Last month FCC voted to approve new powers to oversee broadband internet after Obama called for regulators to maintain a free and open internet

After a year of acrimonious wrangling, threats and an unprecedented online campaign, the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday finally released its new rules on regulating the internet.

The 313-page document is now being scrutinised by an army of communications lawyers as the cable and telecoms industry considers whether – or more likely when – to sue the regulator in the hopes of overturning the new rules.

Last month the FCC voted to approve new regulations that will strengthen its powers to oversee broadband internet in the US. The rules followed a call from Barack Obama for the “strongest possible” regulations to protect net neutrality – the principle that all services and information should have equal access to the internet.



The new rules ban internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking or “throttling” any legitimate service online. The FCC also outlawed ISPs from creating fast lanes for preferred services – a practice known as “paid prioritization.” The FCC will also have the power to step in if it feels new practices in the industry are not “just and reasonable” and will, for the first time, also oversee mobile broadband.

Critics were unconvinced. Republican opponents of the rules have already called for the orders to be overturned, charging that they give too much power to the FCC and will stifle innovation. They have also launched an inquiry into Obama’s influence on the independent regulator’s decision.

Republican FCC commissioner Ajit Pai said he was “sad to witness the FCC’s unprecedented attempt to replace that freedom with government control”. He said the regulator was turning its back on 20-years of light regulation without justification. “We are flip-flopping for one reason and one reason alone: president Obama told us to do so,” he said.

The outlines of the rules were already clear, but both supporters and critics had called for an early release of the hefty report in order to scrutinise the details. Net neutrality activists cheered the FCC’s decision last month, giving the regulator’s chairman Tom Wheeler a standing ovation for the decision.

FCC officials sought to address charges that they were imposing “utility-style” regulation on the internet. “The order bars the kinds of tariffing, rate regulation, unbundling requirements and administrative burdens that are the hallmarks of traditional utility regulation. No broadband provider will need to get the FCC’s approval before offering any price, product or plan,” the regulator said in a statement.

The regulator also said it would not regulate retail broadband rates.

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which represents the largest cable companies, said the release “only confirms our fear that the commission has gone well beyond creating enforceable open internet rules, and has instead instituted a regulatory regime change for the internet that will lead to years of litigation, serious collateral consequences for consumers, and ongoing market uncertainty that will slow America’s quest to advance broadband deployment and adoption”.

The FCC was forced to rewrite its rules after Verizon successfully challenged its authority to regulate broadband last year. The new rules classify high-speed internet as a telecommunications service rather than an information one, allowing the FCC to oversee broadband under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, the most stringent regulatory regime in its purview.