Jon Brodkin

Apparently, Comcast fired about 500 salespeople shortly before Christmas, despite claiming that the company would create thousands of new jobs in exchange for a big tax cut. Comcast apparently tried to keep the firings secret while it lobbied for the tax cut that was eventually passed into law by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in late December. The Philadelphia Inquirer revealed the Comcast firings this week in an article based on information from an anonymous former employee, Comcast documents, and other sources in the company.

AT&T was sued by a workers' union that is trying to stop the company from instituting what it calls a "massive layoff." Thousands of employees are reportedly being laid off by the company, which reported $39.7 billion in revenue and $6.4 billion in operating income last quarter.

The city council in Fort Collins (CO) on Jan 2 voted to move ahead with a municipal fiber broadband network providing gigabit speeds, two months after the cable industry failed to stop the project. The city council vote came after residents of Fort Collins approved a ballot question that authorized the city to build a broadband network. The ballot question, passed in November, didn't guarantee that the network would be built because city council approval was still required, but that hurdle is now cleared.

The Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal network neutrality rules on December 14, but the FCC is still making edits to the repeal order and hasn't released the final version. The final order should be similar to the draft released by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai three weeks before the vote, but some changes will be made. "The goal is to release it as soon as possible," an FCC spokesperson said. The spokesperson said he can't discuss any changes made to the draft order until a final version is released.

When Chad Pierce and his family bought a new house this year, they made sure of one thing: that getting Internet service wouldn't be a problem. But, Internet service wasn't readily available—and Charter wouldn't extend its network to the house unless the Pierce family paid $16,000 to cover most of the company's construction costs. The house is about 550 feet from the road, Pierce said. "Needless to say, we were pretty devastated," Pierce said.

The Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission released a draft memorandum of understanding (MOU) describing how the agencies will work together to make sure ISPs keep their network neutrality promises. 

Hidden fees that show up on broadband bills after customers sign up for service have long been a source of frustration for Internet users. Because advertised prices often don't reflect the full cost of service, the Federal Communications Commission in 2015 forced ISPs to be more transparent with customers about hidden fees and the consequences of exceeding data caps. The new requirements were part of the net neutrality rules—and are therefore going to be eliminated when the FCC votes to repeal the rules next week.

Network neutrality supporters plan a nationwide series of protests starting Dec 7 outside Verizon stores, where they will express their opposition to the pending repeal of net neutrality rules.

You can find local protests by going to https://events.battleforthenet.com/ and searching by ZIP code.

The Federal Communications Commission docket for its repeal of network neutrality rules is missing something: more than 50,000 complaints that Internet customers have filed against their Internet service providers since the rules took effect in 2015. The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) was able to obtain the text of net neutrality complaints from the FCC via a public records request but says it has not been able to convince the FCC to include them in the repeal docket.

While the Federal Communications Commission said it has 18,000 carrier responses to network neutrality complaints, the National Hispanic Media Coalition says it has only received 823 pages worth. 

"The FCC has not produced any additional documents since we filed an Application for Review [on November 14]," said NHMC Special Policy Advisor Gloria Tristani. Besides carrier responses, "we are missing other documents as well, such as attachments to consumer complaints, consumer rebuttals, etc." The FCC has not explained why it didn't provide those documents, according to the NHMC.