The Federal Communications Commission [FCC] rocked the internet Dec. 14 by voting along party lines to repeal net neutrality, which is an Obama-era policy that regulates internet providers.
The regulation required that internet service providers, such as Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable, provide consumers equal access to all content.
Ajit Pai, the Republican chairman of the FCC, said the internet does not need net neutrality.
“In early 2015, the FCC jettisoned this successful, bipartisan approach to the Internet,” Pai said in an oral statement that was published by the agency. “On express orders from the previous White House, the FCC scrapped the tried-and-true, light touch regulation of the Internet and replaced it with heavy-handed micromanagement.”
Pai said these regulations were mistakes.
“For one thing, there was no problem to solve,” he said. “The Internet wasn’t broken in 2015. We weren’t living in a digital dystopia. To the contrary, the Internet is perhaps the one thing in American society we can all agree has been a stunning success.”
Aileen Garza, a social work junior and an Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) tutor at Johnny G. Economedes High School in Edinburg, believes the repeal of net neutrality will make the internet more expensive and inaccessible for the students with whom she works.
“I define net neutrality as keeping the internet safe and accessible, because having accessible access to the internet, is access to resources, for news,” Garza said. “If we didn’t have net neutrality, there would be bigger consequences to people in marginalized, low-income communities.”
Daniel Chomsky, a UTRGV assistant professor of political science, said the purpose of net neutrality was to prevent companies from being able to privilege certain websites over others.
“Everyone will find that internet service providers will be able to privilege certain material over others,” Chomsky said.
He said internet service providers are monopolistic, with consumers having limited choices.
“Net neutrality requires that all information on the internet to be treated equally,” Chomsky said. “These are the conditions that people expect when they go on the internet, but what most people aren’t aware of is that those are regulatory matters.”
He said the way we experience the internet will not be the same as we move forward in the future.
