The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to expand a transparency exemption to small internet service providers with up to 250,000 subscribers, a blow to the Obama administration’s “net neutrality” regulations.
The 2-1 vote along party lines protects these ISPs from what FCC Chairman Ajit Pai called “needless regulation” of publicly disclosing promotional rates, fees or data caps for the next five years. It follows an exemption for ISPs 100,000 subscribers that expired at the end of last year.
The vote represents the first major regulatory pushback against the Obama-era net neutrality regulations that the agency’s Democratic side and tech companies like Netflix and Google championed as a way to prevent service providers from blocking or throttling web content. Meanwhile, major telecommunications players such as Comcast and AT&T have warned against the undue burden on competition and threats to innovation and infrastructure investment.
A legal challenge to net neutrality also ended in June, when a federal appeals court upheld the government’s regulations. Even if Pai and his Republican colleagues are successful, it is unclear whether they would completely take apart net neutrality rules or replace them with less stringent regulations.
Pai, who was chosen by President Trump last month to lead the commission, has said he is looking at ways to further dismantle net neutrality but hasn’t yet revealed many details.
The vote Thursday follows the GOP-led FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau decision to end an investigation, initiated under former Democratic Chairman Tom Wheeler, into whether the “zero rating” policies of AT&T and Verizon were violating net neutrality by allowing customers to stream video services owned by a wireless carrier without eating into their data plans.
The commission’s one remaining Democrat, Mignon Clyburn, said his Republican colleagues are putting consumers at risk.
“In an ongoing quest to dismantle basic consumer protections for broadband services, the majority has decided to exempt billion-dollar public companies from being transparent with consumers,” Clyburn said. “This represents yet another in a series of steps being taken to jettison pro-consumer initiatives.”
Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, also criticized the vote, pointing out that approximately 9.7 million total subscribers may not have access to information from their ISPs.
“Small businesses, students, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who relies on the internet should have access to the most basic and fundamental information about the broadband service for which they pay,” Markey said. “But by granting this carve out for the broadband industry, the FCC has made pricing and performance information less accessible to small businesses and consumers. Consumers deserve truth in pricing information. Instead of allowing ISPs to hide pricing information, the FCC should promote transparency so subscribers have all the background they need to make educated decisions about their broadband service.”
