The potential return of net neutrality and the future of the digital divide

The talk of late at the Federal Communications Commission is whether to restore net neutrality. When the Barack Obama administration put those rules in place in 2015, the idea was to ensure that internet service providers — or ISPs — like Verizon and Comcast gave consumers fair access to the web and didn’t favor sites and services they controlled. But that mandate was repealed two years later under then-FCC Chair Ajit Pai, chosen by then-President Donald Trump. He argued that net neutrality would disincentivize companies from building their networks in low-income, urban and rural areas. Critics of the repeal argued that rural America’s ability to access the internet would be hurt. After the federal repeal, some states adopted their own net neutrality regulations while others didn’t, which provided a pretty great data set for researchers wanting to know: What would getting rid of net neutrality mean for internet access in rural areas?