New Acting FCC Chief Jessica Rosenworcel Supports Restoring Net Neutrality from r/technology
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7mxja/new-acting-fcc-chief-jessica-rosenworcel-supports-restoring-net-neutrality
Rosenworcel has long supported net neutrality, and opposed most Trump FCC policies, be it the steady dismantling of the agency’s consumer protection authority, or efforts to eliminate decades-old media consolidation rules designed to protect public discourse and smaller companies from massive media monopolies.
In 2019, Rosenworcel pressured telecom giants to come clean on their collection and sale of sensitive user location data to third parties, and consumer groups say she’s been a steady advocate of consumer rights throughout her tenure.
Roughly 42 million Americans—double official FCC estimates—lack access to any broadband connection whatsoever. Another 83 million only have the choice of one provider, usually Comcast or Charter. This lack of meaningful competition directly results in high US broadband prices, spotty coverage, and routinely terrible customer service.
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more on netneutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=netneutrality
Comcast data cap blasted by lawmakers as it expands into 12 more states from r/technology
Comcast data cap blasted by lawmakers as it expands into 12 more states
Data cap harms poor people and isn’t needed to manage network, Mass. reps say.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/comcast-data-cap-blasted-by-lawmakers-as-it-expands-into-12-more-states/
Comcast charges an extra $30 per month for unlimited data, or $25 for the “xFi Complete” add-on package that includes the Comcast gateway device and unlimited data. Customers who don’t upgrade to unlimited data and exceed the 1.2TB cap must pay $10 for each additional block of 50GB, up to a maximum of $100 each month. Comcast is phasing in the charges gradually, so customers in newly capped areas could start getting overage charges for their April 2021 usage.
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more on netneutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=netneutrality
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will step down on January 20 from r/technology
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/30/fcc-chairman-ajit-pai-will-step-down-on-january-20.html
In 2017, Pai voted with his fellow Republican commissioners to remove rules that prohibited internet providers from blocking or slowing traffic to particular sites and offering higher speed “lanes” at higher prices. Many major internet providers have not yet taken advantage of that rule change, however.
Net neutrality advocates cheered Pai’s departure online.
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more on netneutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=netneutrality
It’s 2020: Why Is The Internet Still Treated Like A Luxury, Not A Utility? from r/technology
It’s 2020: Why Is The Internet Still Treated Like A Luxury, Not A Utility?
https://gothamist.com/news/its-2020-why-is-the-internet-still-treated-like-a-luxury-not-a-utility
The city Board of Estimate first decided back in 1965 to slice up the city into cable-TV franchise fiefdoms, a setup that has survived largely intact in the internet era. Today, Altice (aka Optimum) has exclusive cable rights to the Bronx and southeast Brooklyn, while Charter (aka Spectrum, formerly Time Warner) has the rest of the city; Verizon FiOS is also available in a slowly expanding patchwork of areas overlying those two. As a result, most city residents have at most one other option if they’re unhappy with their current service, and many have none at all.
Americans weren’t always beholden to their local cable and phone companies for internet access, notes Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative for the D.C.-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance. In the 1990s, thousands of internet service providers across the country offered dialup connections for relatively low prices, connecting via the copper wires of the phone system. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, he says, was initially designed to build on this by enabling multiple providers to use the new, faster networks that were then starting to be rolled out using higher-capacity coaxial and fiber-optic cable. It didn’t quite pan out.
“Both the Clinton and the Bush administrations dismantled that, under pressure from the big cable and telephone companies,” says Mitchell. “Most of those internet access providers went out of business, because they didn’t have access to the networks. If you have a policy that requires a company to pay $1,500 per home to get a subscriber, and it takes three to four years to earn that money back, you will not have much competition.”
The result has been a network of broadband services that are unaffordable or unavailable for a persistently high number of local households.
Torres noted that the city has spent nearly $300 million on renting otherwise-vacant hotels to house homeless New Yorkers during the pandemic, but hasn’t asked for the hotels to allow residents access to their broadband routers.
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more on netneutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=netneutrality
Judge orders FCC to hand over IP addresses linked to fake net neutrality comments. from r/technology
The Times’ lawsuit follows reporting by Gizmodo that exposed multiple attempts by the FCC to manufacture stories about hackers attacking its comment system. In reality, the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) crashed, both in 2015 and 2017, after Last Week Tonight host John Oliver instructed millions of his viewers to flood the agency with pro-net neutrality comments.
For over a year, the FCC claimed to have proof that distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were behind the comment system issues. In August 2018, however, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai finally admitted that wasn’t true. After an inspector general report found no evidence of an attack, Pai sought to pin the blame on his staff—and, for some reason, former President Barack Obama.
Pai stated in an agency memo in 2018 that it was a “fact” that Russian accounts were behind the half-million comments. His attorneys, meanwhile, were arguing the exact opposite in court.
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more on net neutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=net+neutrality
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more on netneutrality on this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=netneutrality