadband investment was higher when net neutrality rules were in place than after they were repealed.” She also noted that the FCC’s net neutrality rules set a national standard, after nearly a dozen states adopted their own regulatory policies when the previous FCC rules were repealed in 2017.
FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, a Democrat, said: “Today we are taking the important and necessary step of giving control of the Internet to those who deserve it: consumers. That’s what this item is actually about. Some today will no doubt argue that it’s all a scheme for government control of the Internet. But let’s be real. It’s about ensuring that every American can use their broadband subscription to access the legal content of their choice.”
The dissent was Commissioner Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, who said broadband has flourished without net neutrality rules, which he likened to “command-and-control regulation of the Internet from the 1930s.” Congress “never passed a law” granting the FCC the authority to regulate broadband as a utility and called the net neutrality order an “unlawful power grab,” he said. Carr also disputed Rosenworcel’s claim that investments in broadband networks increased when the FCC’s previous net neutrality orders were in effect in 2015-2017 — and said the exact opposite happened.
Other critics of the FCC’s net neutrality revival have argued that they are a solution in search of a problem.
“Internet providers have always provided open, unlimited internet service. Consumers can enjoy the web content and applications of their choice without any blocking, throttling or interference,” cable trade group NCTA – the Internet & Television Association said in a policy statement. “Strong regulation will create uncertainty, undermine provider participation and endanger the economy [Biden] The government’s Internet for All initiative. The FCC should scale back its Net Fatality plan.”
“While reviving net neutrality will check a partisan political box, it risks ruining our unique opportunity to get all Americans the internet access they deserve,” NCTA President and CEO Michael Powell said in a statement.
In 2015, cable and telecom providers filed a lawsuit to overturn the FCC’s Open Internet Order. The Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed that the agency had discretionary authority to reclassify broadband as a Title II service.
The text of the FCC rule “Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet” can be found at this link. The order allows the FCC to “once again play a key role in preventing broadband providers at the federal level from blocking, slowing down, or creating pay-to-play Internet fast lanes” and give the agency oversight of broadband outages, according to a summary of the order. It provides “broad, tailored forbearance – including no rate regulation, no tariffs, no unbundling of last-mile facilities, and no cost accounting rules – in the Commission’s application of Title II to providers of broadband Internet access services.”
Additionally, the FCC’s 2024 net neutrality rules would improve the security of broadband networks, the Democratic majority said. Without reclassification of broadband as a Title II service, “the FCC is limited in its authority to require foreign-owned companies that are deemed a threat to national security to discontinue domestic or international broadband service,” according to the FCC has done with telephone services. The FCC majority also says that without net neutrality, the agency has “limited authority to incorporate updated cybersecurity standards into network policies.”
In an April 23 letter, a group of 41 Republicans in Congress urged Rosenworcel to scrap net neutrality rules. The lawmakers, led by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas, ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee), argued that the FCC exceeded its congressional authority by using applying. regulations for the internet.
“The Supreme Court’s binding precedent confirms that Congress is the only body that can authorize the regulation of broadband by public utilities,” the Republican letter to Rosenworcel said. “We therefore urge you to reverse course and stay the course [FCC’s] classification of broadband as an information service.”
Best of variety
Sign up for the Variété newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.