Following the removal of the regulation that prevented US internet service providers (ISPs) from gathering and selling their customer's information without their consent, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is now looking to further roll back former President Obama's privacy rule changes.
A new era for the FCC
President Donald trump had already signed and finalized the removal of the recent FCC regulation, but its seems like the FCC is not done with its rollbacks just yet. According to several reports, the FCC's Chairman, Aji Pai, is now looking to reverse Obama's regulations pertaining to data and Net Neutrality for United States-based ISPs.
Rule changes under Obama
During Obama's administration, and under the former FCC's chair, Tom Wheeler, ISPs were classified as Title II Utilities. Under this classification, ISPs are generally under the rule of FCC regulations. One of these rules includes net neutrality, which essentially means that providers are now allowed to discriminate the data it is sending or receiving from customers.
Regulations put in place to stop data discrimination
The net neutrality rule basically means that every data, sent or received, has to be treated equally. ISPs are not allowed to filter or discriminate between any type of data in order to control its consumer's consumption. Another way of putting it is that ISPs are required to treat data equally, regardless if it is coming from their partner streaming services or other preferred clients.
The effects of the rollbacks
ISPs have long complained that the regulations that were previously put in place by the FCC, under Obama, were burdensome and unnecessary. The current FCC chair even explained that his aim is for a "free and open internet" and that net neutrality is apparently not part of that equation.
However, proponents of the net neutrality rule argue that strict rules have to be put in place to prevent ISPs from monopolizing the bandwidth they are providing.
Providers can easily favor one type of data that would benefit them or their preferred clients. A large streaming service, such as Netflix, could easily strike a deal with providers to increase their bandwidth compared to other services. This would result in an unfair advantage for the company and make it hard for other services to compete in the same space. Pai and congressional Republicans are likely eyeing yet another swift victory to fully dismantle the different telecommunications regulations put in place under the Obama administration.
