Image copyright Reuters Image caption FCC chairman Ajit Pai said existing rules hampered the growth of the tech sector

The US Federal Communications Commission has voted to overturn rules that force ISPs to treat all data traffic as equal.

Commissioners at the agency voted two-to-one to end a "net neutrality" order enacted in 2015.

Ajit Pai, head of the FCC, said the rules demanding an open internet harmed jobs and discouraged investment.

Many Americans and technology firms filed objections to the FCC's proposal prior to the vote.

"This is the right way to go," said Mr Pai ahead of the vote on Thursday.

In a statement, the FCC said it expected its proposed changes to "substantially benefit consumers and the marketplace". It added that, before the rules were changed in 2015, they helped to preserve a "flourishing free and open internet for almost 20 years".

Equal access

The vote by the FCC commissioners is the first stage in the process of dismantling the net neutrality regulations.

The agency is now inviting public comment on whether it should indeed dismantle the rules. Americans have until mid-August to share their views with the FCC.

This call for comments is likely to attract a huge number of responses. Prior to the vote, more than one million statements supporting net neutrality were filed on the FCC site.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption John Oliver urged his viewers to post comments to the FCC, opposing the reversal of net neutrality rules

Many people responded to a call from comedian and commentator John Oliver to make their feelings known.

Separately, some protestors also used software bots to repeatedly file statements on the site.

Many fear that once the equal access rules go, ISPs will start blocking and throttling some data while letting other packets travel on "fast lanes" because firms have paid more to reach customers quicker.

US ISPs such as Comcast, Charter Communications and Altice NV have pledged in public statements to keep data flowing freely.

Despite this public pledge Comcast, along with Verizon and AT&T, opposed the original 2015 rule change saying it dented their enthusiasm for improving US broadband.

Facebook, and Google's parent company Alphabet as well as many other net firms have backed the open net rules saying equal access was important for all.</s>The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to start the process to repeal the controversial net neutrality regulations on Thursday.

Internet freedom was once a decades-long, bipartisan consensus. In 1996, President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, stating that the United States would “preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet . . . unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”

Net neutrality passed under former Democrat Tom Wheeler’s FCC in 2010. The rule, known as the Open Internet Order, reclassified the internet as a public monopoly. Critics chided the rule, stating that it would diminish the freedom of the internet. Proponents argue that the regulations prevent Internet service providers from discriminating against content providers.

Breitbart News asked the FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in an exclusive interview why he thinks that net neutrality is a problem, and why we must eliminate the rule. He said:

Number one there was no problem to solve, the internet wasn’t broken in 2015. In that situation, it doesn’t seem me that preemptive market-wide regulation is necessary. Number two, even if there was a problem, this wasn’t the right solution to adopt. These Title II regulations were inspired during the Great Depression to regulate Ma Bell which was a telephone monopoly. And the broadband market we have is very different from the telephone market of 1934. So, it seems to me that if you have 4,462 internet service providers and if a few of them are behaving in a way that is anticompetitive or otherwise bad for consumer welfare then you take targeted action to deal with that. You don’t declare the entire market anticompetitive and treat everyone as if they are a monopolist. Going forward we are going to propose eliminating that Title II classification and figure out the right way forward. The bottom line is, everyone agrees on the principles of a free and open internet what we disagree with is how many regulations are needed to preserve the internet.

During the Chairman’s speech announcing his proposal to end net neutrality, he referenced Robert McChesney, the founder of Free Press, and his group’s wish for the government to monopolize the internet. Pai explained that McChesney openly bragged about taking over the internet. He said, “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But, the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”

Robert McChesney even said, “In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”

To put McChesney’s influence on net neutrality in context, he was cited 46 times in the Obama net neutrality order.

