Regulatory classification

[Commentary] As I watch great work [of net neutrality rules] get wiped away by a Federal Communications Commission chairman focused exclusively on making an industry happy, I can’t escape the recognition that led me to move on from this field just over a decade ago.

The Federal Communications Commission will vote to repeal its 2015 network neutrality rules during its December 14 meeting.

[Commentary] Strong network neutrality rules don’t just protect companies — they also protect you as a consumer and ensure that you’re getting the full services you’re paying for. If an internet provider slows or blocks a site that you want to look at, it is denying you the right to freely choose the content that’s important to you. To see this more clearly, it’s crucial to understand that net neutrality concerns the delivery of data only once it reaches your internet provider’s network, which is only a small part of the internet as a whole.

Mozilla, BitTorrent, Reddit, Etsy and Patreon are among those driving calls to Congress as part of the Break the Internet network neutrality protest scheduled for Dec 12. That is according to Fight for the Future, which says it has created a tool that will allow protestors to auto-tweet net neutrality messages every 10 minutes in the 48 hours running up to the FCC's planned December 14 vote. 

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has rewritten the rules of the information age so thoroughly that there's no mode of communication under his control where the rules aren't looser than they were a year ago. Here's a look at what he's done.

While it is clear that alignment with the Internet service providers is currently drawn along party lines, the industry’s attempt to gain favor with lawmakers is not partisan. Entrenched telecommunications companies liberally spread money and attention to everyone who holds office. Sometimes that influence comes in the form of lavish parties with Olympic athletes and lobbyists, but consistently it comes in the form of contributions to campaigns.

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote on 12/14 to roll back the net neutrality rules in the United States. While the European Union has such rules in place, telecom providers have pushed the boundaries at times in Sweden, Germany, Portugal and elsewhere, offering a glimpse at the future American companies and consumers may face if protections are watered down. Europe adopted net neutrality rules aimed at ensuring that ISPs in the bloc’s 28 member states can’t pick the web’s winners and losers.

Since the Federal Communications Commission announced just before Thanksgiving that it was planning to gut the rules, there have been about 750,000 calls to Congress made through Battle for the Net, a website run by groups that advocate for net neutrality. By contrast, there were fewer than 30,000 calls in the first two weeks of November.

Dec 7,  Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai held a series of telephone calls with small Internet service providers across the country—from Oklahoma to Ohio, from Montana to Minnesota. They told him how the FCC’s 2015 Title II Order had harmed their businesses and why it is important to them that heavyhanded government regulation of the Internet be eliminated.