CNN was right, in a sense. The repeal of Net Neutrality — which occurred in 2018 with the FCC’s “Restoring Internet Freedom Order” — did mean the end of the Internet as we knew it.
Anyone reading this article can see the Internet didn’t die (hooray!). But few may realize just how much the Internet has improved since Net Neutrality was repealed.
Data released by FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, the former general counsel of the regulatory body, show that not only did the Internet not die; speeds got exponentially faster. According to data from Ookla, a global leader in Internet access performance metrics, median fixed download speeds have increased by 430 percent since 2017. Median mobile download speeds have increased even more — by 647 percent, a more than sevenfold surge.
Internet speeds didn’t just get faster, however. They became less expensive in real dollars.
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