Congressman Greg Walden (R-OR), Senator John Thune (R-SD), Congressman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) released a statement supporting Chairman Pai’s proposal to rescind Net Neutrality regulations. The statement read:

Pai explained that many liberal organizations, such as Free Press, and government officials hold disdain for free speech. Chairman Pai pointed out:

It’s hard to predict, although the very same people that want the government to regulate the internet and they are fundamentally hostile to free speech in a variety of different ways. They want unpopular views to be censored online; they don’t stand up to the bullies on college campuses who even violently of late resist against people, including Berkeley which is ironic that it was supposedly the birth of the free speech movement. There are some members of government who want to regulate online platforms, I mentioned in the speech that some of the Federal Election Commission members, for instance, want to restrict political speech and regulate online platforms like the Drudge Report. It seems the worst thing we want is to restrict that core value of the First Amendment to discuss political issues and if anything, else that’s exactly what the Founders had in mind when they enshrined the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. They want people to express themselves in terms of political opinions.

Net neutrality protesters, in advance of Thursday’s FCC meeting, held signs arguing that they should ban conservative publications such as Breitbart, Infowars, and the Drudge Report.

Ahead of the meeting’s the chairman published the entire text of the proposal to restore internet freedom. The 2015, 313-page net neutrality order was only published after the Commission passed the regulations.

Chairman Pai has argued that a legislative solution would end the political uncertainty of internet regulation.

He said, “I think the best solution would be for Congress to tell us what they want the rules of the road to be for the FCC and the country when it comes to the digital world. Part of the problem is that we are consistently looking at 1934 laws and 1996 laws then we try to shoehorn our modern marketplace to some of those paradigms that frankly we didn’t anticipate a marketplace as dynamic as the internet. I really think that Congress, ideally looking at all the opinions, and all the constituencies they can come to a consensus. Because again as Commissioner O’Reilly pointed out we don’t want the regulatory winds to keep shifting every four or eight years we want to provide some level of consistency to the marketplace so that consumers and companies alike can enjoy the digital revolution.”

Chairman Pai previously said that the internet prospered before net neutrality was enacted. Pai said, “The internet is the greatest free market success in American history.”</s>The Trump administration's Federal Communications Commission on Thursday officially begins the process of unraveling the Open Internet rules passed by the commission under Barack Obama. The FCC's rules on net neutrality dominated tech policy circles in 2014 and 2015, and 2017 is shaping up to be similar. Here are answers to your basic questions:

Wait, remind me again, what is net neutrality? The basic idea is that internet service providers shouldn't be allowed to treat traffic on their networks differently based on the source or type of content. Supporters of net neutrality think that there should be rules to keep, for instance, AT&T from providing preferential treatment to streaming video from DirecTV, which it owns, giving itself an advantage while harming other businesses and their customers. Another example of a violation would be if Verizon slowed down Netflix traffic until the company paid for speedier service.

What's happening today? At its monthly meeting, the FCC will vote to accept a proposal by Chairman Ajit Pai entitled "Restoring Internet Freedom." It's the first step in the commission's rule making process -- the document Pai is presenting is called a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, or NPRM. In the broadest sense, these rules are intended to undo the 2015 rules. And while Pai has the votes to win today, undoing the rules will take awhile. Nine months passed between the time that Tom Wheeler, Obama's FCC chair, introduced his open internet proposal in 2014 and the vote on the final rules. As Pai said in a speech at the end of April, this is the beginning of the discussion, not the end. (UPDATE: The commission voted 2 to 1 to approve the notice. The next step, taking comments from the public, goes through July 17.)

What did the commissioner think was wrong with the old rules? Pai doesn't see this as a debate over net neutrality. When he gave a speech outlining his approach in April, he didn't even use that phrase. His complaint is that the existing rules create a system that, in his words, "gives the FCC a roving mandate to micromanage the internet." Wheeler's FCC decided to treat broadband service as a utility under Title II of the federal Communications Act, which gave the commission stronger oversight. Pai was on the FCC in 2015 and objected to using Title II. The main goal of his plan is to reverse that decision.

But what about net neutrality? Instead of laying out a new set of rules, Pai has decided to ask for suggestions about how to structure them. But he does say that there has never been any evidence of a need for net neutrality protections. His plan asks whether it would make sense to have the industry police itself, whether anti-trust regulations would be enough to stem any bad behavior, and whether it even makes sense to automatically assume that harm comes from things like paid prioritization (speeding up traffic from businesses that pay) or throttling (slowing down certain kinds of traffic.) One thing that Pai does explicitly oppose is blocking legal material outright. In any case, the FCC seems prepared either to have no rules at all, or to have significantly weaker ones.

