- FCC removes Net Neutrality rules from its books, even though they were not in effect.
- A federal appeals court, in a suit brought by telecom companies, had held the rules were improper.
- The argument has gone back and forth since the Obama administration.
Net Neutrality is not a topic that brings crowds of demonstrators surging into the streets but it has important implications in a world that is driven largely by online communications.
The Obama administration's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) constructed a framework of rules and regulations intended to ensure that everyone had equal access to broadband. That made telecommunications companies responsible for providing service on just, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms to users across the nation.
Those rules were repealed during Donald Trump's first term in office earlier this year and reinstated during President Biden's term. But earlier this year, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled — in a suit brought by major telecom companies — that the rules had been wrongfully adopted and that broadband providers cannot be treated as utilities.
Telecoms aren't utilities?
The court determined that broadband is an "information service" not a "telecommunications service," meaning the FCC lacks the authority to impose net neutrality regulations under the Communications Act.
Today, the Federal Communications Commission issued an order announcing its decision to remove the agency’s Net Neutrality rules. The agency neglected to provide advance notice or give the public an opportunity to comment.
The consumer group Free Press called the FCC's action "little more than political grandstanding."
"It’s true that the rules in question were first stayed by the 6th Circuit and then struck down by that appellate court — in a poorly reasoned opinion. So today’s bookkeeping maneuver changes very little in reality," said Matt Wood, the group's vice president of policy and general counsel.
Rules protecting Net Neutrality have broad bipartisan public support; the issue generated record numbers of public comments during prior agency proceedings on these essential open-internet safeguards, Wood said.
"There’s no need to delete currently inoperative rules, much less to announce it in a summer Friday order. The only reason to do that is to score points with broadband monopolies and their lobbyists, who’ve fought against essential and popular safeguards for the past two decades straight," Wood said. "It also shows subservience to Elon Musk’s incredibly destructive government-by-chainsaw attitude — which seems to have outlived Musk himself in some corners of the Trump administration."