The discussions of Net Neutrality are still very much current in the media and with US lawmakers. Although the FCC, led by Chairman Ajit Pai, voted to partially repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order in December of 2017, classifying Internet access once again as an information service, there is considerable information and future plans that have yet to be disclosed with the public. While the general vote and extremely brief overview (https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-internet-freedom) was provided to the US public, we are still in the dark in regards to future plans regarding Net Neutrality rules. We still do not know if “Internet Fastlanes” will appear or if ISPs will eventually begin to introduce tiered packages and discriminate network traffic based on content or the producer. The only real information the FCC has provided in regards to these issues was the satirical video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFhT6H6pRWg) where Ajit Pai addressed some of these concerns, but was heavily criticized as Pai seems to be mocking those who fear the removal of Net Neutrality laws.

The dismantling of the Obama-era administration Internet regulations are still ongoing, and there is considerable resistance from not only the public and public advocacy groups, but also from many legislators, particularly Democrats. Additional steps are being taken to ensure that issues, such as the notion of “Internet Fastlanes”, are properly brought to legislative boards. The “Open Internet Preservation Act”( https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2017/12/net-neutrality-bill.pdf?tid=a_mcntx), proposed by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) in late December restores two of the most important provisions of the FCC’s net neutrality rules: a ban on the blocking of websites, as well as a ban on the slowing of websites. It also includes the same public disclosure requirements Internet providers must abide by under the FCC’s decision December of last year. Unfortunately, the bill lacked any information in regards to ISP paid prioritization that was included in previous Net Neutrality regulations.

Later this month, The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on internet fast lanes, a major source of concern for Net Neutrality supporters and a point where bipartisan agreement has failed in the past. This is a main area concern that has seen disagreement from both sides of the political spectrum and is arguably one of the largest turning points for how the internet, on the large scale, in an economic sense. Despite such discussions, Democratic and Republican conflicts on the issues of Net Neutrality continue to occur. Despite strong support from Republicans, many support the notion of replacing net neutrality rules with stronger and permanent legislation, “They argue that codifying the principles into law will end the regulatory uncertainty that the telecom industry faces with the prospect that the rules will change every time the White House switches parties.” However, Democrats are unhappy with this since Republicans currently have the majority, and “believe that any bill that a GOP-dominated Congress can come up with will be toothless compared to the 2015 regulation”

Additionally, lawmakers in Massachusetts are pushing for a state solution to fill in the several potential gaps left by the removal of the Obama-era regualtions. According to an article by Government Technology, “A proposal by a special Senate committee Wednesday, backed by dozens of lawmakers, seeks to promote net neutrality through state contracts and protect consumer privacy by barring internet service providers from collecting, using or disseminating personal data without consent. It would also create a registry of service providers who do business in Massachusetts and prohibit practices such as “throttling” down the speed of some internet content while prioritizing content from those who pay more.” The bill is aimed to get ahead of any future regulations that may be implemented by the FCC and the federal level and provide added regulations to provide the public with added security.

Looking to the future, we should advocate for change for Net Neutrality where bipartisan agreement can be found and ensure that major issues such as specific network throttling and consumer rights violations are properly addressed when creating new regulations on Net Neutrality.

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/381436-house-panel-to-hold-hearing-on-net-neutrality-internet-fast-lanes

http://www.govtech.com/network/Massachusetts-Lawmakers-Push-State-Solution-to-FCC-Net-Neutrality-Decision.html

As of December 2016, more than 129 million Americans have only one option for broadband internet service in their area – equating to about 40 percent of the country. Out of these 129 million customers, about 52 million are forced into obtaining internet from known Net Neutrality violators. In total, just over 177 million Americans are stuck with one or more ISPs who have committed Net Neutrality violations. The report, carried out by the Institute For Local Self-Reliance (using data directly from the FCC’s public data) also shows that on the US East Coast, nearly 15 million people will soon be limited to a single broadband provider that has already violated Net Neutrality regulations.