What has been the impact of the current approach? One big fight among people debating the Wheeler rules (and net neutrality rules in previous incarnations) is how internet regulation impacts investment in broadband. Opponents say the regulations drive investments down, because running a broadband company would be less profitable. In his speech Pai claimed the country's 12 largest internet providers reduced their domestic capital expenditures by 5.6% from 2014 to 2016. Yet the Internet Association, which represents net neutrality advocates like Google, Facebook, and Netflix, said telecom investment among publicly traded companies increased 5.3% in 2015 and 2016, compared with 2013 and 2014.

Most people just pick the set of statistics that fit into their ideology, says Brent Skorup, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University who opposes the Wheeler rules. He says this is the wrong way to think about the issue. If Washington has too much power, he argues, companies that are best at pulling the levers of government will come out ahead. Bigger companies are better at this than smaller companies, and the big internet providers are really big. "It's not clear to me that Title II will be bad for any companies in particular," he said. This is a mirror of the argument made by net neutrality advocates, who argue that Google or Netflix have little to lose in a non-neutral web, where they can use their resources to cut deals that smaller competitors can't.

What does John Oliver think about Pai's plan? He's against it. Many skeptics of net neutrality see Oliver's televised rants as an illustration of a broader challenge: Net neutrality advocates have a big advantage in mobilizing popular support. There are already signs that this fight it going to be nasty. The FCC has claimed that its commenting system was attacked earlier this month, causing it to slow down. It hasn't provided firm evidence of such an attack, and skeptics say the commission is looking for an excuse to explain why it wasn't ready to handle the wave of comments flooding in. Meanwhile, media reports have shown evidence casting doubt on the validity of thousands of public comments supporting Pai's rules. In the end, the only ones who get to vote on the rules are the FCC commissioners -- and it's not clear how, if at all, Pai will be affected by public opinion.

Does this whole story end with the FCC? Unlikely. Abigail Slater, general counsel for the Internet Association, questioned whether the FCC is justified in reversing its previous rules, something federal agencies aren't supposed to do if circumstances haven't changed significantly. Slater argued that the basic contours of the internet industry are the same now as they were two years ago, and a legal challenge could be justified. "We don't want to predict the future too much, but if you look at the 2015 order, it was voted out and immediately challenged by opponents of the order," she said. "We might expect to see the same thing happen here."</s>The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday took a first step in dismantling rules aimed at deterring broadband providers from tightening their control over the internet.

The agency's three commissioners voted 2-1 to start the process of repealing so-called net neutrality regulations, which were adopted in 2015. The move is expected to touch off a prolonged legal fight over how the web is regulated. The technology industry, including giants such as Alphabet (GOOGL), the parent of Google; Apple (AAPL); and Facebook (FB), supports net neutrality as a way to ensure innovation, and is aggressively lobbying lawmakers to preserve the rules.

FCC chief Ajit Pai has said eliminating the rules would boost competition among internet service providers (ISP), benefiting consumers.

"Whether I am in Red America, Purple America or Blue America, whether I am above the Arctic Circle or in the bayous of Louisiana, people tell me that they want fast, affordable, and reliable Internet access," Pai said in a speech last month in Washington that laid out the FCC's rationale for striking down net neutrality. "They say that they want the benefits that come from competition. And they tell me that they want to access the content and use the applications, services, and devices of their choice."

Under current law, ISPs are classified as telecommunication services, a designation that gives the FCC authority to regulate the industry more strictly. Net neutrality aims to block ISPs from giving priority to the content that moves through their pipes. A final vote on the rules could take months and is likely to face legal challenges, experts said.

"This FCC and the chairman are interested in scaling back regulations, but we don't know how much they want to scale back," said Jon Peha, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering. "Whatever they decide, it'll be challenged in court. And we don't know the outcome of that."

Repealing the existing net neutrality guidelines could allow ISPs to make some content more available than others. That could have a much broader impact on Americans, proponents for the rules contend.

