Well, it finally happened. On Monday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s wildly unpopular net neutrality rollback officially took effect. A last-ditch effort to reverse the repeal — an effort that was co-led by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey — wasn’t enough to stop the FCC from getting rid of the Obama-era rule that prevents Internet Service Providers from charging us more money to access certain of online content.

While it’s too soon to know how companies like Verizon and Comcast will use this new power, the signs from Portugal — which gives Internet Service Providers (ISPs) similar clout — are not good. Over there, consumers are given a range of Internet “package” options, which allow them a finite amount of content. The packages are geared towards different kinds of Internet utility — say, messaging, or social media — and the package prices are tied to their inclusiveness. To access everything, you have to pay more.

It’s hard to overstate what a radical departure this would be from the Internet as most Americans have known it. But now that U.S. ISPs have free reign to impose content-specific pricing tiers for Internet subscriptions, what’s happening in Portugal could soon become our reality. Many of us could soon find our Internet activities limited to what we can afford to pay for, which poses a terrible and unjust risk to small businesses and remote workers who rely on the Internet to make a living, and people for whom the Internet is a means of staying in touch with distant family and friends.

The good news is that this doesn’t have to be our reality here in Massachusetts.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass, via a taped recording from Washington, addresses a state legislative panel hearing as it considers how Massachusetts might respond after the Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality rules at the Massachusetts Statehouse Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, in Boston. (Stephan Savoia/AP)

On a federal level, we’ve lost the fight to save net neutrality, but some states have been pushing back against Ajit Pai’s FCC by introducing their own laws that would require ISPs to abide by net neutrality laws on a local scale. One of the first states to take a crack at this was Montana. Back in January, Governor Steve Bullock issued an executive order that bound all telecom companies with state government contracts to the rules of net neutrality. The governors of New York and Vermont have given similar orders. But a much more sweeping law was passed in Washington, which — as of right now — is the only state in America that blocks all telecom companies from charging premium content fees or throttling Internet traffic.

Massachusetts has every reason to follow Washington’s example — our progressive legacy notwithstanding. And several of our elected officials have already introduced bills that would restore essential consumer protections for ISP customers here in Massachusetts. The authors of these bills are Rep. Andy Vargas, Senators Barbara L’Italien and Jamie Eldridge, and Rep. Dave Rogers. The usual gang of Internet industry leaders have turned out at hearings to criticize the bill but what’s worrying here is the fact that this joint effort to protect Commonwealth residents from the manifest greed of ISPs has yet to be amplified by our most popular (and arguably powerful) elected official of all — Governor Charlie Baker.