The upshot of Tuesday’s ruling is that it could open the door for internet giants like Verizon and Time Warner to cut deals with large content providers — say Disney or Netflix — to ensure that their web content was delivered faster and more reliably than other sites. This could not only restrict consumer choice but also provide a threat to smaller websites that do not have the resources to pay for any “express lanes” that the broadband providers but choose to create. The ruling, however, may leave latitude for the FCC to reassert its authority over the broadband providers by rewriting the rules once again.
In 2011, Verizon challenged the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking policies defined in the FCC's 2010 Open Internet Order. In January of this year, a federal appeals court declared that while the FCC could not enforce such net neutrality policies on wireless service providers because they were not formally established as nondiscriminatory "common carriers," Verizon would have to disclose to its subscribers about favoring certain content and services while throttling others.