"News sites that have low-quality content or fake news could pay ISPs to get ahead of competitors that have more accurate, high-quality content," said David Gorodyansky, CEO and founder of AnchorFree, a provider of virtual private network software. "The repeal of net neutrality will lead to censorship of information in America."

He went on to compare that scenario to "ISPs in restrictive countries like Saudi Arabia that block Skype and WhatsApp because they compete with the local phone companies." As in those countries, Gorodyansky added, "American ISPs will be able to restrict or limit the services that they don't like, that may be competitive or that don't pay them a separate fee. This will create a censored environment and will restrict equal access to information for users in the U.S."

That means on the most mundane level, consumers could get a hobbled online experience, net neutrality supporters say. Rule changes might allow ISPs to prioritize content that has been paid for rather than content that users actually prefer, while popular sites could disappear from web search results.

Net neutrality advocates also fear internet users could end up paying more for content that's more expensive for ISPs to carry. Currently, most users pay a single price per month for everything they do online -- email, social media, web browsing, streaming video and so on. But consumers may eventually be forced to pay separately for high-bandwidth services like Netflix (NFLX) and Hulu, or some ISPs could throttle or entirely block services that hog bandwidth, critics say.

"This proposal represents an existential threat to the continued development of the internet," said Ferras Vinh, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on the internet, in a statement. "It is based on the idea that societal change and economic growth are driven by internet service providers, rather than users, coders and engineers."

Ending net neutrality could mean "consumers would be left in the untenable position of accessing the internet in much the same way they make use of cable television -- through a tiered system of subscription services," said Kevin Howley, a professor of media studies at DePauw University. "And we all know how much the American people appreciate the cable industry's menu of programming packages."

Still, it's unclear what the new rules will ultimately look like. Pantelis Michalopoulos, an attorney who has argued in previous net neutrality cases, has confidence that current rules won't simply disappear even if ISPs get recategorized.

FCC chief Pai "wants net neutrality protections," Michalopoulos he. "He doesn't want ISPs to block or throttle traffic. He's on record saying he wants these protections."</s>The Federal Communications Commission is voting Thursday on a proposal that would start to roll back former President Obama’s rules on net neutrality.

Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Harold Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute, who says the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules are unconstitutional and prevent companies from blocking content they don’t like.</s>The process to overhaul how the Internet is regulated is now officially underway.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 on Thursday to move forward with a proposal to roll back net neutrality protections. The rules were put in place by the agency during the Obama administration to keep the Internet open and fair.

The controversial vote is the first step in a lengthy process that could drag on well into the fall. The proposal now goes through an official public commenting period before a final vote is considered.

Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC, said the vote would kick off a conversation about how to "best maintain a free and open Internet" while ensuring Internet providers "have strong incentives to bring next-generation networks and services to all Americans."

"This is beginning of the process, not the end," Pai said Thursday.

The net neutrality rules, approved by the FCC in 2015, prevent Internet providers from playing favorites by deliberately speeding up or slowing down traffic from specific websites and apps. Comcast (CCV), for example, can't allow its own video content to load faster than content from a competing video site like Netflix (NFLX, Tech30) or Vimeo.

As part of the 2015 process, the FCC voted to assert more regulatory control over Internet providers by reclassifying them as common carriers, similar to telephone services.

Pai unveiled a proposal last month to repeal that reclassification, called Title II, potentially gutting the net neutrality protections.

Pai and his supporters in the telecommunications industry have framed the move as eliminating burdensome regulation on broadband providers while simultaneously paying lip service to the idea of maintaining an open Internet.

Net neutrality advocates argue the move could lead to a power grab by a handful of Internet service providers at the expense of consumers and upstart online companies.

"If you unequivocally trust that your broadband provider will always put the public interest over their self-interest or the interest of their stockholders, then [this proposal] is for you," Mignon Clyburn, the FCC's lone Democrat commissioner, said in prepared remarks Thursday.

More than 1,000 startups and investors have now signed an open letter to Pai opposing the proposal. The Internet Association, a trade group representing bigger companies like Facebook (FB, Tech30), Google (GOOGL, Tech30) and Amazon (AMZN, Tech30), has also condemned the plan.

