Rep. Marsha Blackburn proposes bill to ban site blocking and throttling but allow fast lanes and bar FCC from regulating ISPs as common carriers under Title II
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second time Rep. Marsha Blackburn has gone to Congress to preempt the FCC on net neutrality: in 2015 she pushed a bill to block the agency from implementing its net neutrality rules outright, and this proposal takes a more surgical route — codifying bans on blocking and throttling while explicitly permitting fast lanes and stripping the FCC of Title II common-carrier authority.
The bill also fits a broader legislative pattern in the related coverage of shielding private ISPs from both regulators and public competitors, from Tennessee's lawsuit defending its ban on municipal broadband expansion to the proposed Virginia Broadband Deployment Act restricting municipal networks.
First-order effects
- ISPs would gain legal certainty to sell paid fast-lane priority to content companies, since the bill bans blocking and throttling but leaves paid prioritization untouched.
- The FCC would lose its Title II pathway for classifying ISPs as common carriers, foreclosing the regulatory approach it used for its 2015 rules.
Second-order effects
- Edge providers and startups that cannot pay for priority would compete on degraded terms against deep-pocketed services inside fast lanes, shifting bargaining power toward ISPs.
- State and local efforts to expand government-run broadband would face reinforced headwinds at the federal level, aligning with the CONNECT Act's later limits on municipal networks.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US net neutrality settles into statute as a narrow anti-blocking/throttling floor with legalized paid prioritization, replacing common-carrier regulation as the governing framework.
- Broadband policy consolidates around a pro-private-ISP coalition spanning Congress and state legislatures, leaving municipal networks as the main contested alternative.
The trend: US broadband policy is moving from FCC common-carrier oversight toward legislation that codifies light-touch ISP rules while constraining both the regulator and municipal competitors.