Network Neutrality

Pennsylvania’s internet service providers (ISPs) have always been committed to – and offered – the Commonwealth’s consumers a powerful, open internet experience so they can enjoy online content, services and applications of their choosing.

Our state’s broadband communications industry has embraced and fostered the development of an open internet where companies do not block, throttle or otherwise interfere with the customer’s desire to go wherever they want on the web. Consumers demand it and, more importantly, it makes good business sense to provide customers full value for their internet connections.

Prior to 2015, bipartisan federal internet policy unanimously supported a “light touch” regulatory model, which provided the incentive to invest and build some of the most advanced networks in the world. Since the mid-1990s, more than $8 billion in private investment has been injected into building reliable networks that are available to the vast majority of Pennsylvanians, in urban, suburban and rural communities.

In the coming decade, Pennsylvania will receive more than $1.5 billion in federal infrastructure money to further deploy broadband to more than 275,000 unserved and 53,000 underserved locations. Much of this investment is contingent upon a significant match of private capital from ISPs.

For the past decade, the issue of “net neutrality” has been at the forefront of telecommunications regulation. During the Obama administration, the FCC proposed net neutrality by seeking to classify the internet as a Title II service, giving way for the federal government to further regulate the industry. Essentially, this reclassification would move the internet from an information source to a telecommunications service.

Proponents then argued that if the internet wasn’t reclassified, it would come to a stop. Providers would block, throttle, and discriminate against traffic, and users would have to pay to visit every website. That never happened, and the Trump administration repealed the order.

With a yet another change in administrations in Washington, D.C., the FCC voted in April 2024 to move ahead with the reclassification, even in the face of considerable legal challenges, and with more stringent rules.

Net neutrality is considered a back-door approach to more heavily regulate the industry – regulations that aren’t needed because the marketplace is providing wireless, wireline, and satellite competition. Applying such heavy regulation would raise costs, which are ultimately borne by consumers, and threaten the continued growth and expansion of those networks throughout the Commonwealth and the United States.

Consumers are best served by policies that encourage ongoing investment and innovation especially as technology changes, network demands increase and stakeholders focus on closing the digital divide in every community.

If the industry should be regulated, the power to do so should come from Congress. Such legislation would end the back-and-forth policies and put enforceable open internet principles in statute. Such action will allow everyone to move beyond endless partisan debate, and the industry to focus on building and expanding its world-class networks that continue to create jobs and advance prosperity in Pennsylvania and around the nation.

No one would argue that the growth of the internet, through the access of broadband infrastructure built by private investment – including Pennsylvania’s broadband companies – has been anything less than revolutionary in the communications, research and educational growth of modern society. It will continue to grow if simply left alone.

Unnecessary regulation comes at a price, and in this burgeoning industry the price would be paid in lost business development, stifled economic growth and a major step backward in Pennsylvania’s – and America’s – historic technological expansion.

Again, we strongly advocate that consumers be allowed to access any lawful content, applications and services available over the internet, while using today’s expanding technology and hardware in a way that causes no harm to broadband networks. We would argue that this is the wish of most Pennsylvania consumers as well.

In the meantime, the issue of net neutrality is spurring endless litigation, taking the focus away from expanding and improving broadband networks.