"The current FCC rules are working for consumers and the protections need to be kept in tact," Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Internet Association, said at a press conference Wednesday.

The FCC has already received a torrent of comments online in the days leading up to the vote thanks in large part to a rallying cry from "Last Week Tonight" host John Oliver. In fact, the FCC's comment system crashed after an Oliver segment. The FCC later claimed it was a DDoS attack.

An offline rally to save net neutrality took place place outside the FCC headquarters on Thursday.

While outrage may be growing over Pai's plan, there are doubts among advocates about how effective these demonstrations will be.

Pai, appointed to the chairman role by President Trump, is a longtime critic of the previous FCC administration's approach to net neutrality. There is also clear opposition from the Republican-led Congress.

The initial vote comes before the FCC is fully staffed with five commissioners. It currently has two Republican commissioners, including Pai, and one Democrat.

"We think it's worth fighting for," Beckerman said. "We are not just going to give up because there happens to be votes at the FCC."

Related: Trump's FCC may try to roll back net neutrality. Here's why that matters

Gigi Sohn, a counselor to former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, says the public comments could also factor into any court battle that may come later over the rule change.

"If you have an overwhelming record in favor of retaining these rules, it's something the FCC has to consider and something a court is going to look at, if you believe it will ultimately go to court," Sohn tells CNNTech.

The public outrage could also put pressure on Republicans, who have already come under fire for a vote to repeal Internet privacy protections.

"If this starts to become a political liability for Republicans," Sohn says, "they might just whisper to [Pai]: 'It's not worth it.' "</s>NEW YORK (AP) — A federal agency voted to kick off the repeal of “net neutrality” rules designed to keep broadband providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from interfering with the internet.

It’s the latest change that the Federal Communications Commission has made to ease regulation of the phone, broadcast and cable industries.

Undoing the net neutrality rules – which, for instance, block providers from favoring their own apps and services over those of competitors like Netflix – may be the biggest battle yet triggered by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. The tech industry, which sees net neutrality as necessary to innovation, is already pushing back by lobbying politicians, sending letters of protest to the agency and starting to rally supporters.

The FCC’s three commissioners voted 2-1, with the lone Democrat opposed, to start a process aimed at unwinding the net neutrality rules. It will be months before final rules are up for a vote.

Pai often argues that net neutrality rules are heavy handed and discourage broadband investment. His goal, he says, is to encourage companies to build out their wired and wireless broadband networks and draw more Americans online.

For support, Pai turns to a study by Hal Singer, a net-neutrality critic and economist who has worked as a telecom-industry consultant. Singer found that such infrastructure investment by network companies has declined 5.6 percent in 2016 from 2014. The telecom trade group USTelecom likewise says broadband investment is falling in the aftermath of the net neutrality rules.

Free Press, an advocacy group that supports net neutrality, has its own competing study showing broadband companies’ infrastructure spending rose, and says USTelecom is wrong to exclude some spending by AT&T and Sprint. Pai on Thursday defended the analysis he relied on, saying it’s the more accurate measure of investment in the U.S.

Industry analysts, however, say it’s so far hard to say, and note that other factors also affect investment.

In June 2015, the Obama-era FCC decided to regulate broadband as a “Title II” service – putting it, like phone service, under stricter government oversight. That gave the FCC authority to enforce net neutrality rules. Companies worried that regime would make it easier to regulate the prices they charged for broadband.

“From where we sit, the overall level of investment in the business is still pretty strong,” said Moody’s Mark Stodden, who analyzes telecom companies like Verizon and AT&T. “I hear companies complaining about net neutrality and Title II, but I think it’s a cop-out. I don’t think they’re actually spending less. They don’t like it so they complain about it.”

Some net-neutrality supporters have already started to push back against the repeal effort. The Firefox browser has a call to action that goads users to “tell the FCC that you heart the open web!” and links to a site collecting signatures for a letter to Pai.

John Oliver, the HBO comedy-news host whose 2014 segment helped popularize net neutrality as an issue (nearly 4 million comments filed back in 2015), got into the mix again with another segment on May 7, urging viewers to tell the FCC to keep the net neutrality rules.

