US regulators roll back ‘net neutrality’ rules
WASHINGTON: United States regulators voted on Thursday to roll back so-called “net neutrality” rules which required Internet providers to treat all traffic equally, a move opponents say would curb online freedom.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in a three-totwo vote, adopted a proposal by Republican-appointed chairman Ajit Pai, who said his plan would scrap “heavy-handed” rules adopted in 2015, which he argued discouraged investment and innovation.
The vote capped a heated partisan debate and was just the latest in a battle over more than a decade on rules governing Internet service providers in the courts and FCC.
Democratic member Mignon Clyburn, one of the two dissenters, charged that the agency was “handing the keys to the Internet” to “a handful of multibillion-dollar corporations”.
Immediately following the vote, officials from two states and others vowed to challenge the FCC action in court.
Net neutrality activists had staged a series of protests in cities around the US and online, amid fears that dominant broadband providers could change how the Internet works.
“Chairman Pai has given Internet service providers an explicit licence to block, slow, or levy tolls on content,” said Ferras Vinh of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a digital rights group.
Vinh said Internet providers “will now have even greater power to shape the online experiences of Internet users, at the expense of consumers and small companies”.
Net neutrality backers had argued that clear rules were needed to prevent Internet service providers from blocking or throttling services or websites for competitive reasons.
Some activists feared Internet service providers would seek to extract higher fees from services that were heavy data users, like Netflix or other streaming services, with these costs passed on to consumers, but new start-ups without the resources of major companies would be more likely to feel the pain.
Critics of the 2015 net neutrality rule counter that it was based on utility-style regulation designed for 1930s telephone companies, not a dynamic Internet market.
Appointed by President Donald Trump, Pai was a fierce critic of the neutrality rules adopted under former president Barack Obama in 2015 and, earlier this month, unveiled his plan named the “Restoring Internet Freedom” order. AFP