Biden’s FCC Revives the Longest-Running Policy Fight in Tech

The Federal Communications Commission is heading into the next round of Washington’s longest-running fight over technology policy. On Oct. 19 the agency is slated to take a preliminary vote to reassert its authority to regulate broadband providers, clearing the way to pass a version of the net neutrality rules that it eviscerated during the Trump administration. President Joe Biden has called for the reinstatement of net neutrality since being elected, yet the FCC didn’t have the third Democrat it needed to push through the policy at the five-member agency until Anna Gomez joined in September. Just one day after Gomez became a commissioner, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel acted to move forward, saying Covid-19 lockdowns had ratified broadband as “essential infrastructure for modern life,” yet the FCC “has limited ability to oversee these indispensable networks.” This puts the commission on a timeline that could have a new version of net neutrality regulations in place by mid-2024. The outline of the proposed rules will be familiar to those who followed the debate up to this point. The rules prohibit broadband providers that bring the internet to homes and businesses from blocking or slowing access to web traffic or offering paid “fast lanes” that put their business partners’ traffic ahead of everyone else’s.