But the vitriol often unleashed by the internet is already leaking into this inter-industry tech-policy battle. The chairman and his staff have complained about mean or racist comments directed at Pai, who is Indian-American. Oliver even begged supporters to be civil in an online video posted Sunday.

There are also reports that many of the 2 million comments already filed to the FCC are fake. And the FCC said its site was attacked the night of Oliver’s first segment, making it hard to leave a comment.

FCC officials have said, however, that it’s not a numbers game, and they pay more attention the know-how of the person or group making the comment rather than how many are filed on each side.

A preliminary version of Pai’s proposals, released last month, raised concerns that the FCC would only repeal, but not replace, net neutrality protections. Thursday’s proposal asked whether it’s still necessary to bar internet providers from blocking or slowing down certain websites or apps, or from charging services like Netflix extra for access to consumers. (Pai said Thursday these sections are still in the proposal.)

Big broadband companies say they can be trusted to do what’s right for their customers. Net-neutrality advocates cry foul; Free Press has a list of what it calls net-neutrality violations going back more than a decade.

“An open internet means that we do not block, throttle or otherwise impair your online activity,” said a Wednesday ad in the Washington Post placed by the cable lobby, NCTA. “We firmly stand by that commitment because it is good for our customers and good for our business.”

“Verizon supports net neutrality. Our customers demand it and our business depends on it,” wrote Craig Silliman, Verizon’s general counsel, in a post on LinkedIn. He also called for net-neutrality legislation from Congress.

In an April blog post, AT&T says it “has always supported our customers’ right to an open internet – and the right to access the content, applications and devices of their choosing.”

AT&T and industry trade groups sued the FCC over the 2015 rules; a federal appeals court upheld them in 2016 . Verizon sued over a previous attempt that was spiked in 2014 by a federal appeals court.

© Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>The Federal Communications Commission has officially begun to undo Obama-era regulations on Internet service providers, often called net neutrality rules. The rules, passed in 2015, had placed cable and telecom companies under the strictest-ever oversight of the agency.

Start the conversation, or Read more at News 88.9 KNPR.</s>Bots appear to be spamming a US regulator's website over a proposed reversal of net neutrality rules, researchers have said. According to three separate analyses, a flood of automated comments to the Federal Communications Commission was detected over the weekend.

Start the conversation, or Read more at BBC News.</s>How you use the internet and what you pay for speed and some say maybe even your favorite content – is up for debate again. IN 2015, many consumers thought the issue was resolved when the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) voted on net neutrality.

Many consumer groups favored the new rules, which they said provided equal access to customers. The FCC saying in 2015 that the providers could not be left to simply make up their own rules. The idea was that providers should not be able to block access or slow down access to “smaller” customers and play favorites to “big” customers who were willing to pay a lot more. In 2015, the FCC said basically if the Internet was a highway, that everyone deserved the same sized lane.

Well, now there is a new Administration and several new FCC members, including the chairman. And Thursday, the FCC voted to begin rolling back net neutrality.

Bryon Henry, and intellectual property attorney told us his take on net neutrality. ” It’s just basically like we’re gong to mandate that the Internet all be the same for everybody whether you’re willing to pay $20 a month or $200,” he said. “To say that everybody is entitled to the same Internet without additional charges, that’s not free market.”

Byron acknowledges that net neutrality may have certainly helped some consumers but falls more on the side of the new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai who said net neutrality provides too many regulations and hurts business and that rolling back the rules will “restore Internet freedom.”

“As long as there are protections in place to make sure there is not content based discrimination and to ensure people get Internet access, I think the free market and the new chairman have the better argument,” Henry told us. “Although there’s some strong, vocal proponents neutrality and they’re not going away. There will probably be a lawsuit if the rules are changed.”

Members of the public have until August 16 to comment to the FCC on what they want in terms of net neutrality , i.e. should it go or should it stay.

Meanwhile, one member of the FCC (who favors net neutrality) wrote Thursday that new FCC members are suggesting the same old trickle down economic theory that if we just “remove enough rules that internet providers will automatically improve service and give us more savings.”
The Federal Communications Commission votes to overturn a 2015 ruling requiring net neutrality.