We Must Hope Net Neutrality Remains a Mainstay

President Trump has made it evident that he is no supporter of net neutrality for several years now. In 2014, he tweeted how he feared net neutrality would "target conservative media" and compared net neutrality to the Fairness Doctrine, which was a perplexing comparison. After his election, Trump hired Jeffrey Eisenach onto his presidential transition team. Eisenach has been known for being a critic of the regulatory policies of the Federal Communications Commission.

A 2014 study by Ookla Speedtest showed that the United States had one of the slowest internet download speeds, ranking 31st in the world at the time. However, since the FCC issued new net neutrality rules in 2015 under the Obama administration, the United States' rank has improved over the recent years.

Ookla Speedtest published another study in 2016 following up on the United States' 2014 ranking. What the report showed was progress in the speed of the United States' internet. The U.S. internet increased its speed, and according to the study, fixed broadband customers saw the most significant bump with download speeds averaging over 50 Mbps (a 40% increase since July 2015), which was a first. Mobile internet customers received a 30% increase from the previous year with an average download speed of 19.27 Mbps. Although the U.S. is still in the lower ranks of internet speed worldwide (20th in fixed broadband and 42nd in mobile internet), the nation improved upon its previous rankings.

This study illustrates that the actions on net neutrality of the Obama administration and the FCC in the past couple of years were indeed working quite promisingly. Of course, the U.S. still has work to do in order to rise through the ranks even further. But it seems as if the nation has been taking the right steps towards so. Therefore, with the Trump administration appearing to be looking to cease net neutrality, we must pray that this does not come to fruition and the U.S. continues to expand the freedom of the internet.