After voting last month on net neutrality, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released the text of their Open Internet policy this morning.
The rules, meant to protect net neutrality, reclassify Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as a telecommunications service. Under the policy, ISPs will be subject to regulation under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.
I quickly skimmed some of the pages of the Open Internet rules (also available as a PDF); it’s not an easy read at 400 pages.
I was encouraged by the opening paragraph:
The benefits of an open Internet are undisputed. But it must remain open: open for commerce, innovation, and speech; open for consumers and for the innovation created by applications developers and content companies; and open for expansion and investment by America’s broadband providers.
The policy’s clear, bright-line rules call out specific practices that harm the open Internet, applying the rules to both fixed and mobile broadband Internet access:
- No blocking: consumers get access to what they pay for
- No throttling: no degrading lawful Internet content, applications, services, and devices
- No paid prioritization: providers can’t accept payment to manage their network for the benefit of specific content, applications, services or devices
Interesting to discover that in the past five years, devices on a high-speed LTE (Long-Term Evolution) data network have grown from 70,000 to more than 127 million.
It’s going to take a while for everyone to read and analyze the policy.
If you’d like to learn about the policy in bite-sized nuggets, check out the tweets from Alex Howard on Twitter (@digiphile).
The new policy doesn’t take effect until 60 days after they appear in the Federal Register.
What do you think about the Open Internet policy? Share your thoughts in the comments.
