The Federal Communications Commission clarified its net neutrality rules to prohibit more kinds of fast lanes.
While the FCC voted to restore net neutrality rules on April 25, it didn't release the final text of the order until yesterday. The final text has some changes compared to the draft version released a few weeks before the vote.
[...] Advocates warned that mobile carriers could use the 5G technology called "network slicing" to create fast lanes for categories of apps, like online gaming, and charge consumers more for plans that speed up those apps. This isn't just theoretical: Ericsson, a telecommunications vendor that sells equipment to the major carriers, has said the carriers could get more money from gamers by charging "up to $10.99 more for a guaranteed gaming experience on top of their 5G monthly subscription."
[...] The final FCC order released yesterday addresses that complaint.
"We clarify that a BIAS [Broadband Internet Access Service] provider's decision to speed up 'on the basis of Internet content, applications, or services' would 'impair or degrade' other content, applications, or services which are not given the same treatment," the FCC's final order said.
The "impair or degrade" clarification means that speeding up is banned because the no-throttling rule says that ISPs "shall not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of Internet content, application, or service."
[...] In one FCC filing, AT&T promoted network slicing as a way "to better meet the needs of particular business applications and consumer preferences than they could over a best-efforts network that generally treats all traffic the same." AT&T last week started charging mobile customers an extra $7 per month for faster wireless data speeds, but this would likely comply with net neutrality rules because the extra speed applies to all broadband traffic rather than just certain types of online applications.
[...] Broadband providers plan to sue the FCC in an effort to block the regulation.
Previously on SoylentNews:
FCC Restores Net Neutrality Rules that Ban Blocking and Throttling in 3-2 Vote - 20240426
Cable Lobby Vows "Years of Litigation" to Avoid Bans on Blocking and Throttling - 20240404
Related Stories
The Federal Communications Commission has scheduled an April 25 vote to restore net neutrality rules similar to the ones introduced during the Obama era and repealed under former President Trump.
"After the prior administration abdicated authority over broadband services, the FCC has been handcuffed from acting to fully secure broadband networks, protect consumer data, and ensure the Internet remains fast, open, and fair," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said today. "A return to the FCC's overwhelmingly popular and court-approved standard of net neutrality will allow the agency to serve once again as a strong consumer advocate of an open Internet."
[...]
In a filing with the FCC, Turner wrote that "ISPs have been incredibly bullish about the future of their businesses precisely because of the network investments they are making" and that the companies rarely, if ever, mention the impact of FCC regulation during calls with investors."We believe that the ISPs' own words to their shareholders, and to industry analysts through channels governed by the SEC, should be afforded significantly more weight than evidence-free tropes, vague threats, dubious aggregate capital expenditure tallies, or nonsensical math jargon foisted on the Commission this docket or elsewhere," Turner wrote.
Broadband lobby groups prepare lawsuit, calling rules a "net fatality"
The Federal Communications Commission voted 3–2 to impose net neutrality rules today, restoring the common-carrier regulatory framework enforced during the Obama era and then abandoned while Trump was president.
The rules prohibit Internet service providers from blocking and throttling lawful content and ban paid prioritization. Cable and telecom companies plan to fight the rules in court, but they lost a similar battle during the Obama era when judges upheld the FCC's ability to regulate ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act.
[...] FCC Republicans blasted the Democratic majority today. "The Internet in America has thrived in the absence of 1930s, command-and-control regulations by the government," Commissioner Brendan Carr said.
Carr, who spoke for more than half an hour, described how the FCC's net neutrality decisions were allegedly swayed by President Obama in 2015 and by President Biden this year. "The FCC has never been able to come up with a credible reason or policy rationale for Title II. It is all just shifting sands, and that is because the agency is doing what it's been told to do by the executive branch," Carr said.
Carr also blamed judges for giving the FCC too much power.
[...] In the weeks before the vote, some consumer advocates criticized what they see as a loophole in the rules that would let ISPs give faster speeds to certain types of applications as long as application providers don't have to pay for special treatment. They say the FCC should explicitly prohibit ISPs from speeding up applications instead of only enforcing a no-throttling rule that forbids slowing applications down. Others say the rules are just as strong as those enforced during the Obama era.
[...] Reinstating Title II also gives the FCC more authority to monitor Internet service outages, the agency said.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Friday May 10 2024, @11:39AM
We'll see if the ISPs behave or if they push back or drag their feet in (re-)compliance. This order is a big step in clarifying what the rules are.
There is a better analysis of the final version of the FCC's order [fcc.gov] which has been posted by Stanford university:
Also at The Register:
Ars Techica was fine in its day, but those good old days are decades past. They're not investing enough to either replace the good people the had writing at the turn of the century or to make up for having put m$ komprimats in their places.
While the FCC's order, "Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet", links to a plain text version and a PDF script, it also links to a non-standard, proprietary format (one of the .docx formats) which has no place in public settings. The FCC ought to have provided either regular HTML there or else, if a word processing format is needed, an actual open standard like ODF.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 10 2024, @11:46AM (6 children)
Net Neutrality was one of the things that Obama got right. And, one of the things Trump got totally wrong. Of course O'biden is going to copy Obama, but, in this case, I'm glad he does.
