Surprising nobody, the FCC today voted 3-2 along party lines to impose Title II-based net neutrality rules. The decision comes after 4 million public comments, millions of dollars spent on ISP lobbying to derail the effort, and an unprecedented wave of consumer-advocate activism. Note the public still doesn't get to see the rules yet, and may not get to see them for several weeks.
While neutrality opponents have tried to claim this is an attempt to hide the rules from the American public, releasing rules after a vote has been standard FCC policy since the 1970s (pdf). That doesn't make it a good rule, but it's a rule that has impacted both parties equally over the years. In a speech during the commission's meeting, a visibly-moved Tom Wheeler was quick to debunk the idea that the agency is "secretly planning to regulate the Internet":
quote:
This proposal has been described by one opponent as, quote, a secret plan to regulate the Internet. Nonsense. This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concepts: openness, expression, and an absence of gate keepers telling people what they can do, where they can go, and what they can think.
Wheeler states that the only thing holding back the public from seeing the rules right now, are the fact that the two dissenting Commissioners -- Ajit Pai and Mike O'Reilly -- have thus-far refused to include their dissenting edits. The two have spent the last several weeks complaining about transparency, but once the two provide their edits, we'll be able to see the rules in detail and the inevitable ISP lawsuits can commence.
With the actual rules still unpublished, there's sure to be plenty of debate waiting in the wings depending on legal wording issues and caveats. For example it's still entirely unclear just how hard the FCC intends to treat zero rated apps (or AT&T's Sponsored Data plan), though the FCC has generally given the impression that the rules won't impact any of the plans on the market today. The FCC's intentions when it comes to governing interconnection issues also remains unclear, and depends entirely on specific wording.
You can find the FCC's full statement
here.