Over here in North America, we’re all sitting anxiously on our desk chairs and couches to see what will happen with the new laws governing how the internet will work for us in the future. Currently, these laws are affecting the United States.
What’s happening?
Here is the official statement released by the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) on June 11 about their decision.
In summary, the FCC implies that the pre-existing regulations on the internet were hindering investment and therefore progress in the Internet Service Provider (ISP) industry. This is part of the reasoning for their decision. Of course, as you’ve probably seen around social media and on blog/article pages, people are hypothesizing what will occur as a result of this decision.
The FCC passed its ruling on June 11th of 2018 that net neutrality will end. This is great news for internet providers like AT&T (an example you’ve probably heard literally everywhere else). These providers are now lawfully free to alter broadband connection as they want to for specific websites or services. Though the likelihood of this happening is low, or may not in fact take place for a while.
The reason we may not see any changes right away is because of competition in the market of internet providers. For example, there are currently 55 million US Netflix subscribers. If Company A slows internet connection down for Netflix streaming and Company B is willing to offer full streaming speeds, subscribers will choose Company B, making it more profitable. Company A will want to re-evaluate their decision.
Of course, it’s difficult to understand what might happen in the next few years. Internet providers might start to slowly take advantage of the new laws, or the internet might not change with any significance at all. We’ll be keeping a close watch on this though!
As always, feel free to message us with any questions on the topic.
Here’s a video to further explain some of the implications of the FCC decision if we didn’t explain this whole ordeal well enough.