As discussed in my previous post, providers such as Comcast and AT&T have consistently been under pressure from consumers and the FCC for various Net Neutrality violations throughout the past several years. However, the list extends far beyond the major three ISPs (Comcast, Charter/Time Warner and AT&T) (this list https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history provides an overview of several nationwide and international cases of broadband-provider Net Neutrality violations.

So why is it so important for Americans to have a market protection from Net Neutrality violators? Well, there are several reasons why this “internet monopoly” directly

impacts the American consumer.

1. They’re in It for the Money.
   It is no secret that American broadband providers are very centralized on revenue and not the consumer. For an internet connection of 25 megabits per second, New Yorkers pay $55 – nearly double that of what residents of London, Seoul and Bucharest pay. Customers in Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and Paris receive connections nearly eight times faster and pay the same price or less than major US cities. Additionally, cable prices have been growing constantly over the past two decades. In 2017, Comcast hiked it’s base cable pricing by $48 and its price increases follow a major trend of consistent price hikes from ISPs that have been growing faster than inflation. This clear focus on profit over consumer rights leaves dangerous room in the absence of net neutrality. If ISPs can charge an extra twenty dollars a month by splitting cable into Comcast or Verizon won’t hesitate to charge extra for access to streaming websites for an extra ten dollars per customer. The lack of ISP options for many people give ISPs the power to hike prices without financial repercussions and with Net Neutrality slowly disappearing, they now have options to increase their revenues while consumers have no other options but to keep cashing larger checks.
2. Consumer Rights Violations
   The principle concept of Net Neutrality is that both the website/domain receive equal treatment and access/speed to all other websites. Comparatively, the consumer should be able to access every website/service equally. Therefore, many people believe that the equal treatment of internet traffic is a fundamental right. Blocking or slowing access to certain domains has various implications on one’s freedom of expression and access to information. If smaller websites cannot keep up with larger services with ISPs charging more, we risk being limited to websites belonging to companies that can afford to pay off the cable companies to prioritize their content. This, in turn, limits your access to information to what these specific websites offer, and your online speech to their publishing and communication platforms. We could see the internet reduced to social media giants and shopping websites, and we could lose equal access to all the little random, odd corners that make the internet what it is today.
   With these potential changes, consumers will undoubtedly feel as if their rights are being infringed upon, and other than expressing public disagreement (which so far has not achieved any executive action), a majority of Americans will be unable to react due to the limited ISP options as discussed above.

This monopoly on the broadband industry has not only allowed ISPs to raise their prices and potentially abandon the concept of a fair and equal internet, but it has incentivized them to further this process. A large pillar of this issue stems from the statistics above on the lack of freedom in ISP choices. Providing customers with a wider array of choices would allow consumers to boycott larger ISPs and would create a free-market situation, however given the major infrastructure costs and sizes of the existing companies, this is unlikely.

Nevertheless, companies such as Google have taken a role in providing consumers with alternatives. Google Fiber is the company’s approach to giving consumers a faster and more financially viable option. While major ISPs were notably lobbying for the net neutrality vote, Google did, although quietly, express its dismay for the outcome. Unfortunately, the progress with this project has been relatively slow and currently only serves about 400,000 customers and is available in only 9 areas across the country.

While this issue predominantly affects the net neutrality debate, unfortunately I don’t believe that we will see change here given the strong hold on the industry. However, with Net Neutrality regulations in place, there are at least strong restrictions in place to help prevent future violations.

https://ilsr.org/repealing-net-neutrality-puts-177-million-americans-at-risk/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/internet-u-s-compare-globally-hint-slower-expensive

https://www.extremetech.com/internet/240942-comcast-cable-costs-jump-48-per-year-thanks-increased-fees

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/12/13/protect-open-internet-us

https://www.freepress.net/blog/2014/04/14/comcasts-wallet-lightening-ways

On December 14, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission, led by Chairman Ajit Pai, voted to repeal Obama-era regulations that served as the basis for net neutrality. Media coverage for this repeal was astronomical. Internet sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit were consistently exhausted with posts and petitions to stop or slow the progress of repealing the vote. There was certainly a sense of a doomsday scenario if the order was repealed. But how important is maintaining Net Neutrality?

What Is Net Neutrality?

