Hi, I'm Mike Swift, M-Lex's Global Chief Correspondent for Digital Risk. I'm based in San Francisco,

California, and I'm here with my colleague Amy Miller, M-Lex's privacy and data security reporter.

If you're new to M-LX podcasts, a very warm welcome to you. If you've listened to our

continuing series of podcasts before, welcome back.

Today we're headed to the hallways of the U.S. Congress to hear about one of the first regulatory battlegrounds of the Trump administration, net neutrality.

After becoming president, Donald Trump set out to undo a host of regulations passed by his

Democratic predecessors.

And one of the first targets has been the 2015 decision by the Federal Communications Commission

to enforce net neutrality by regulating consumer broadband like a public utility.

Net neutrality is the principle that an Internet service provider cannot discriminate against digital traffic it conveys.

It can't block, slow down, or charge for priority access, for example.

In late January, President Trump appointed Republican FCC member Ajit Pai as chairman of the FCC,

a longtime critic of closer utility-style regulation of Internet services.

Since then, Pi and Republican lawmakers have lost no time trying to dismantle net neutrality rules

passed by Pi's Democratic Democratic predecessor Tom Wheeler.

That won't happen without a fight, however.

Democrats and advocacy groups have vowed to do everything they can to preserve the rules.

The M-WAC staff here in Silicon Valley, which includes Amy and myself, have been covering

the rapid action by Congress and the FCC this

spring and the resulting fallout in states across the country over net neutrality. Hello, Amy.

Hi, Mike. So what happens next with net neutrality? Well, there were three key main rules that were part of the 2015 open Internet order,

and those were no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization.

...