The Editorial Board

USA TODAY

For the most part, the Internet has been a marvelous invention.

It has produced one great digital service after another — email, the World Wide Web, streaming, search and social media, to name a few. Five of the world’s most valuable companies — Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook — all reside in and around the Internet.

But this remarkable ecosystem has always had a weak link: the Internet service providers (mainly cable and telephone companies) that dominate the business of running data into homes and businesses. The ISPs are better known for their escalating prices than they are for innovation or customer service.

For the past two decades, they have been lobbying Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to hand them control of the Internet. While it pains us to say it, they are on the verge of succeeding. As early as Thursday, the FCC is planning to begin the process of turning them from common carriers into gatekeepers and toll collectors.

From its origins, the Internet has thrived under the principle of network neutrality. That is, the companies that control the physical conduits over which content travels could not use that power to give faster download speeds or otherwise favor certain content. Put another way, they couldn't erect toll booths on the information superhighway.

FCC CHAIRMAN:Strict regulations stifle competition

America likely never would have had an Internet had the dial-up networks of its early days not been regulated as common carriers that could charge by volume of traffic but had no stake in what they carried.

In the broadband age, it would be hard to imagine the kind of streaming from the likes of Netflix and Amazon that Americans have come to enjoy had service providers been able to impose their will. At the very least, consumers would have been forced to pay more to account for the piece of the action that service providers would have demanded from streaming companies, and perhaps even movie and television producers.

Absent net neutrality, the broadband Internet would have looked a lot like cable television. For that reason the FCC in 2015 decided to formalize the idea of net neutrality from guiding principles to hard and fast rules.

But now, the Trump administration’s FCC, chaired by a former lawyer for Verizon, is determined to undermine these principles and write new rules that allow the service providers to, in effect, force themselves into partnership with content companies.

Some cynics argue that this is all a minor tempest because the Internet itself is not the competitive cauldron it once was.

Indeed, two companies, Google and Facebook, account for an astounding two-thirds of all digital advertising revenue. And companies such as Amazon, Netflix and Apple have come to dominate the distribution of premium entertainment content.

But anyone who thinks that the competitive era of the Internet is over should remember the example of Microsoft. In the 1990s and early 2000s it was widely believed to be an unstoppable force that was stifling tech innovation. Today, that argument looks silly.

New companies will come around to challenge the incumbents. In fact, someone is likely to invent some whole new paradigm for using the Internet. But that can happen only if the Internet remains the Internet, which right now looks like a shaky proposition.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

To read more editorials, go to the Opinion front page or sign up for the daily Opinion email newsletter. To respond to this editorial, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.