The FCC made some changes to the recent Net Neutrality Order between the version that got approved on April 25 and the final version that was released to the Congressional record. One of the most interesting changes was to clarify rules pertaining to carriers creating fast lanes.

The original order included language that prohibited paid prioritization, which is generically referred to as fast lanes. The original rules largely prohibited ISPs from slowing Internet traffic for some customers but not others, which is the same language that was included in the original net neutrality order first passed by the Commission in 2015.

But there were numerous comments made in the docket expressing concern about ISPs offering fast service to some customers for an additional fee, which is basically the definition of a fast lane. The final FCC rules prohibit fast lanes where some customers selectively get a better broadband connection than somebody else, even if the faster connection is made at no charge.

The draft FCC language did not specifically prohibit fast lanes but instead reserved the right for the FCC to judge each case that arose in the market. The revised final language pivoted to a straight prohibition against throttling some customers to slower speeds or boosting others to faster speeds.

This is one of the aspects of net neutrality that have been controversial with the public since the topic was first raised years ago. For example, gamers who hear this discussion assume it means they can’t get a faster connection. The fact is that they can if their ISP does it in a way that doesn’t create a fast lane. It is not a violation of fast lane rules for an ISP to offer a faster broadband connection. ISPs already do that today, and offering gigabit or faster broadband speeds is not a violation of the fast lane principle as long as the faster products are available to everybody.

The fast lane prohibition stops ISPs from giving a customer a priority or a benefit that comes at the cost of degraded service for others. For example, the fast lane rules would stop an ISP from making a deal to give Netflix customers a more reliable video stream than Amazon Prime customers.

One of the concerns that might have convinced the FCC to tighten the fast lanes language was a lot of comments made about network slicing. This is a technology that allocates different amounts of bandwidth on a 5G network according to the needs of the customer. A customer who is only making a voice call needs a small amount of bandwidth, and in a network equipped with fully functional 5G network slicing, a voice customer would only be provided a small portion of one channel. However, somebody playing a video game on the cellular network might be given the bandwidth from several channels. Using network slicing would not automatically create a fast lane for gamers, but it can be construed to do so if a cellular carrier promises that gamers will get a higher priority than everybody else – a claim that’s not hard to imagine. Ericsson was quoted by the FCC saying that it is not hard to imagine a cellular carrier charging $10.99 more per month to gamers for a guaranteed priority connection.

The FCC warned ISPs not to disguise regulated broadband products to look like enterprise or wholesale services in an attempt to avoid the fast lane prohibition. I have to imagine that the latest FCC language is causing some consternation in ISP departments working on new products.

The flip side of prohibiting fast lanes is that ISPs can’t purposefully throttle or slow some customers in a way to favor others. It’s not hard to imagine an AI-controlled network that could give higher priority to subscribers who pay the highest price for broadband. It’s almost inevitable that somebody will bring such a complaint within the next decade.