December 2017

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote on 12/14 to roll back the net neutrality rules in the United States. While the European Union has such rules in place, telecom providers have pushed the boundaries at times in Sweden, Germany, Portugal and elsewhere, offering a glimpse at the future American companies and consumers may face if protections are watered down. Europe adopted net neutrality rules aimed at ensuring that ISPs in the bloc’s 28 member states can’t pick the web’s winners and losers.

Since the Federal Communications Commission announced just before Thanksgiving that it was planning to gut the rules, there have been about 750,000 calls to Congress made through Battle for the Net, a website run by groups that advocate for net neutrality. By contrast, there were fewer than 30,000 calls in the first two weeks of November.