The broad concept of Net Neutrality is relatively simple. Essentially, access to any website or web services should be equal to the end user. Comparatively, anyone starting their own website or web service have an equal opportunity as any other website. Essentially the system is in place to prevent Internet Service Providers (such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon) from speeding up, slowing down or blocking content, applications or websites – for their own monetary gain.

So without Net Neutrality, Comcast, for example, could reduce internet speeds for Netflix to force users into using its own platform (note – this actually happened in 2014). Additionally, many have claimed that in the absence of Net Netrality, ISPs would result to a package system, where users would have to purchase bundles to access online streaming or social media sites, for example.

Specifically, what the FCC recently voted on was in regards to reversing Title II regulations. Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 is a classification of “Common Carrier” (Wikipedia – A common carrier offers its services to the general public under license or authority provided by a regulatory body). Previously, the internet was classified under Title I which classified it as an “Informative Service”. So why is this so important? This reclassification allowed the internet to become a government-regulated service, and in turn provided the legal basis for the FCC to enforce Net Neutrality rules.

With the FCC’s changes in place, ISPs were forbidden from throttling data or prioritizing certain websites or services. Indeed, these regulations have worked. A notorious case was in 2012 with the release of Apple’s FaceTime. With the introduction of the video-calling feature, AT&T announced that customers would be required to upgrade their plan in order to access the service. Several public interest groups filed several formal complaints with the FCC which in turn led to the lifting of these rules.

The Title II regulations have been praised by many as a very consumer focused initiative, protecting internet users and online creators from unfair treatment from ISPs and an unbalanced playing field. However, there are people who believe that the concept of Net Neutrality tarnishes the concept of a free and open internet.

Several people believe (Ajit Pai included) that the concept of a government-regulated internet is stifling any real online innovation. If larger players such as Netflix, Facebook or Google were to be charged for their enormous bandwidth usage, infrastructure upgrades would permit much higher speeds and allow for a level playing field with new competitors. Additionally, arguments have been made which suggest that these major companies should pay their fair share to support infrastructure and development since they provide the greatest internet traffic. While these are certainly valid arguments, it is up to the consumer and website creators to decide between the notion of a government regulated internet or a capitalistic system controlled by ISPs. It should be noted that companies such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T have had astronomically high consumer rights violations and have been at the forefront of lobbying against Net Neutrality, clearly incentivized by profits.

This leads onto my last point of the recent Net Neutrality vote. Many people praised late-night talk show host John Oliver for really publicizing the issue of Net Neutrality and the potential dangers of its repeal in a 20 minute rant on the issue. He mentions that the FCC complaint system is overly complicated, so in an effort to educate and compel people to voice their complaints, he notoriously created the website gofccyouself.com which directed people straight to the specific hearing page which allowed consumers to leave their complaint in regards to the repeal. In the months following, over 22 million comments* were made in regards to the issue. Despite the major public backlash over the repeal, Ajit Pai announced that the vote would occur despite the public outcry. This really begs the question of how democratic this proceeding was. It could certainly be argued that since the electoral college led to Donald Trump’s presidential success, and he selected Ajit Pai as the FCC commissioner, that indeed this was a fair and democratic vote. But such major issues should certainly not be deaf to the voices of millions of Americans.

In 2016, the United Kingdom held a public referendum for its removal from the European Union. Although many disputed both sides of the referendum, the principle of the public directly voting on such a major issue was, in my opinion, a great show of a direct democracy. Such a major change in a publically used and maintained system should have certainly had an input from the millions of American consumers, companies and politicians from both parties and I felt that disallowing any real attention of these complaints was a harsh blow to our democratic system.

Despite the recent 3-2 vote to repeal Net Neutrality, the proceedings are still ongoing. Voicing your opinion, contacting your local or state representative and researching the issue is an important step in continuing the fight to restore Article II. I hope that my blogs and research will help inform you and prompt you to voice your opinion on the ongoing matter.

*It should be noted that the FCC has claimed that at least 7.5 million of these comments were spam.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-net-neutrality-debate-in-2-minutes-or-less/

https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now

https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/internet-speech/what-net-neutrality