Net neutrality takes a right turn again

Led by Biden's commitment to protecting the Open Internet, the recent FCC decision has brought the Net Neutrality debate back to the front

- AMITABH SINGHAL

The Federal Communications Commission, the US communications regulator, voted and announced on 25 April 2024 that it is restoring Net Neutrality (NN) and re-establishing the national Open Internet (OI) standards. It has re-classified broadband services as common carriers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act and will regulate them as essential services.

The announcement unambiguously states that the FCC will ensure that the Internet is fast, open, and fair and will exercise its authority to protect the OI by “prohibiting ISPs from blocking, throttling, or engaging in paid prioritisation of lawful content, restoring the rules that were upheld by the DC Circuit in 2016.”

Both OI and NN are understood differently by different people in different contexts.

In simple terms, the term Open Internet emanates from the engineering design of the Internet itself. Unlike traditional telecom infrastructure, any network or its part, wired or wireless, such as devices, equipment, applications and users, can physically connect or interconnect by adhering to specific TCP/IP protocols and standards. As some say, the Internet has been a permissionless network (arguably) meant to move ‘all information’ as data from origination to destination.

NN technically flows from the OI design. It is more of a techno-socio-economic principle since no technical or commercial discrimination is allowed between the class of users and traffic (with exceptions), thereby leading to ‘the network effect’ (where the more the users, the more the network value gets enhanced).