heres something to think about. Way back in January 2014, a US court ruling found that the FCCs 2010 Open Internet Order was unlawful. To truly protect the neutrality of the Internet, the FCC would have to reclassify Internet Service Providers as common carriers. At the time, I wrote about how this could potentially affect PC gamers. And since then, things have gotten a lot worse. In the spring, the FCC proposed a new set of regulations that essentially allowed big corporations like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast to install Internet fastlanes that prioritized some data over other data. A lot of people were pissed. By summer, Netflix was paying Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T to ensure its traffic reached customers without being throttled. The FCC pushed back a final decision on its FCC plans for months and months to reevaluate after the publics negative response. Then something unexpected happened: in November, President Obama called for the FCC to classify the Internet as a utility, which would prevent carriers from discriminating against certain types of traffic that flowed over their network. That would be a huge win for net neutrality. President Obama cant actually affect the FCCs decision, though, and his suggestion has turned net neutrality into even more of a political talking point. Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz have opposed net neutrality, claiming it would stifle innovation in an argument that doesnt really make much sense. Worse, dozens of tech companies, including Intel and IBM, have come out against net neutrality. Google, Amazon and Facebook are noted supporters. But heres the most enraging part: AT&T and the other ISPs have threatened to stop investing in the expansion of their fiber networks until the FCC makes a decision. And yet, for years, the federal government has given these companies billions of dollars in grants and tax breaks, much of which was meant to support the expansion of fiber Internet. As it stands now, the FCCs net neutrality ruling wont come out until early 2015. If the FCC doesnt opt to classify broadband as a utility, 2015 will likely be an even worse year for net neutrality than 2014 has been.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 14:55:44 +0000
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