It's complicated. I don't think things happen all at once. I think the problems will just creep in and one day...bam...what happened?

1. Rural networks will continue to deteriorate. Money will be spent where providers can deliver the content that pays them the most, to people who have money.

2. Content providers will merge with delivery providers. Like Comcast NBC. You pick a package. But you won't get everything.

3. Here's an add in Portugal. Like Facebook? That's another 5 dollars.

I think it's hard to say since it's new. If it's significant and unpopular, figure it will be reversed next time power shifts between the parties in Washington. Which, as things are going, may be sooner than expected.

I agree it's complicated, but I don't see it providing any benefits to the average person in accessing the internet. Rather, I think it will lead to slowdowns accessing some sites, the playing field becoming uneven for smaller entities, and lots of money being made by those who have the ear of the FCC at the moment. With net neutrality gone, I accept that the ISPs could use their new freedom to do some good things, like limiting bandwidth hogs, but: 1) there are already ways to do things like this, and 2) when is the last time your ISP gave you better access / faster speed at a lower cost?

I agree with Elmer that, if it gets too bad, we'll go through some lengthy process to fix it. The sad part is that when we have a change of administrations the first couple of years will be spent just trying to undo damage like this.

I don't see it benefiting consumers in any way. If, for example, Comcast goes to Amazon and says it's gonna cost $100 million to give them "priority" that Bezos is going to take a pay cut. I also don't believe that Comcast will be giving consumers a lower rate for service because they have an additional source of revenue.

How much does this affect me if my primary internet service is using cellular data?

The main objections as I understand are that service may slow or become annoying ( more buffering, sound cuts out on videos, pixelated images etc.) You want something better? Sign up for the new package, it's just a low monthly fee.......going to increase as time goes on. Maybe your provider drops some things from your search but you'll never know it. Maybe censorship happens.

Right now people are being hired to hide videos on You Tube or at least make them hard to watch. Some of the anti war and environmental changes videos are being subjected to this. Anyone with a strong opposition to corporate-political power is feeling the pressure. With an end to neutrality, these voices may just disappear. Does it seem like the same stories and viewpoints on TV ? Why spend hours on the Presidents twitter and never talk about the issues voters say they want progress on? I don't want the internet to be another thing like that. On the internet you can have meaningful discussions. We don't want to give that away.

The vote to end neutrality was opposed by 80% of the public yet they used out of context or falsely created copy and paste comments to support it by using people's names and addresses without their consent. Even people who had died had their names used with made up endorsements. Verizon's lawyers say it's about more freedom, yes freedom for them to change the internet however they wish to profit a few companies. What we have now is freedom and we want to keep it that way. This is a power grab for what the people built. But it will be lost if we don't fight for it. It's not too late for congress to overturn this and protect neutrality but we must all make ourselves heard without delay.

Free Speech and Free Internet now and always.

mtvhike, this can affect every device that uses the internet here in the US, both from a provider service based in the US, to the content you consume here on US servers and services.. I dont think anyone yet knows the extent of what will heppen, but corporate greed always seems to show its ugly face.

Reddit has a Net Neutrality community go to reddit and search net neutrality and visit that discussion group to hear detailed information from people directly involved and what is going on right now.

A number of states are going to court now to defend neutrality.

Kitty, I think you may be misinformed. As I understand it, net neutrality has nothing to do with censorship or favoring one set of views over another. Liken it to a highway system - is it a freeway or a toll road? I believe it has to do with whether the carriers must allow all traffic equal and unhindered passage, from and to any or all websites, or whether they have a right to charge for heavy users.

Carriers have to use their own money to expand capacity as use increases. Can or should they charge the major sources of use increase - the Netflix, Amazons, YouTubes, etc - or do they simply have to accommodate them? I believe that's the issue, and also whether such important changes are within the domain of agencies like the FCC or whether it should be Congress to set the rules.

Elmer-

The problem I see is that neither the FCC nor Congress will be setting the rules. They've just gave free rein to some of the biggest, greediest, and consumer-unfriendly companies in the country. I want rules for the Internet that aren't made up by these companies.

kudzu, I think time will tell. This is like a sporting event or a political contest, everyone seems to want to choose one side over another but without any real basis to know what the consequences are.

Carriers want no regulation. So called net-neutrality supporters are companies who think in its absence they will have to pay fees to carriers. Companies like Netflix, Google, yada yada yada. On any issue like this, companies act in their own self interest, as they should. To suspect one side as being evil while another is composed of innocent choir boys is naive.

I don't suspect one side as evil...I know it, based on a couple of decades of dealing with them. ;-)

Like the health care or education access argument. Sure you can get access but you have to have the ability to pay. Right now the internet is available to most people. I don't want a poor man's version of the internet for most of the country. I don't trust these big companies not to monkey with searches to favor their advertisers and clients over little guys, some sites have had subscribers removed. This is going on already and could get worse.

I'm not a fanboy for the current administration but I also don't see why so many of you are into such fear-mongering for this topic.

