How the FCC's Net Neutrality Plan Breaks With 50 Years of History

Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai has proposed repealing longstanding net neutrality rules. Only he has a different phrase for them: “The Obama administration’s heavy-handed regulations.” Wait a second: Did Obama really invent net neutrality? Early History---the 1970s What’s now called the “net neutrality debate” is really a restatement of a classic question: How should a network’s owner treat the traffic that it carries? The question is ancient enough to be relevant to medieval bridges, railroad networks, and other “common carriers.” But let’s skip 500 years or so and keep the focus on telecommunications networks, where what we now call net neutrality policy really has two ancestors, both dating from the 1970s. In the jargon of the day, the companies were described not as “apps,” “over the top,” or “internet companies” but as providers of “data-processing services.” The FCC recognized the great potential in such “over-the-top” services and the importance of what it called the “confluence of computer and communications technologies taking place.” In 1971 the commission declared the data-processing industry “a major force in the American economy,” and predicted “its importance to the economy will increase in both absolute and relative terms in the years ahead.” But it was also obvious that the new industry, as it ran on AT&T’s lines, was vulnerable to and could be destroyed by the monopolist, whose jealousy was legendary.