FCC voted, the Internet protected under Title II

February 26, 2015 15:00 EST • Alexandre Vallières-Lagacé • 2 minute read

This is great day for our buddies in the USA. The FCC has voted to consider the Internet as a public srvice and this covers the mobile Internet.

"The action that we take today is an irrefutable reflection of the principle that no one, whether government or corporate, should control free and open access to the internet"

— Tom Wheeler, FCC Chairman

###What does this means? It simply means that your Internet provider cannot throttle some service because it feels it is competition to another one of his service. You can think of Netflix having to pay millions of dollars to providers so they don’t have their speed slowed down to a crawl. This famous speed graphic says it all.

Netflix speed overtime by ISP

So yes, Netflix must be popping out the Champagne at this very moment. ;) But it’s not good just for them. It’s one of the first and important milestone for a free Internet for our neighbours and can have repercussion in Canada too. Our dear Canada usually mimic policies of our neighbours to keep the commercial exchanges simple and stream-lined.

"We have to add net neutrality to a list of basic market conditions that we protect."

— Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web

Small players too

It’s also very good for the small player in the industry. Where would Netflix be if from the start they were throttled down and had to pay lots of money just to be usable? It would probably have failed.

Job’s done?

Not quite, the big ISP could contest this ruling in court and over the next couple of years things could change, but for once the FCC seems to have an objective that makes sense and most important of all, it seems to have purpose.