At the end of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) abolished the legal requirements of the Network Neutrality Rule. The decision sparked heated media debate and even after two years, politicians and IT companies are not abandoning their attempts to influence the FCC to reverse their decision. We talk about the emergence of network neutrality and its "fall" and discuss whether it has a chance to return.
First steps to network neutrality
Network neutrality is a concept that prohibits telecommunications companies from differentiating traffic from different sources. For example, an ISP may not block access to sites or give priority to any type of content.
The FCC's net neutrality questions in the Internet space were asked back in the middle of zero. At that time, large conglomerates such as AOL Time Warner and Comcast NBC Universal were formed. These organizations possessed a large-scale computing infrastructure, controlled a significant part of the market and could restrict users' access to competitor services (for example, e-mail or chat rooms).
The FCC tried to eliminate the latter scenario. In 2005, Kevin Martin, chairman of the Commission, formulated four rules for telecom companies and ISPs. These rules were meant to support healthy competition in the marketplace.
- The right of access to legal content of their choice;
- The right to run applications freely;
- The right to freely connect devices to the network;
- the right to competition between network providers, application providers and service providers.
The new principles were no more than recommendations and were not enshrined in law. It is expected that some ISPs chose to ignore them. Literally in 2005, a local provider Madison River Communications closed its subscribers' access to the Vonage VoIP service, which competed with its own application. The same story happened in 2007 with Comcast. The operator slowed down the exchange of customer files via BitTorrent on its network. Such behavior caused inconvenience for the clients of the companies and also created a "distortion" in the competitive market in favor of the network owners.
Courts with telecommunications companies
Since non-binding recommendations have not yielded the desired result, the FCC decided to take a different path and in 2009 adopted formal network neutrality rules. The Commission approved the document in 2010, but it did not enter into force.
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ISPs immediately opposed the new order. Net neutrality limited their capabilities and obliged them to provide the same level of service to users of all services (even competing ones). Verizon, America's largest provider of services, sued the court, saying that the FCC had no right to regulate the work of operators. A little later, another operator, MetroPCS, joined Verizon in the lawsuit. At that time, it was one of the top 5 operators in America in terms of the number of subscribers.
The trial lasted for four years, and Verizon was the winner. Although the FCC still had the right to appeal the decision, for some reason the organization decided not to continue the fight. But soon they had to change their mind.
Public reaction
In its decision in favor of Verizon, the U.S. court actually allowed providers to prioritize traffic and take money from companies for "premium" conditions in their networks. In turn, this could affect the cost of various services (for example, streaming platforms) for which users pay.
The threat of the abolition of network neutrality was reported by the major media - Forbes, CNN and Business Insider - and protesters gathered at the FCC headquarters. The citizens were joined by IT companies such as Google, Twitter, Facebook and Netflix. A number of websites held a Slow Internet Day - the loading of pages of large Internet resources was deliberately slowed down to draw attention to the problem. Even President Barack Obama expressed his opinion on this issue. He called for tougher requirements for providers.
As a result, the FCC has developed an updated set of rules for network neutrality, which has a stricter legal basis. It banned providers:
- block legal applications, services and devices;
- to slow down services;
- give priority access to services on a paid basis.
The rules were approved in 2015. But ISPs and members of the s of the Republican Party (who initially were against net neutrality) were not going to give in.