EDUCAUSE Comments: Proposed Net Neutrality Rules
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Sources(s): EDUCAUSE Policy Office
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Abstract
EDUCAUSE and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) submitted comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on December 14, 2023, regarding the FCC’s proposal to restore its 2015 net neutrality regulations. If reestablished by the FCC, those rules would prevent mass-market broadband service providers from blocking or throttling lawful Internet traffic. They would also bar broadband providers from implementing paid or affiliated prioritization (i.e., from prioritizing the data traffic of any given entity based on the payment of fees or an affiliation between the entity and the provider, such as when the two are owned by the same corporate parent company). Finally, the proposed regulations would include a “general conduct rule” that would enable the FCC to ban provider actions that present a significant likelihood of negatively impacting net neutrality.
EDUCAUSE and ARL supported the FCC’s net neutrality regulations when they were established in 2015 and opposed the decision to rescind them in 2017. Our comments submitted in relation to the FCC’s 2023 rulemaking proposal highlight the points that EDUCAUSE, ARL, and other associations made in support of net neutrality during the 2015 and 2017 FCC proceedings, as well as arguments raised in a 2018 amicus brief that advocated for a federal court to overturn the FCC’s 2017 decision to rescind its net neutrality regulations.