Net neutrality was once a largely academic dispute with a wonky name.
Plenty of others had followed the issue through the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, but net neutrality didn’t become a cause celebre of sorts until a May 2017 episode of comedian John Oliver‘s HBO show, Last Week Tonight. Oliver railed against efforts to undo Federal Communications Commission regulations passed two years before, which supporters said would require that internet service providers treat all content equally. Oliver warned that ISPs could intentionally slow down service or create paid “fast lanes” reserved for deep-pocketed customers.
Oliver’s rant stirred consumer anger over the long-simmering but low-profile tech issue to the point that supporters of the existing rules flooded the FCC with hundreds of thousands of online comments.
It didn’t help in the end. The FCC in December 2017 voted to dismantle the net neutrality rules, led by Chairman Ajit Pai, an appointee of then-President Donald Trump.
Now, nearly five years on, dire warnings about the move have proved unfounded, with consumers noticing no tangible difference in internet connection speeds. Innovation and growth have continued.
Net neutrality, in fact, should never have been such a matter of dispute, said Jeffrey Westling, director of technology and innovation at the American Action Forum.
“The basic core principles of net neutrality were never really that controversial,” Westling told the Washington Examiner. “But the really big controversial part was how you go about implementing that.”
This included categorizing the internet as a “Title I” or “Title II” communications tool, as designated by the Communications Act of 1934. The designations would have monumental implications for how the government regulates the internet, which burst onto the public scene in 1993 after years as a mostly academic tool also used by the Pentagon for communications.
Policymakers and regulators spent several years attempting to define net neutrality. Their work culminated in the 2015 FCC vote for an “Open Internet Order,” in which “common carriers” could face penalties if they showed preferential treatment for some online users over others — by, say, throttling a website’s internet speed or access.
The decision was praised by Democrats but drew concerns among Republicans and others who said it could hurt innovation.
The rules’ reversal two years later was, according to Pai, then the FCC chairman, part of a “light-touch regulation approach.” The 2017 change removed the restriction on throttling and meant ISPs did not have to report as much information to the FCC.
The debate was divisive within the internet industry. While Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook supported net neutrality, ISPs like Verizon and AT&T opposed the deal.
Net neutrality was a legal concept coined by Columbia academic Tim Wu that requires all internet providers to treat their communications equally regardless of their views on the website, the platform, the content, or anything else.
For most people, it was largely an invisible fight. The internet has operated chiefly the same since the FCC lifted net neutrality rules nearly five years ago.
To be sure, there have been occasional instances of what critics call throttling, though not necessarily in the ways critics warned about. Comcast in 2018 imposed speed limits on watching videos on mobile devices over cellular networks. Verizon throttled a California fire department’s unlimited data in August 2018 amid a series of wildfires, though this was later labeled an error on the service provider’s part.
While federal forces have struggled to challenge the FCC’s ruling, state lawmakers have taken it upon themselves to implement their versions of net neutrality. Seven states have enacted legislation or adopted resolutions to implement some aspect of net neutrality, though not every attempted resolution has succeeded. Eleven states have also introduced some version of net neutrality legislation for consideration since the FCC order.
The FCC could pass a new version of net neutrality rules during President Joe Biden’s term. But the delayed nomination of Gigi Sohn, former adviser to onetime FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, as a member of the body will make that harder. Currently, the FCC has only four of the five required commissioners for a vote. This delay was caused, in part, by her views on keeping the 2015 net neutrality rules in place. The White House has also stated that net neutrality is a priority and in August listed it among its tech policy priorities.
Congress has also made motions to explore the implementation of net neutrality through legislation. The Senate passed a bipartisan resolution in favor of net neutrality and is considering the Save the Internet Act, which would enshrine the policy into law.
However, these bills may be dead on arrival if Republicans win control of the House and/or Senate. Net neutrality is “basically just a no-go for Republicans,” Westling noted. “It’s just not something that I think there’s a lot of political will on the Hill right now to do.”
Tech policy has regularly been rated as a low priority among voters, and there are few reasons to justify passing such legislation in the near term.
But that won’t stop lawmakers from trying — even if we won’t be hearing about it on television from Oliver again anytime soon.