Most of the articles I've read on the subject have suggested the effect of this rule repeal is uncertain. One said the brash FCC president hoped that the action would push Congressional Democrats to engage in discussions and negotiations to reach legislative solutions, something they've apparently resisted doing but that he favors instead of an administrative rule.

Apparently the rule that was just reversed dates only from 2015. Was the gloom and doom y'all are talking about something that that 2015 rule change reversed? I don't remember much about it, I wonder if any of you do either.

Yes, I followed this 2 years ago and was relieved when I thought it would move forward. I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned now, totally apart from what one thinks of this Administration, But let's meet up again on this topic in a couple of years after the dominoes fall and we'll see how well this has worked out for users. I already know how it will turn out for those deriving massive revenues as service providers... ;-)

Kudzu, I don't know if you're old enough to have experienced this but I was a recent college grad and new entrant into the world of adult employment when the Oil Crisis of 1973 hit. In California, gas lines were long and a system of sales limitation was put in place - cars whose last digit was even could only buy on even numbered days, etc. Gas prices shot up and it was a real hassle. The rumors of windfall profits for oil companies were rampant. While complaining about this and the general situation to my father, he said "If the oil companies are going to make a bundle from this, buy some stock". It took me more talking and some days to resolve my view but I decided to act on his advice and bought some Chevron stock. I don't think they did as well as expected but I made a good return after holding it for 3 or 4 years.

If you think the internet carriers will now have extreme profits from this change, buy some stock and ride the wave yourself! If you're right, this is a great investment opportunity.

Elmer-

I not only am old enough to remember that, but I was working as a Federal regulator for the Department of Energy at the time, and one of our main tasks was to try to make sure gas supplies were getting fairly distributed around the U.S., and to rein in price gouging that was occurring. :-)

That was a difficult period and, regardless of what you think about Federal regulation, I can only tell you that the economic impacts on individuals, and the competition for access to fuel, would have been worse without some oversight by government. Those people and areas with the most money would have caused market distortions. So I do see this as a bit analagous to what could happen with net neutrality being thrown out the window. We'll see....

That's interesting, kudzu. Did you buy shares in Big Oil at the time like I did?

No...as a federal regulator, an investment like that would have been a conflict of interest, which one could get in trouble for (although I guess that this day the rules for ethical conduct only apply to the little people, based on some of the incredible things going on in the current Administration).

https://qz.com/1156695/net-neutrality-millions-of-fake-fcc-comments-were-filed-under-stolen-identities/

Check to see if your name was one of the 2Million used to petition the FCC to erase Net Neutrlity.

I don't think the FCC was or would have been influenced by public comments one way or the other. Do you?

Elmer-

I'll give you my perspective. I spent much of my professional life working at Federal regulatory agencies (EPA, Dept of Energy). I was involved throughout my career in developing proposed regulations, holding public hearings, receiving and assessing feedback, and revising regulations based on the feedback we received. We took it seriously, and we evaluated all comments...sometimes 10's or 100's of thousands. It's one of the reasons it takes so long to get a new regulation in place after a law has been passed directing an agency to do so.

I was involved in some pretty controversial, far-reaching regulations (like emission standards for power plants throughout the U.S.). Many of these regulations were controversial, and there was political pressure. And even though the agency or department heads were political appointees, Republican and Democrat, they did not generally try to force staff to reach a conclusion that was politically based. We did our best to develop regulations grounded in best available science, weighing the economic impacts on all parties, and other things, such as the potential health impacts on the public.

Having said that, we are now in uncharted territory. The current Administration has appointed people to head various agencies, departments, and commissions who are not well-qualified for the job, or are diametrically opposed to the mission of the office they head, or have a political agenda that outweighs the type of ethical standards I thought Federal employees should be held to and that I did my best to adhere to.

The whole issue of the FCC being influenced by "comments" is complicated by the fact that a lot of those comments arose from Internet sites and there is controversy over whether many of them, on both sides of the issue, were bona fide. However, aside from this, my view is that in past years the FCC should and would have considered comments and used the analysis of those comments as part of the decision making process. How seriously they took the comments this time is unclear. What seems clear however is that a certain political outcome was desired and almost preordained, and the head of the FCC made sure that that outcome occurred.

I had dealings with federal and state government agencies on behalf of growing and large-ish business clients I was a consultant for, along with colleagues who were often ex-employees of such agencies we had hired. Other colleagues in my company, with appropriate earlier career experience, worked as client advocates communicating and educating various legislative committee staff members and elected officials.

For those enmeshed (in an occupational sense) in the technicalities of various areas, as it sounds like you were and I also was, the difference between a thoughtful and informed opinion versus an opinion from someone who really doesn't know what they're talking about stands out as dramatically as the difference between a large dog and a small cat. It's never a hard call.

Agency staff members should be administrators and apolitical subject matter experts. Political appointees are political appointees. It's usually not hard to tell one from the other of this kind too. This FCC decision seemed to me to be a clearly political one and that was why I suggested that no number of comments and no matter from whom might have been expected to alter the outcome. And most certainly not comments from the general public.

Elmer-

I think we are in heated agreement on that... ;-)