Before the Biden FCC restored net neutrality, there was concern that the new net neutrality rules weren’t as tough as the ones discarded by the Trump administration. While the draft rules did require ISPs be transparent about the limits of your broadband connection, and barred big ISPs from blocking or throttling competitors, there were concerns they still allowed ISPs to create preferential “fast lanes.”
More specifically, Stanford Professor Barbara van Schewick expressed concerns that the rules failed to prohibit wireless providers from using 5G network slicing to put certain apps in select “fast lanes” to the detriment of others. This, she argued, could “limit user choice, distort competition, hamper startups, and help cement platform dominance.”