What is net neutrality again?
Net neutrality is the principle that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally, regardless of whether you're checking Facebook, posting pictures to Instagram or streaming movies from Netflix or Amazon. It also means that companies like AT&T, which is trying to buy Time Warner, or Comcast, which owns NBC Universal, can't favor their own content over a competitor's content.
So what just happened?
Pai, who became FCC chairman after President Trump took office, on Tuesday published a proposal to eliminate the current net neutrality regulations, which prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing down traffic and ban them from offering so-called fast lanes to companies willing to pay extra to reach consumers more quickly than competitors.
But the proposal's most significant change is to strip the FCC of its authority to regulate broadband and instead shift that responsibility to the Federal Trade Commission. Under the 2015 rules, the FCC reclassified broadband as a utility, which gave it the authority to regulate broadband infrastructure much as it did the old telephone network. The proposal would strip away that classification.