According to the New York Times…
High speed internet service can be defined as a utility, a federal court has ruled, a decision clearing the way for more rigorous policing of broadband providers and greater protections for web users.
The decision from a three judge panel at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday comes in a case about rules applying to a doctrine known as net neutrality, which prohibit broadband companies from blocking or slowing the delivery of internet content to consumers.
Those rules, created by the Federal Communications Commission in early 2015, started a huge legal battle as cable, telecom and wireless internet providers sued to overturn regulations that they said went far beyond the F.C.C.’s authority and would hurt their businesses.
The court’s decision upholds the F.C.C. on the declaration of broadband as a utility, the most significant aspect of the rules. That has broad reaching implications for web and telecommunications companies and signals a shift in the government’s view of broadband as a service that should be equally accessible to all Americans, rather than a luxury that does not need close government supervision.
This is a big deal – but they are talking about access to information via broadband *not* access to broadband.
Here’s the short take from the FCC press release..
“The internet is the most dynamic platform for free speech ever invented and our internet economy is the envy of the world. Today’s decision supports internet principles of fairness and openness—the principles that keep us innovative, fierce, and creative.”
Here’s a snippet from the opinion – it gives a brief history of Net Neutrality in the Courts…
we confront an effort by the Federal Communications Commission to compel internet openness— commonly known as net neutrality—the principle that broadband providers must treat all internet traffic the same regardless of source. In our first decision, Comcast Corp. v. FCC, 600 F.3d 642 (D.C. Cir. 2010), we held that the Commission had failed to cite any statutory authority that would justify its order compelling a broadband provider to adhere to certain open internet practices. In response, relying on section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Commission issued an order imposing transparency, antiblocking, and anti-discrimination requirements on broadband providers. In our second opinion, Verizon v. FCC, 740 F.3d 623 (D.C. Cir. 2014), we held that section 706 gives the Commission authority to enact open internet rules. We nonetheless vacated the anti-blocking and anti-discrimination provisions because the Commission had chosen to classify broadband service as an information service under the Communications Act of 1934, which expressly prohibits the Commission from applying common carrier regulations to such services. The Commission then promulgated the order at issue in this case—the 2015 Open Internet Order—in which it reclassified broadband service as a telecommunications service, subject to common carrier regulation under Title II of the Communications Act. The Commission also exercised its statutory authority to forbear from applying many of Title II’s provisions to broadband service and promulgated five rules to promote internet openness. Three separate groups of petitioners, consisting primarily of broadband providers and their associations, challenge the Order, arguing that the Commission lacks statutory authority to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, that even if the Commission has such authority its decision was arbitrary and capricious, that the Commission impermissibly classified mobile broadband as a commercial mobile service, that the Commission impermissibly forbore from certain provisions of Title II, and that some of the rules violate the First Amendment. For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we deny the petitions for review.
It means a provider can’t throttle your connection, can’t charge for premium channels, can give preferential treatment to their partners. But it doesn’t mean that a provider has to serve a whole community.