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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 2015 Open Internet Order classified Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as telecommunications services. The classification provided FCC members more oversight powers over ISPs.
The 2015 Order created three explicit rules for ISPs:
- No blocking.
- No throttling.
- No paid prioritization.
Key to this new classification was an intention to protect something called the open Internet, commonly referred to as net neutrality.
What is net neutrality? Simply, ISPs act in a neutral and non-discriminatory manner toward all data that is transmitted and received. That means customers connect to remote computer services and information unfettered. Access to one kind of data is treated no differently than other types of data.
With much controversy, on December 14, 2017, members of the FCC voted to roll back the 2015 Open Internet Order.
Important to the debate is the roll back seems designed to appease the largest ISPs. In the United States, less than a dozen companies provide a majority of all ISP services. In many regions people have only one choice for an ISP. There is no competition.
The large ISPs lobby extensively to protect their artificial pseudo monopolies. The popular argument that people can “vote with their wallets” is meaningless. Classifying ISPs as telecommunications services was intended to offset monopolistic tendencies.
The roll back reverts the ISP regulations to the rules that were in effect in 2011. The 2011 rules require the following of all ISPs:
- All fees and prices must be transparently and fully disclosed.
- ISPs may not block lawful content, applications, or services.
- ISPs may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.
Supporters of the 2017 roll back argue that free market conditions should regulate ISP behavior. Opponents argue there is no free market because there is little to no competition. Without a legal leash monopolistic ISPs will act in nefarious ways.
There is a history of the large ISPs acting in nefarious ways.
A cornerstone of the debate is a concept known as the open Internet. The Internet is seen as a tool that should benefit all humans. An open Internet embodies the idea of humans at their best — a conduit and tool to help humans advance and improve the quality of life. Being open means access is unfettered and barriers to access are at the lowest level possible.
For many years the Internet and World Wide Web was used mostly by technical enthusiasts and hobbyists. Gradually a commercial component grew with people providing various content delivery services, such as online radio, video streaming, and social media. Today these services arguably comprise a majority of the overall Internet data traffic.
Another element of this debate is the growing data mining and customer surveillance market. Behind this trend are advertisers, who ignore customer privacy and believe collecting data on people is useful to create targeted advertising. Key to this picture is the owners of large social media services doing much of the data collection and sharing that data with advertisers.
Unlike content providers, ISPs are in unique position. ISPs provide a necessary portal for people to connect to one another. This gateway service means all ISP customers are a captured audience. Large ISPs can monitor and control all data traffic. Users can choose not to contract with online content providers to avoid respective data mining and surveillance but cannot avoid ISPs.
The 2015 Order prevented ISPs from selling and sharing customer usage data. As the commercial side of the web has grown, some of the large ISPs want a piece of this pie. They want to mine and track customers to sell data and are in an ideal position to do that.
Before the December roll back, ISPs still had the ability to collect and store data about every customer. There is no technical way to prevent ISPs from collecting data because they provide the initial portal. Without the 2015 Order ISPs now could share and sell customer usage data.
The large ISPs want to charge customers and content providers both to use their portal. They want to create something called “fast lanes,” where customers and providers must pay extra to ensure connections are not throttled or impeded.
The 2011 rules require ISPs to be transparent and disclose their fees. The rules stipulate that ISPs may not unreasonably discriminate. A fear of many people is with the roll back, ISPs now will “reasonably” discriminate through tiered pricing and paid prioritization — creating “fast lanes.”
Another fear is ISPs now could indirectly censor, block, control, and throttle access — as long as they are “transparent” and “disclose” that such access is available with additional fees. Internet access could possibly no longer be unfettered. Customers could pay a base ISP connection fee plus additional fees to connect to popular services.
For example, customers with a high volume of email, such as business owners, could be charged extra for the alleged bandwidth and storage being used.
ISPs could advertise “free” access to social media as part of a base fee yet charge extra for “fast lane” access to video streaming services or gaming sites.
Torrent users could be charged extra to use that protocol.
Data mining and surveillance could be advertised as opt-out for an additional fee, meaning users would pay extra not to have web surfing habits tracked. Because there is no technical way to prevent ISPs from collecting this data, the additional fee in itself is no guarantee of anything.
Using HTTPS and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) somewhat prevents ISPs from collecting customer usage data. ISPs could charge extra to such customers if they wanted because detecting such technologies is easy. ISPs could “transparently disclose” that such usage constitutes a desire to opt-out of data mining and tracking and charge their additional opt-out fee. Or perhaps ISPs could charge extra to “guarantee” HTTPS and VPN connections are not throttled. Or both.
Access to web sites in certain regions of the world could be available only through additional fees. ISPs could charge extra to access non mainstream news sources, thereby effectively censoring information. Not paying additional fees would, in some ways, amount to web site blockage and censorship but would be legal because of being transparent disclosure.
All of these possible actions attack the idea of an open unfettered Internet. Only a handful of ISPs are in a position to control and alter Internet access in this manner.
At this point all of these possible actions are conjecture. Nobody knows how the future will unveil. Whether ISPs act as imagined by many people remains to be seen. A significant amount of cynicism is not required to foresee adverse effects from the roll back. Conversely, legislators in several states are exploring ways to impose the concepts of net neutrality to negate the December roll back in addition to law suits. There also are similar discussions in Congress.
The net neutrality topic is controversial and complicated. An excellent source for a long-running detailed analysis about net neutrality is techdirt, a web site where writers “analyze and offer insight into news stories about changes in government policy, technology and legal issues that affect companies’ ability to innovate and grow.”
Fast-Air customers might be curious about how the December roll back will affect them. Nobody working at Fast-Air participates in customer data collection. Fast-Air customers pay fully disclosed fees. There is no blockage, throttling, censorship, or additional fees to access certain web sites. The Fast-Air policy is posted online at the Fast-Air web site. This policy has remained unchanged for several years.
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