Today, the FCC released its long-awaited Open Internet Remand Order that establishes the strongest net neutrality protections the Commision has ever enacted. While the rules are not perfect, they are an incredible victory for the many startups and advocates that fought so hard for the past year against some of the most well-funded corporate lobbying interests in the nation to preserve and protect the open Internet.
The Order is critically important for two main reasons: first, the FCC took the politically difficult step of reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act—essentially labeling broadband Internet as a “common carrier” service—in order to build its new rules on a legally secure foundation. While the FCC’s prior net neutrality orders had important protections that supported the growth of the Internet we enjoy today, the Commission has repeatedly seen its rules thrown out in court due to a failure to provide an adequate legal framework supporting the rules. The order’s reclassification of broadband as a Title II service is a necessary prerequisite for strong rules, as the court in Verizon v. FCC noted. The FCC had the courage to stand up to the powerful telecom lobby and do what was once considered politically impossible, and for that, all Internet users should be grateful.
Secondly, the Order contains strong, bright-line net neutrality rules and demonstrates a clear recognition of how important the open Internet is to startup activity. The FCC’s use of flat bans rather than case-by-case adjudication in dealing with paid prioritization, throttling, and blocking is meant to relieve “small edge providers, innovators, and consumers of the burden of detecting and challenging instances of harmful paid prioritization.” As the Commission recognized, bans on ISP discrimination are useless to startups if these small, cash-strapped companies must bear the burden of challenging violations. In addition, the order creates a “no-unreasonable interference/disadvantage” standard that is meant to give the FCC the flexibility to address future threats to the open Internet. It is unclear at this point whether the FCC’s general discrimination standard will prove effective in blocking future ISP activities that undermine net neutrality. Still, it is encouraging that in considering whether to allow these practices, the FCC will evaluate their impact on innovation and competition. Since the central value of an open Internet is the freedom to innovate and compete on the quality of one’s ideas rather than the size of one’s legal team, the FCC is right to put the concerns of innovators at the center of any inquiry into discriminatory ISP practices.
The rules, however, are not without fault. As we expected, the Order does not impose a flat ban on zero-rating schemes. Without such a ban, carriers may enter into agreements with large edge providers to exempt data from those providers from consumers’ data caps. Considering more than half of all smartphone users with data capped plans report altering their online behavior because of these caps, startups that have to compete with zero-rated companies will be at a huge competitive disadvantage, and future innovation may be stifled as a result. Similarly, the Order is somewhat unclear on how it will treat interconnection disputes, though it appears that the FCC will review claimed abuses on a case-by-case basis.
All in all, the Order released today is a monumental victory for Internet freedom. There is still significant work left to do fighting the inevitable legal challenges and congressional meddling that will seek to undo the FCC’s actions, but the plan appears to offer strong rules built on a solid legal foundation—the cornerstones of any successful net neutrality plan.
