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This took effect on June 11.
The FCC claims that it removes the layers of regulation introduced by net neutrality, and the same things that were illegal before net neutrality was put into place will still be illegal.
Unfortunately, the reasons that net neutrality was introduced have been ignored (it wasn’t just done to waste paper and time). Prior to that, ISP’s and carriers routinely ignored the law and the various consumer protection agencies that the FCC now says they’re relying on did nothing; just a few examples include Comcast blocking and/or slowing file sharing operations, AT&T pressured Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP applications, AT&T, Sprint & Verizon blocked Google Wallet, etc. There are many, many more examples.
Unfortunately, there are a large number of people that believe everything they read. Facts, and not politics, need to be taken into consideration, when evaluating what is going on.
I must respectfully disagree. I know the Comcast/BitTorrent/Sandvine issue from personal experience and Comcast did nothing wrong. These were times of very fast changing technology with management solutions that were equally fast moving targets. That whole issue was resolved within the system, WITHOUT any network neutrality rules needed. Based on what I have read, and colored with my personal experience, I believe the issues with Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Apple, Google Wallet, etc, were also all settled correctly by the Federal government (mostly by the FTC) all without the need for any so-called “network neutrality” rules.
The problem with replies such as JimHenry’s is that it mixes some truths, with some commonly thrown around falsehoods (generally associated with politics) and opinion.
So let’s keep to the facts. The three examples I gave were the first 3 of a long list of issues with ISP’s and carriers, which led to net neutrality being introduced. In all of those 3, the FTC did nothing. Nada.
In the case of Comcast, they were simply not providing the service that people were purchasing. The company was secretly throttling and/or blocking file sharing. How that is doing ‘nothing wrong’ is a different definition of ‘nothing’ and ‘wrong’ than mine. The FCC was going to order them to cease & desist (just before net neutrality came into effect) but Comcast bowed to public pressure and stopped.
In the Skype case, the offending carrier had competing technologies. While you can never know what is going on behind the scenes in a company, AT&T backed down when the FCC ruled that carriers were also subject to net neutrality (which started being enforced in 2010).
The issue is a little less straightforward in the Google Wallet case. The carriers were claiming security concerns. There were big fights. suits against the FCC, etc.
The point is – the FTC was no help in any of these highlighted cases, and in fact it was the FCC, in introducing net neutrality, and then interpreting one aspect of it (in the case of Google Wallet) that played a decisive role in determining the outcomes.
Imagine what’s going to happen now that the companies can go back to playing fast and loose?
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