The FCC’s net neutrality rules are officially repealed today. Here’s what that really means.

Author: 
Coverage Type: 

With the network neutrality rules coming off the books, how is your Internet experience likely to change? Here's what you need to know:

The end of the bans on blocking, slowing and paid prioritization means your Internet providers will be free to engage in that activity without legal repercussions, so long as they disclose it to the public on their own websites or to the Federal Communications Commission. The repeal effectively narrows what the federal government would consider a net neutrality violation. Under the old policy, any blocking or slowing of websites would directly run afoul of the rules, inviting immediate enforcement. Under the new policy, a violation might occur when regulators find out that an Internet provider has been blocking websites without saying so. The new approach hands much of the responsibility for enforcing violations to the Federal Trade Commission, a sister agency. And in its repeal decision, the FCC explicitly rejects the idea that it has much authority to regulate Internet providers at all.

The blocking and slowing of websites gets much of the attention in the net neutrality debate. But what's more likely to occur are subtle changes to your Internet experience that you may or may not notice. It's hard to say what specific changes you might experience; part of the whole point of undoing the net neutrality rules is that Internet providers will begin to experiment with business models we haven't seen before. One danger, according to consumer advocates, is that those new models could end up making it harder to discover innovative new services. Under this theory, you won't know what you're missing. But here are a few tactics that have been tried before that have drawn scrutiny under the old net neutrality rules: One is the offering of discounts on Internet service in exchange for letting your broadband provider mine your browsing history and other personal information. Another might be getting unlimited wireless access to a mobile app that your Internet provider owns, while usage of other apps continues to count against your monthly data cap.


The FCC’s net neutrality rules are officially repealed today. Here’s what that really means.