The American telecom regulator FCC has reintroduced net neutrality after seven years. That measure was scrapped under President Trump.
With the ‘Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet’ regulations, internet providers are no longer allowed to discriminate against services or sites in favor of others who pay the provider for a faster connection.
Net neutrality was imposed by the FCC in 2015 under then US President Obama. In 2017, those rules were reversed under his successor Donald Trump. When an American president is appointed, the leadership of the FCC is also usually changed, which can sometimes cause policy to change significantly.
The plans had been there for some time, but it took a long time for American politics to approve an additional council member of the FCC, so net neutrality was only announced in September last year and has now been approved.
What is net neutrality?
Net neutrality is the principle that an internet provider may not slow down or block (legal) traffic to some sites or services, or increase fees for services.
A (fictitious) example of this is that, for example, Netflix would pay a provider for an optimal fast connection to that provider’s customers, and in return a service such as Disney+ or YouTube would be put on a slower track, which is detrimental to the user experience. . Net neutrality states that all players should be treated the same.
An interesting detail is that not counting data traffic is also not allowed in the US. This concerns (usually mobile) providers that, for example, do not count traffic from TikTok or Instagram towards your data limit. This is permitted to a limited extent in Belgium.
Tags: regains net neutrality Data News
