The Federal Communications Commission restored Obama-era net neutrality aimed by preventing broadband providers like Verizon or Comcast from blocking or slowing down service to competitors like Netflix or YouTube. The rules make broadband similar to a utility regulated like phones and water. Free speech advocates favor net neutrality as vital to preserving access to the internet. (The New York Times, April 25, 2024, by Cecilia Kang)
Eva Dou in The Washington Post, April 25, 2024, writes that the changing internet complicates government regulation, that the advent of a 5G technology called “network slicing” that requires fast lanes.” 5G, Dou writes, is “designed to run multiple separated networks or slices at different speeds and latencies — appears fundamentally to contradict the traditional concept of net neutrality of all data flowing at the same speed through a pipe, with nothing allowed to jump the queue or be pushed to the back.”