FCC net neutrality protections to expire on Apr. 23 without intervention

The Title II protections that currently enforce net neutrality among U.S. internet service providers will disappear on Apr. 23, unless another party is able to intervene.

The deadline was revealed in an update of the U.S. government's Federal Register, spelling out when the Federal Communications Commission's "Restoring Internet Freedom" order will take effect. The controversial decision allows ISPs to block or prioritize internet traffic as they see fit, the only real safeguard being that these actions must be publicly disclosed.

"Finding that transparency is sufficient to protect the openness of the internet and that conduct rules have greater costs than benefits, the Order eliminates the conduct rules imposed by the Title II Order," the Register entry says.

The Title II revocation could theoretically be undone by an upcoming battle in Congress, but that's likely to be won by Republican opposition, including President Donald Trump. In the meantime 22 state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit, and various public interest groups are taking action. The California Senate recently approved a net neutrality law of its own.

Even under net neutrality some ISPs have been practicing "zero-rating," in which certain services don't count against monthly data caps. T-Mobile for instance exempts some video services — but not others — as an incentive to subscribe. The trouble is that this gives established platforms an inherent advantage, and can make it harder for new services to gain a foothold.

ISPs have nevertheless been caught throttling traffic from the likes of Netflix and YouTube, looking to manage bandwidth without investing in infrastructure upgrades. A purely neutral approach would see those services operating at full speed whenever possible — creating intense data consumption as video increasingly switches to 4K resolution.

39 Comments

Mike Wuerthele 6897 comments · 8 Years

About 6 years ago

We have made a conscious decision to keep this thread open.

Behave, and it will stay so.

LoneStar88 325 comments · 9 Years

I think this measure will have its intended positive effects in the form of encouraging private investment in infrastructure—especially in rural areas.

It may not happen soon enough, but it will happen.

randominternetperson 3094 comments · 8 Years

Mike Wuerthele said:

We have made a conscious decision to keep this thread open.
Behave, and it will stay so.

Thank you. Personally I find it very frustrating not to be able to read and contribute to the comments on a story. I'd prefer not to see a story here than to see a story with locked comments.

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

Good!

Oh, and by the way, THIS is happening:
http://www.ibtimes.com/elon-musk-spacexs-internet-satellite-company-has-name-logo-2591532

NemWan 118 comments · 8 Years

LoneStar88 said:

I think this measure will have its intended positive effects in the form of encouraging private investment in infrastructure—especially in rural areas.

It may not happen soon enough, but it will happen.

In pursuit of what profit in rural areas? There would be lower return on investment because there will never be as many subscribers in rural areas. Rural areas in many parts of the country are depopulating below "frontier" levels.

When the landline telephone network was deployed a century ago it was mandated to provide universal access to all areas of the country. If the Internet existed when the Communications Act of 1934 was passed it would have been included in its principles of "rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges" to "all the people of the United States."

This was and is paid for by raising everyone's prices, and there's nothing wrong with that concept so long as industry is also regulated enough to see that people are getting what that price increase was expected to pay for. Rural civilization depends on being subsidized by wealthier, more industrialized urban areas. Rural citizens receive more federal funding per captia than they pay taxes while the reverse is true for urban citizens. This is a benefit to everyone — after all urban Americans gain the ability to communicate with rural Americans and vice versa. If we don't want to pay to be able share our lives together there's something fundamenatally wrong with our unity as a nation.

If we want a strong and growing rural America that can give birth to new hubs of capitalism we must have a regulatory framework that lays the foundation for opportunty, such as modern communications. It may be that satellites can meet some needs that would otherwise requiring the expense of upgrading all those landlines, but you can't overcome the fact that the speed of light is not fast enough at the distance of satellites to replace ground links.