The Federal Communications Commission released its final net neutrality order on Tuesday, and it includes a few edits to the draft version ensuring that internet service providers canât sneakily violate fast-lane bans.
Speaking to WIRED on Tuesday, a senior FCC official said that the final net neutrality order has been updated to ensure that paid fast lanes in consumer-facing products violate the agencyâs rules. The official also said that providers couldnât mask consumer products as enterprise ones to skirt the rules.
In April, the FCC reinstated net neutrality rules that would reclassify broadband, once again, as a âcommon carrierâ service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. By reinstating net neutrality, the agency can prevent internet service providers, like AT&T and Verizon, from blocking, throttling, or offering pay-to-play fast lanes to online services.
But many critics feared that the draft rules were outdated and didnât account for new developments in technologies like 5G and, more specifically, ânetwork slicing.â Telecom executives have argued that network slicingâthe act of chopping a network into several smaller ones that vary in speedâshould be exempt from rules banning paid fast lanes.
Many industries and products, like autonomous vehicles and remote surgery equipment, are expected to run on network slicing. The difference, however, is that many of these products are enterprise uses of slicing and not products marketed to consumers like their in-home internet packages.
âThe FCC has said that if a provider was taking steps that looked like it was being done to avoid the compliance of net neutrality requirements, that could be a violation of the net neutrality requirements,â Greg Guice, former director of government affairs at Public Knowledge, said on Tuesday. âSo in other words, you couldnât design your service to try to get around the obligations that you have.â
Changes to the final order also address concerns that the FCCâs rules could preempt state-led broadband affordability programs.
Late last month, a federal appeals court reversed a ruling that barred the state of New York from enforcing its own law requiring broadband providers to offer low-cost programs. The New York law requires ISPs to offer 25-Mbps service for no more than $15 per month, or 200 Mbps for $20 per month. On Tuesday, the FCC confirmed that its rules wouldnât get in the way of New Yorkâs program or others like it in the future.
