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The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

By Barbara van Schewick on April 11, 2024 at 5:18 pm The FCC is set to vote on April 25 to restore its authority over the companies we pay to get online, and reinstate federal net neutrality protections that were jettisoned by the Trump administration in 2017. Net neutrality protections are supposed to ensure that we, not the internet service providers (ISPs) we pay to get online, get to decide what we do online.

These kinds of ISP-controlled fast lanes violate core net neutrality principles and would limit user choice, distort competition, hamper startups, and help cement platform dominance. Legislators, government agencies, attorneys general in states both red and blue, public interest groups, startups, and open-source technologists are all working to reduce the power and dominance of the biggest platforms. While draft order acknowledges that some speeding up of apps could violate the no-throttling rule, it added some unclear, nebulous language suggesting that the FCC would review any fast lanes case-by-case, without explaining how it would do that.

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