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from the gold-standard-from-the-golden-state dept.
California passes strongest net neutrality law in the country
California's legislature has approved a bill being called the strongest net neutrality law in the US. The bill would ban internet providers from blocking and throttling legal content and prioritizing some sites and services over others. It would apply these restrictions to both home and mobile connections.
That would essentially restore the net neutrality rules enacted federally under former President Barack Obama, which were later repealed by the Federal Communications Commission under the watch and guidance of current chairman Ajit Pai. But this bill actually goes further than those rules with an outright ban on zero-rating — the practice of offering free data, potentially to the advantage of some companies over others — of specific apps. Zero-rating would, however, still be allowed as long as the free data applies to an entire category of apps. So an ISP could offer free data for all video streaming apps, but not just for Netflix. [...] The Electronic Frontier Foundation called the final legislation "a gold standard net neutrality bill."
Now, the bill heads to the governor's desk. California Gov. Jerry Brown hasn't said whether he'll sign the legislation, but it's garnered the support of top state Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Kamala Harris.
Also at Engadget.
(Score: 5, Informative) by martyb on Sunday September 02 2018, @02:20AM
It is a bit of a problem these days because of how the major ISPs have split up the territory so they do not have to compete with each other.
Sure, there are some places with multiple high speed data providers, but the majority of folk in the USA have at *best* a single cable or fiber provider, maybe a much slower DSL option, and then there's mobile (major data caps) and satellite (high latency).
There was a time in the late 90's where one had a choice of multiple DSL providers. They competed on the basis of reliability of service, customer service, price, etc.
Then the local telcos were freed from the requirement to make their lines available at fair and reasonable rates to all interested parties and you ended up with what we have now.
Just require local loop unbundling; let the cable or Telco charge for the line, and let different ISPs compete on features and price, and things would be very different.
But, with the current administration and head of the FCC, that is not likely to happen any time soon.
Wit is intellect, dancing.