Key figures: Julius Genachowski (FCC chairman), Michael J. Copps and Mignon Clyburn (commissioners voting to adopt), Robert M. McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker (dissenting commissioners)
Summary
On December 21, 2010, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted the Open Internet Order, its first set of enforceable rules intended to preserve “network neutrality” — the principle that broadband providers should not discriminate among the lawful internet traffic they carry. The order was approved by a 3–2 vote that split along party lines: Chairman Julius Genachowski and fellow Democratic appointees Michael J. Copps and Mignon Clyburn voted in favor, while Republican commissioners Robert M. McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker dissented. The commission released the full Report and Order (FCC 10-201) on December 23, 2010, and the rules took effect on November 20, 2011.
The order established three core obligations for broadband providers. A transparency rule required both fixed and mobile providers to publicly disclose their network-management practices, performance, and commercial terms. A no-blocking rule barred fixed providers from blocking lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices, and prohibited mobile providers from blocking lawful websites or applications that competed with their own voice or video services. A no-unreasonable-discrimination rule, applied to fixed broadband, prohibited providers from unreasonably discriminating in transmitting lawful traffic. The rules deliberately treated fixed and mobile broadband differently, imposing lighter obligations on mobile networks in recognition of their earlier stage of development and capacity constraints.
Significance
The 2010 Open Internet Order was the FCC’s first attempt to codify net-neutrality protections in binding rules, capping years of debate that had intensified after a 2008 enforcement action against Comcast for throttling peer-to-peer traffic. It framed a policy question that would recur throughout the decade: whether internet access should be regulated as a lightly supervised information service or as a common-carrier utility.
The rules proved legally fragile. Verizon challenged the order, and in January 2014 the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in Verizon v. FCC, vacated the no-blocking and no-unreasonable-discrimination provisions, holding that the commission could not impose common-carrier-style obligations on providers it had classified as information services, though it upheld the transparency requirement. That ruling pushed the FCC to reclassify broadband under Title II of the Communications Act in its 2015 Open Internet Order — a designation later reversed in 2017 — making the 2010 order the opening move in a prolonged regulatory and legal contest over how the internet should be governed.