Trump FCC Repeals Net Neutrality, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Americans Could Still Reach Every Website At The Same Speed

The Filing

WASHINGTON. The Federal Communications Commission voted 3 to 2 Thursday to repeal the net neutrality rules barring internet providers from blocking, slowing, or charging extra for the websites Americans wish to visit, resolving a long-standing concern that a person paying for an internet connection could still use it to reach the entire internet.

The order, titled "Restoring Internet Freedom," was championed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a former associate general counsel at Verizon whom President Trump had elevated to the chairmanship in his first weeks in office. By reclassifying high-speed internet from a public utility back into a lightly regulated "information service," the commission freed companies such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T from the requirement that they carry all of that information equally.

"For too long, a small business in Ohio and a trillion-dollar streaming service have loaded at exactly the same speed, and the American consumer has had no way of knowing which one paid more," said one senior official, describing the prior arrangement as a market distortion in which customers received precisely what they had ordered. "Going forward, the connection a family already pays for will be made available to them in a range of exciting new tiers."

The commission acted over millions of public comments, a record later complicated by the discovery that a substantial share of the filings supporting repeal had been submitted under fabricated or stolen identities, including those of dead Americans, who officials noted had lodged no objection to the contrary. Sources within the administration praised the resulting docket as the most enthusiastic show of public support the agency had ever been unable to verify.

Industry representatives welcomed the decision, which removed the only federal rules preventing a provider from slowing a competitor's video, billing a website for ordinary delivery, or steering subscribers toward the provider's own content. Pai's office maintained that competition among internet providers, of which most American households have exactly one, would protect consumers more reliably than the rules now being deleted.

At press time, an internet provider was thoughtfully reminding subscribers that the website they were attempting to load remained fully accessible at whatever speed the company found appropriate.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who installed the chairman, banked the repeal as a deregulation victory, and let the costs arrive quietly on monthly bills he would never have to read.
§FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and the commission's Republican majority, who delivered a long-sought industry priority and reframed the removal of consumer protections as the restoration of freedom.
§Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T, freed to block, throttle, and sell paid "fast lanes" on connections their customers had already purchased (Verizon being the chairman's former employer).
§The cable and telecom lobby (NCTA and USTelecom), whose decade-long campaign against the rules concluded with their deletion.
§Internet providers' own streaming and content divisions, now able to speed their own video while metering everyone else's.
§The operatives who flooded the public comment system with fabricated filings, whose fraud was absorbed into the official record as evidence of popular demand.
§The broader deregulation movement and future commissions, handed the precedent that a consumer protection can be erased simply by reclassifying the thing it protected.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment