Question

The FCC has recently issued new rules for protecting the neutrality of the content of the internet. Investigate these rules and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this policy

Answer 1

The Federal Communications Commission is working toward officially taking current net neutrality rules off the books. The agency took the requisite formal step of publishing the rules, opening the door for lawsuits from a number of state attorneys general and advocacy groups.

Senate Democrats have also been pushing for a special congressional vote to block regulations from going into effect, but have so far been one vote short of overcoming the Republican majority. A similar vote would also face a very high hurdle in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

The pushback follows the December vote by the Republican-led FCC to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules, which limit the power of Internet service providers to influence loading speeds for specific websites or apps. The repeal can't take effect until the Office of Management and Budget completes a review of the change.

As NPR has reported, "the rules, put in place in 2015, banned cable and telecom companies from blocking or slowing down any websites or apps. They also prohibited broadband providers from striking special deals that would give some websites or apps 'priority' over others."

The FCC's repeal will allow both blocking and throttling by Internet providers, leaving one requirement intact: that broadband companies — such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T — have to disclose to users how they handle web traffic. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has said the Federal Trade Commission should then police violations. The FTC does not pre-emptively regulate them.

It is more beneficial for data applications than for applications that require low latency and low jitter, such as voice and real-time video. He explains that looking at the full spectrum of applications, including both those that are sensitive to network latency and those that are not, the IP suite isn't actually neutral. He has proposed regulations on Internet access networks that define net neutrality as equal treatment among similar applications, rather than neutral transmissions regardless of applications. He proposes allowing broadband operators to make reasonable trade-offs between the requirements of different applications, while regulators carefully scrutinize network operator behavior where local networks interconnect. However, it is important to ensure that these trade-offs among different applications be done transparently so that the public will have input on important policy decisions. This is especially important as the broadband operators often provide competing services—e.g., cable TV, telephony—that might differentially benefit when the need to manage applications could be invoked to disadvantage other competitors.

Some opponents of net neutrality argue that under the ISP market competition, paid-prioritization of bandwidth can induce optimal user welfare. Although net neutrality might protect user welfare when the market lacks competition, they argue that a better alternative could be to introduce a neutral public option to incentivize competition, rather than enforcing existing ISPs to be neutral.

Some ISPs, such as Comcast, oppose blocking or throttling, but have argued that they are allowed to charge websites for faster data delivery. AT&T has made a broad commitment to net neutrality, but has also argued for their right to offer websites paid prioritization and in favor of its current sponsored data agreements.

While many countries lack legislation directly addressing net neutrality, net neutrality can sometimes be enforced based on other laws, such as those preventing anti-competitive practices. This is currently the approach of the US FCC, which justifies their enforcement based on compliance with "commercially reasonable" practices.

In 2011, Aparna Watal of Attomic Labs said that there had been few violations of net neutrality. She argues that transparency, threat of public backlash, and the FCC's current authority was enough to solve the issues of net neutrality, claiming that the threat of consumers switching providers and the high cost of maintaining a non-neutral network will deter bad practices.