Fast lanes, slow lanes, whatever they want to call it, is nothing more than exploitation.
I'll remind everyone that the US government has paid the telcos repeatedly to build out the internet, and the telcos have simply pocketed that money. We, the taxpayers, have paid for fast internet, again and again. We don't deserve to be exploited again, on top of the repeated thefts.
Your ISP should be a dumb pipe. However much capacity the pipe has, it should be utilized by the paying customers with no discrimination. And, we need to continue pressuring the telcos and ISPs to build out the internet. I'm happy as can be that I finally have something worthy of the name "broadband". But, millions of Americans still don't have that. Congress needs to kick some ass, and bring the entire country up to date. Start be redefining "broadband" as 100 meg, which makes much of DSL/ADSL obsolete. My former ISP couldn't provide anything better than 10 meg, and that was only on an exceptionally good day.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Friday May 10 2024, @12:27PM (5 children)
I'll remind everyone that the US government has paid the telcos repeatedly to build out the internet, and the telcos have simply pocketed that money. We, the taxpayers, have paid for fast internet, again and again. We don't deserve to be exploited again, on top of the repeated thefts.
Yes, that has been mentioned here and elsewhere, repeatedly, yet it still hasn't sunk in at the political level. As of about a decade ago, the US taxpayers have already shelled out over $400 billion for broad band infrastructure which was never delivered [irregulators.org] (warning for PDF script). It happens again and again with more or less the same culprits stealing the money with impunity and no politicians even calling them out for it.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday May 10 2024, @04:25PM (1 child)
I can't imagine why [opensecrets.org] they'd all keep their mouth shut.
Some things to note about this:
1. It's bipartisan and vast. It would be much easier to compile a list of federal politicians that aren't on the take from the telecoms. Specifically, 90 out of 100 senators, and 389 out of 435 representatives, and both major-party presidential candidates are recipients of telecom largesse.
2. Buying politicians has an ROI of something like 40000%. Of course they're going to spend whatever it takes.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2024, @04:48PM
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2024, @10:03PM (2 children)
Why should they? All this trash talk against the "politicians" is bullshit when reelection is virtually guaranteed. Why change anything? There is only one way to fix this, but nobody is interested in hearing it...
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Saturday May 11 2024, @12:53AM (1 child)
You're one of the not interested else you would be talking about the fix rather than talking about the nobodies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2024, @04:08AM
The obvious fix is to vote for different politicians, stop reelecting the same old corrupt ones for 40 years.
Now it's your turn to deny it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Friday May 10 2024, @02:27PM (1 child)
I have a cellphone, and no matter which carrier I choose, they all allow spam and scam calls. So I have a voip provider that blocks all the unwanted calls, then i uninstalled all the carrier voice handling apps. Very peaceful. Now I hope my voip provider will fly under the radar of net neutrality.
Though I do wish my cell carrier could block those calls, and I wouldn't need the voip.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Friday May 10 2024, @03:23PM
I shut off the ringer. Voice service is dead.
In somewhat more detail, my main system ringtone is playing a ringtone of 'silence', and my wife and kids and rest of my family individually have custom ringtones that are normal ringtones. So anyone can call my phone, which plays a ringtone of silence except my family members which play a real ringtone. This is easy on Android, probably also possible on Apple phones.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by EJ on Friday May 10 2024, @02:55PM (16 children)
I don't think Trump was really against net neutrality. He just made the mistake of delegating to the awful Ajit Pai.
The biggest problem I have with politicians is that most are too rich to relate to their constituents or to be impacted by their own policies.
As silly as it seems, the McDonald's ice cream machine controversy is about as relatable as I can remember from a president.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday May 10 2024, @04:37PM (4 children)
Donald Trump really doesn't have policy positions besides "I should be in charge of everything, and everybody else should have to do what I want them to, and if they don't start hurting them until they change their minds". To demonstrate the point: In 2012, Mitt Romney ran on a Republican platform that was a little over 60 pages long, full of policy points and wonkery. By the 2020 convention, with Trump's role cemented in the party, they skipped that part, and just adopted 1-page document that basically said "rah rah Donald Trump is great".
This makes sense when you understand his by all appearances sincere belief that he's the smartest person on the planet about everything, a belief that his core base of supporters seem to share.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ox0000 on Friday May 10 2024, @07:30PM (1 child)
Politics went from "we can both win because everyone gets better" to "you too can win if you make some minor concessions" over "I have to win" all the way into "not only do I have to win, you have to lose" and finally into the current "The other side must lose, even if that means I lose as well".
The age of statesmen is over. What we seem have in congress today are folks concerned with building "brand" so that they can milk it post-official-dom, rather than people who want to actually govern.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday May 10 2024, @09:34PM
Among other reasons for their "brand-building" behavior: They can make a lot more bank as a post-Congress lobbyist and/or media pundit than they can on a mere congressional salary. So the incentives are not actually towards being re-elected.
