This also appears to be happening with Xfinity’s protected browsing feature. A reader alerted us that, when he tried to access TorrentFreak, access was denied stating that a “suspicious” site was ahead.
Source: Comcast’s Protected Browsing Blocks TorrentFreak as “Suspicious” Site – TorrentFreak
Portugal isn’t the only country allowing tiering of internet services. In Britain, the internet service provider Vodaphone charges about $33 a month for basic service but offers several “passes” allowing unlimited video or music streaming, social media usage, or chat, at additional tariffs of up to $9.30 per month.
Source: Portugal’s internet shows us a world without net neutrality, and it’s ugly – LA Times
The court agreed with AT&T and Comcast’s argument, saying, “It is clear that the [Metro Nashville] Charter grants NES broad, unencumbered power to manage and control the properties of the Electric Power Board. It expressly denies that power to the Mayor, the Council, and any other agency of the Metro Nashville government.”
Source: AT&T and Comcast lawsuit has nullified a city’s broadband competition law | Ars Technica
Comcast says it’s a “recognized provider of protected speech under the First Amendment and, as such, may not be singled out for undue burdens that infringe on such rights.”
Source: Comcast Cable Is Abandoning Customers in the Name of Free Speech | WIRED
Writer Andrew Jerell Jones also points out how Comcast-owned NBC News, CNBC and MSNBC can rarely be bothered to reveal their parent company’s lobbying on this subject, or in fact cover net neutrality in their news reporting much at all. Even purportedly “progressive” MSNBC has been frequently criticized for rarely talking about the subject.
Source: 3 ISPs Have Spent $572 Million to Kill Net Neutrality Since 2008 | DSLReports, ISP Information
The 2015 Order famously outlined clear net neutrality rules. But those rules only passed muster because the Order also explicitly classified broadband service as a “common carrier” service, regulated by Title II of the Communications Act, rather than an “information service” regulated by Title I of the same Act. And that classification has several corollary effects, because Title II isn’t just about net neutrality. It is also meant to curtail the anti-competitive conduct from incumbent monopolists like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. In essence, as common carriers, they are not able to use their power to control the Internet experience, and they are not able to directly harm their competitors in the broadband market.
Google Fiber’s deployment ran into snags in Austin, Texas when those poles were owned by AT&T, because the surest way to prevent competition is to just physically prevent their entry into your market. If a company the size of Google could be stifled without the law supporting them, what hope does a smaller ISP have in entering into a market where the incumbent broadband provider owns the poles that are a necessary component to deploying the network? The FCC Chairman’s plan fundamentally ignores this problem and offers no clear solution to competitors. An incumbent broadband provider that owns a lot of the poles is going to have no federal legal obligation to share that access at fair market rates if broadband is no longer a common carrier service.
New laws will be introduced to implement these rules, forcing internet companies such as Facebook to abide by the rulings of a regulator or face sanctions: “We will introduce a sanctions regime to ensure compliance, giving regulators the ability to fine or prosecute those companies that fail in their legal duties, and to order the removal of content where it clearly breaches UK law.”
See the problem? If people begin noticing that there’s no competition, that Americans are paying too much for too little, and that the entire country is suffering as a result, that’s a big problem for Big Cable.
Source: How One Little Cable Company Exposed Telecom’s Achilles’ Heel
What really matters is whether, someday, we’ll take on as a country the issue of the dismal state of high-speed internet access in America. If the Title II reclassification holds, it’s more likely that we will take that step sooner. And the carriers know that.
In Atlanta, for example, Comcast provided hourly median download speeds over a CDN called GTT of 21.4 megabits per second at 7pm throughout the month of May. AT&T provided speeds over the same network of ⅕ of a megabit per second. When a network sends more than twice the traffic it receives, that network is required by AT&T to pay for the privilege. When quizzed about slow speeds on GTT, AT&T told Ars Technica earlier this year that it wouldn’t upgrade capacity to a CDN that saw that much outgoing traffic until it saw some money from that network (as distinct from the money it sees from consumers).
Source: Major internet providers slowing traffic speeds for thousands across US | Technology | The Guardian
The legislation, introduced by Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican, is called a resolution of disapproval, a move that allows Congress to review new federal regulations from government agencies, using an expedited legislative process.
via New bill would invalidate FCC’s net neutrality rules | PCWorld.