Net Neutrality Rules Go In Effect Today Despite Intense Telecom Opposition

Today is a good day: net neutrality rules are now active. Despite the fact that some companies have initiated legal action against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for its approval of net neutrality rules, the US Court of Appeals has worked in its favor by refusing to put a halt on things, stating "petitioners have not satisfied the stringent requirements".

Since the FCC approved net neutrality back in February, there's been a ton of excitement from regular consumers and much angst from the biggest ISPs. About a month after the approval, AT&T, Verizon, and others, decided to go to court to slow the process of instating net neutrality rules down. On multiple occasions, those requests have been shot down.

From the get go, FCC's chairman Tom Wheeler has exuded confidence that net neutrality would be instated and stay put, and noted that no court challenge would succeed. Just last month, in response to ISPs complaining that net neutrality could harm competition, Wheeler snapped, "You don't have a lot of competition".

As I've said in previous posts, Wheeler once seemed like a threat to net neutrality, but he's since become an important part of the entire mechanism. Assuming his beliefs are right, we probably don't have much to worry about going forward, and with net neutrality now active, our entire Internet ecosystem should continue to get better. Now, we can move onto the next challenge, like fixing that little spying problem we seem to be having.