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.
Before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to repeal net neutrality at the end of 2017, the agency collected public opinion on the policy. In all, it said it received nearly 22 million comments. Over the years, there’s been a fair amount of discussion surrounding where many of those came from, with a study from that same year suggesting that only six percent of the comments were unique.
a report found the “largest” broadband companies funded a secret astroturfing campaign to push the FCC toward repealing net neutrality. At the time, AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon (Engadget’s parent company) were in favor of repealing the policy. The industry hired several third-party firms to build public support for their decision. Ostensibly, those companies were supposed to convince people to support the broadband industry with incentives like gift cards and prizes. Instead, they simply submitted 8.5 million fake comments. The attorney general has fined three of the companies involved in sending in those comments $4.4 million.
Earlier in 2021, a bipartisan group of senators called on the FCC to redefine broadband as 100 Mbps down and 100 Mbps up, as that would better reflect how people actually use their internet.
Still, paying $15 a month for 25 Mbps down is a heckuva lot better than paying $50 a month for those same speeds. Better yet, for those living in urban areas such as New York City, where the internet tends to be much faster, the same bill caps the price of broadband up to 200 Mbps at just $20 a month.
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.