The Federal Communications Commission voted to revive net neutrality rules that prevent internet service providers such as
Comcast
or
Charter Communications
from slowing or blocking content on their networks.
In a 3-2 vote along party lines, the Democratic-led agency is proposing to expand its power to regulate some of the nation’s largest internet service providers as essential telecommunications utilities.
These net neutrality rules were dismantled during the Trump administration, and telecommunications companies that offer broadband likely will try to block the effort to bring them back.
Jonathan Spalter, CEO of telecommunications industry group USTelecom, said: “Broadband providers will and always will support an open internet,” but called the proposal a “regulatory power grab.”
The FCC’s next step is to take public comments on the proposals.
FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said that internet service is now as essential as water, electricity, or telephone infrastructure, and needs tighter government oversight to ensure that it remains “fast, open, and fair.”
“Today, there is no expert agency ensuring that the internet is fast, open and fair,” she said Thursday. “Even as we recognized that our lives were being transformed and we were doing anything and everything online, our institutions failed to keep pace.”
Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr disagreed, saying the plan would lead to “government control of the internet.”
Rosenworcel told the National Press Club in September that she wanted to bring back the 2015 Obama-era policy that imposed the net-neutrality rules, which prevent providers from blocking the delivery of content from platforms such as Google and
Netflix
(NFLX), throttling speeds, or creating fast lanes that favor some internet content over others in a practice called paid prioritization.
The Trump administration repealed that policy in 2017, saying regulation of the broadband market was unnecessarily intrusive.
The policy change would apply utility-like regulations to internet service, and is expected to raise costs for providers.
Michael Powell, president of the trade group NCTA—the Internet & Television Association, which represents
Comcast
(ticker: CMCSA),
Charter Communications
(CHTR), and other big cable companies—called the FCC’s proposal a “monumental change in how the internet will be regulated,” saying it will “dramatically affect how it will work going forward.”
Among the industry’s concerns is whether rates will be affected.
Rosenworcel said the FCC doesn’t intend to regulate the rates that internet companies charge, but could intervene if it considers rates unreasonable.
The FCC’s proposal also comes as the Biden administration works to expand the nation’s connectivity. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in 2021 included $65 billion to expand affordable high-speed internet to underserved communities nationwide.
Write to Janet H. Cho at [email protected]
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