What’s Next After the Repeal of Net Neutrality

The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to discard so-called net neutrality rules that prevented broadband providers from slowing sites or demanding payments from them for fast delivery. The decision opens the door for very different consumer experiences on the internet. The rules will go into effect in the coming weeks.

Here is a guide to what will happen next:

Is my Netflix going to start sputtering? Will my internet service bill go up?

Consumers will probably not encounter immediate changes to their internet service. The biggest broadband companies, like Comcast and AT&T, have promised that consumers will not see a change in how they experience the web. And with such a big spotlight on them, the companies will probably be careful about changing service plans, partly to avoid angering customers and attracting lawmakers’ attention.

Broadband companies are “likely to proceed cautiously pending final resolution of these legal challenges,” said John Beahn, a regulatory lawyer at Skadden, Arps, who does not have clients with interests in net neutrality. “They recognize the ultimate fate of the regulations is still far from certain at this point.”

But significant changes could come over time. For instance, AT&T could decide to charge a company like Etsy or Netflix more to deliver traffic from the website’s servers around the internet. Internet service providers, many of which are also media companies, could create faster lanes of delivery for their own sites, which would make it harder for the content of their rivals to show up in front of consumers. In the past, some providers have even blocked sites, as when AT&T prevented Apple’s FaceTime service from working for some customers of its wireless networks in 2012.

One Republican commissioner, Mike O’Rielly, said he supported some forms of paid prioritization, which could open the door for an internet model more like cable television, with different price tiers for certain websites.

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