The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) approved the proposed amendment to net neutrality regulation. The vote was 3 commissioners in favor to 2 against it. The result has immediately caused more controversy adding to what’s been happening in the last few months due to the risk of having a two-speed Internet.

The FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, at the center of the controversy for his proposals, reiterated his desire to maintain net neutrality, only in a different way from the past. Wheeler spoke about the possibility for Internet operators to sign agreements for “paid prioritization”, meaning you can pay other operators so that the traffic of your services are delivered at higher speed. On this point, that has convinced several companies to publish a letter to the FCC, Wheeler said he wants to be vigilant to avoid having an Internet for the rich and one for the non-rich.

In this new situation created after the ruling against net neutrality, the Netflix streaming service has already signed contracts with various providers to have a wider bandwidth for its customers. With the increasing trend towards Internet streaming services that can be HD or even 3D, it’s an understandable need. The question is always: who’s going to pay?

Can Netflix afford to pay providers, and we can guess it’s paying a lot, without having to raise the prices for its customers? Netflix is a big operator but what about small start-ups that want to offer services that require a lot of bandwidth? How could they pay providers to have enough bandwidth to the needs of their customers?

The situation is complicated and it’s for this reason that the issue is far from resolved. The FCC approval is only the first step towards new final rules. After the vote on Thursday a period of 120 days began in which anyone can submit their proposals and comments on this issue.

​​Tom Wheeler’s is to have final rules by the end of the year. They could dramatically change the Internet in the USA, where those rules are binding. It’s clear that this will affect the Internet across the world so people who don’t have the backing of a large company can only hope that in the future there will still be an Internet with equal opportunities.

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