But also: This isn't the most divided US politics has ever been. For that, you have to look at the late 1850's, when members of Congress were routinely armed in the chambers and sometimes drew their weapons, and in one incident a senator got beaten over the head by a political rival on the Senate floor.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by darkfeline on Friday May 10 2024, @09:42PM (1 child)
This is a textbook example of Trump Derangement Syndrome. I'm sure even the most ignorant person in the US has heard of "build the wall" (but I'm prepared to be disappointed).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday May 11 2024, @03:34PM
He did say "build the wall". And then he didn't do it. Which means it wasn't important enough for him to really want to build it.
Politicians do that kind of thing all the time. On the campaign trail: "$X is my top priority!" Once in office: "Well, we couldn't do $X, because hem haw hem haw ..." Back on the campaign trail: "$X is my top priority!" Once in office: "Well, we can't do $X, because hem haw hem haw ..." Repeat for as long as the public will still be suckered in, then retire from politics to the more comfortable life of a lobbyist or a power behind the throne.
And before you say "He's not a politician", the moment he announced his first campaign for president he became a politician. He might be a politician you like or support, but he's definitely a politician now.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tork on Friday May 10 2024, @06:13PM (10 children)
He would have sided with whoever was holding the big bag of money [politico.com].
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2024, @06:21PM (9 children)
:-) Yeah... as if the rest of them don't!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2024, @07:58PM (8 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2024, @09:54PM (7 children)
I did... Trump's big "offense" is revealing their world to us muggles, doing out in the open what is normally done behind closed doors.. That doesn't seem to matter anymore, they still get reelected, just means nobody is serious about it
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 11 2024, @12:57AM (5 children)
In other words, they get reelected because they do these things behind closed doors. It's not rocket science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2024, @04:18AM (4 children)
Since that is the way you want to look at it, yes, discretion is key, or it was. Whether it's behind closed doors or not, nobody cares how corrupt their favorite politician is as long as they think they'll get a piece
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 11 2024, @10:49PM (3 children)
The point of closed doors is that someone does care - else they won't bother hiding it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2024, @01:31AM (2 children)
If people cared, we would have a completely different government, and your Trump wouldn't be so famously infamous, outside of the entertainment section, and Biden would be a mid level manager in a small bank
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 12 2024, @06:15AM (1 child)
FTFY. I tire of hearing the same dumbass narratives. Whining at me about how people aren't perfect doesn't help anyone.
In other words, Trump supporters care even less about corruption than muggles do. Trump's "big offense" is really a big offense. It takes a peculiar combination of stupidity and mendacity to treat a brazen exercise of corruption and hypocrisy as merely "revealing".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 13 2024, @05:15AM
You didn't "fix" anything. If people cared, politicians wouldn't be able to hide their corruption, we would have transparency
Not me, babe. That's how the voters treat it, very lightly. The numbers are even more "revealing", confirming everything I've said. Every complaint you have about the government rests on the voters.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2024, @02:27AM
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2024, @06:25PM
There is no "net neutrality" without it...
Where the hell is congress on this? The FCC serves the whims of the president
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2024, @08:13PM (1 child)
I think we all want things like games, VOIP, and video to work as fast as possible so they don't glitch; but we don't want to pay for QoS on an app basis and we definitely don't want it only available to big companies, and we don't want some idiot abusing it so their script laden ad-infested web pages load faster.
How do you spell that out in legalese that translates in to technical action that satisfies all stake-holders in a reasonable way?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Ox0000 on Friday May 10 2024, @11:20PM
Here's a first stab at it, let's iterate on this and see where we can get?
My suggestion: An "Act for Neutrality And Lawfulness" (I'm sure some staffer can come up with a good backronym for that one)
§1: what you should do.
§2: what you cannot do.
§3: the head honchos are personally liable, and attempts to shield them are illegal, also, they have to be targettable persons, to prevent CEO's being their own LLC who are hired as a 'contractor' by an ISP.
§4: the incentive to not fuck up, you cannot be (re)compensated by the company if you as a head honcho get convicted; it's on you, forever, bit like student debt: there is no escape.
§5: you can only be a head honcho if you sign this piece of paper everyone can ask for.
§6: non-pre-emption, states or munis can make this more stringent
It's not a good final version, but it's a start...
(Score: 2, Disagree) by ChrisMaple on Saturday May 11 2024, @02:18AM (1 child)
It looks like the FCC is making it illegal to charge for better service, thereby removing the incentive to improve.
FWIW, Runaway1956, above, states that a minimum for broadband should be 100 Mbps. Where does he want his diamond-encrusted Ferari delivered?
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Saturday May 11 2024, @06:36PM
Im happy I don't live in the good ol' U.S. of A.
My network provider is constantly upgrading equipment. We went from 10 Mbps to 60 Mbps recently, for the same price.
You know what drives this improvement? Competition.
Don't drink the Kool-aid. Higher prices do not drive innovation.