In January 2014, net neutrality was rejected by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which ruled that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) hasn’t the authority to prohibit Internet service providers to block or even slow down web traffic and applications in a selective manner. Now the FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler stated that new rules will be proposed that, however, could disrupt the Internet with higher costs for users.
The battle will be fought in particular on the possibility for operators to filter traffic from competing services and to demand to be paid to allow their customers to use those services. The principles of net neutrality were aimed exactly to prevent such practices and the President of the USA Barack Obama supported them. The FCC supported those principles as well but things seem to have changed after Tom Wheeler became its chairman.
The case broke when the Wall Street Journal revealed that the FCC plans to propose new rules that essentially abandon net neutrality. Chairman Tom Wheeler admitted that the new proposal would allow the operators to make deals to have special treatment in the management of Internet traffic. The FCC would review those agreements case-by-case.
In essence, Tom Wheeler argues that net neutrality would be restored by abandoning it. Criticism began immediately, even openly accusing Wheeler of being still at the service of the telecommunications operators lobby he had worked for before becoming the FCC chairman.
These new rules will be voted on May 15 and if approved the costs for users are likely to increase as operators will start paying for the data generated by their services not to be filtered by competitors. These rules will be valid for the USA while other countries have their own laws, which may include a version of net neutrality. However, it’s obvious that if in the USA Internet will have different speeds depending on how much a service will pay there will be consequences for anyone who uses those services even in the rest of the world.
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