Consumers generally connect to the internet one of two ways. They can subscribe to a residential broadband service from a company such as Time Warner Cable. Or they can subscribe to wireless internet access from companies such as Sprint.
These companies have spent billions of dollars laying cables in the ground (in the case of residential internet access) or erecting cell phone towers (for wireless access) to ensure that customers have fast, reliable service.
Network neutrality is the idea that these companies should treat all internet traffic equally. It says your ISP shouldn’t be allowed to block or degrade access to certain websites or services, nor should it be allowed to set aside a “fast lane” that allows content favored by the ISP to load more quickly than the rest.
Since the term was coined more than a decade ago, it has been at the center of the debate over internet regulation. Congress, the Federal Communications Commission(FCC), and the courts have all debated whether and how to protect network neutrality.
Advocates argue that network neutrality lowers barriers to entry online, allowing entrepreneurs to create new companies like Google, Facebook, and Dropbox. But critics warn that regulating the broadband market could be counterproductive, discouraging investment in internet infrastructure and limiting the flexibility of ISPs themselves to innovate.
Net Neutrality Just Got Sucker-Punched. Will Madison Avenue Get the Bill?
Why You Should Be Freaking Out About The End Of Net Neutrality: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/14/net-neutrality_n_4597831.html
Feds Can’t Enforce Net Neutrality: What This Means For You: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/01/14/262454310/feds-cant-enforce-net-neutrality-what-this-means-for-you?utm_content=socialflow&utm_campaign=nprfacebook&utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook
Internet has been the most democratic tool in the last two decades. Trough the Arab Spring, anti-Putin blogs, Erdogan’s Turkey, my home country Bulgaria: people have had a viable voice to speak, hear and share, despite government-own, Goebbels-like mass media, who thus looses the opportunity to control public opinion. .
That era is only logical to wind down. In my home country, the Murdock-like media owner, as well as ruling-parties’ apparatchiks pay “trolls” to go and muddle the blog sections under online articles and the social media field.
In the U.S., the same process takes different “democratic” way: the big companies are lobbying and buying their way of silencing the Internet right of people to be able to voice, speak and share their opinion.
Firefox-maker Mozilla is leading a push for the Federal Communications Commission to swiftly reinstate net neutrality rules stripped away under the Trump administration.
In a letter to FCC Acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel Friday, ADT, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Reddit, Vimeo and Wikimedia joined Mozilla in calling net neutrality “critical for preserving the internet as a free and open medium that promotes innovation and spurs economic growth.”
Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) should not be allowed to favor or throttle service for websites that rely on it.
Here’s the full text of the California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act of 2018, also known as SB-822. It contains a list of things that ISPs are not going to be able to do, including paid prioritization, “zero-rating” favorable content so it doesn’t count against your data cap (think of those bundled streaming services!), and failing to tell you fast service actually is and how their network management practices and speeds actually work
Jeff Kao Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Language Nerd, Biglaw Refugee. jeffykao.com
More than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments were Likely Faked
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The Federal Communications Commission released a plan on Tuesday to dismantle landmark regulations that ensure equal access to the internet, clearing the way for internet service companies to charge users more to see certain content and to curb access to some websites.
The proposal, made by the F.C.C. chairman, Ajit Pai, is a sweeping repeal of rules put in place by the Obama administration. The rules prohibit high-speed internet service providers, or I.S.P.s, from stopping or slowing down the delivery of websites. They also prevent the companies from charging customers extra fees for high-quality streaming and other services.
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FCC chairman defends net neutrality repeal plan
An analysis of the millions of comments conducted by the data company Gravwell in October found that just 17.4 percent of the comments to the FCC on the net neutrality rules came from real people.
Because many internet services for mobile devices include limits on data use, the changes will be visible there first. In one dramatic scenario, internet services would begin to resemble cable-TV packages, where subscriptions could be limited to a few dozen sites and services. Or, for big spenders, a few hundred. Fortunately, that’s not a likely scenario. Instead, expect a gradual shift towards subscriptions that provide unlimited access to certain preferred providers while charging extra for everything else.
Even Verizon’s “unlimited” plans impose limits. The company’s cheapest unlimited mobile plan limits video streaming quality to 480p resolution, which is DVD quality, on phones and 720p resolution, the lower tier of HD quality, on tablets. Customers can upgrade to a more expensive plan that enables 720p resolution on phones and 1080p on tablets, but the higher quality 4K video standard is effectively forbidden.
Meanwhile, Comcast customers in 28 states face 1 terabyte data caps. Going over that limit costs subscribers as much as an additional $50 a month. As 4K televisions become more common, more households may hit the limit. That could prompt some to stick with a traditional pay-TV package from Comcast.
Republican FCC Chair Ajit Pai argues that Federal Trade Commission will be able to protect consumers and small business from abuses by internet providers once the agency’s current rules are off the books. But that’s not clear.
The good news is the internet won’t change overnight, if it all. Blake Reid, a clinical professor at Colorado Law, says the big broadband providers will wait to see how the inevitable legal challenges to the new FCC order shakeout. They’ll probably keep an eye on 2018 and even 2020 elections as well.
The FCC is accepting data via an online form, where you can presumably talk about anything, whether it be slow speeds, lack of providers, data caps, or high costs. The FCC is asking you to describe the problem in three to five sentences, and provide your name, the state where you live, ZIP code, phone number, and any attachments you’d like to include.
The FCC has currently been using its own broadband maps
One pandemic-driven solution in Kentucky has been to put mobile hotspots in public school parking lots so kids without internet at home can keep up with schoolwork, but that isn’t without its own flaws https://t.co/Ne47p3SkS9
How faster internet is being blocked by politics and poverty throughout the eastern US
While FCC data holds that about 93% of Kentucky has broadband access, last September, Microsoft vice president Shelley McKinley said the portion of the state’s population actually using the internet at broadband speeds (defined as 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up) is only about 31%. Those findings echo Microsoft’s 2016 estimates that 162.8 million Americans are not using the internet at broadband speeds compared to the FCC’s count of 24.7 million.