Network Neutrality

This Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) is entered into by the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission for the purpose of facilitating their joint and common goals, obligations, and responsibilities to protect consumers and the public interest. The Agencies recognize and acknowledge that each agency has legal, technical, and investigative expertise and experience that is valuable for rendering advice and guidance to the other relating to the acts or practices of Internet service providers. It is agreed that: 

The Federal Communications Commission voted to restore a national standard to ensure the internet is fast, open, and fair. This decision to reclassify broadband service as a Title II telecommunications service allows the FCC to protect consumers, defend national security, and advance public safety. With this vote, the FCC restores fundamental authority to provide effective oversight over broadband service providers, giving the Commission essential tools to:

Net neutrality, a set of policies designed to prevent internet-service providers from playing favorites among the websites they carry, is coming back. In a vote on April 25 the Federal Communications Commission classified internet service as a public utility. The definition is part of a new framework the FCC will use to regulate broadband networks. Net-neutrality rules typically bar internet-service providers from assigning priority to certain web traffic or creating so-called fast lanes for certain websites.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said, "Broadband is now an essential service. Essential services, the ones we count on in every aspect of modern life, have some basic oversight. So let's be clear about what we are doing today. This agency, the nation's leading communications authority, believes every consumer deserves Internet access that is fast, open and fair.

On April 25, the Federal Communications Commission will vote to reinstate the net neutrality rules and resume real regulatory oversight over broadband. It is critical that the text of this reinstated regulatory framework does not inadvertently undermine its own objectives in regards to broadband affordability.

Here are five reasons why we need net neutrality protections restored and why the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed Title II reclassification brings back its ability to provide necessary oversight to this essential service: 

Millions of people have called on the Federal Communications Commission to protect the free and open internet — backed by the authority of Title II of the Communications Act — registering more public comments on this issue than any other in the agency’s history. Now, under the leadership of FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel — who had to wait two years to act until the Senate filled a vacant seat on the commission — net neutrality, gutted under the Trump administration, is back on the docket. A new vote to restore it is set for April 25 at the FCC.

With the FCC's vote on net neutrality coming up Thursday, April 25, some industry groups are making a final push for a change to the language in order to leave open the possibility of meaningful Universal Service Fund (USF) reform at the agency level. Specifically, representatives at industry trade groups NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association, Incompas, and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) met with members of the FCC in the last week to urge the Commission not to forbear applying USF to broadband Internet access providers (BIAS). I

When the Federal Communications Commission ended the Obama Administration’s failed, two-year experiment with these heavy-handed regulations back in 2017, Title II advocates guaranteed that doing so would literally break the Internet.  They claimed that broadband prices would spike, that you would be charged for each website you visited, and that the Internet itself would slow down. None of this was true. Broadband speeds increased, prices decreased, competition intensified, and years of record-breaking infrastructure builds brought millions across the digital divide.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been tussling for roughly two decades over regulations that require internet service providers to treat all web traffic equally. And that battle is about to enter a new round. Chair Jessica Rosenworcel will lead her fellow Democrats to impose the rules, known as net neutrality, for the third time. A court overturned them when a Democratic-controlled FCC first voted to put them in place in 2010.