FCC To Rule On "Paid Prioritization" Deals By Internet Service Providers

An anonymous reader writes "After a record 3.7 million public comments on net neutrality, the FCC is deciding if the company that supplies your internet access should be allowed to make deals with online services to move their content faster. The FCC's chairman Tom Wheeler says financial arrangements between providers and content sites might be OK if the agreement is "commercially reasonable" and companies say publicly how they prioritize traffic. Many disagree, saying this sets up an internet for the highest bidder. "If Comcast and Time Warner – who already have a virtual monopoly on Internet service – have the ability to manage and manipulate Internet speeds and access to benefit their own bottom line, they will be able to filter content and alter the user experience," said Barbara Ann Luttrell, 26, of Atlanta, in a recent submission to the FCC."

Comments

Re:So.

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix will already put a caching server on an ISP's network.
They've been doing this for a long time.

This is about cable and telco ISPs extorting popular content providers to pay for bandwidth that the ISP's customers have already paid for.

What?
Me as a customer would like to use my monthly bandwidth quota to access Netflix?
Sorry, that's extra even though I already paid my ISP's monthly fee.

Re:So.

[Jason Levine]

Especially if you compare it to the number of comments the FCC gets on other issues. I'd wager that most FCC comment periods net a few thousand comments at most. 3.7 million is a huge outlier.

Just to double-check, I looked at fcc.com/comments.

"Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet" (i.e. Network Neutrality) has 283,467 comments. (This doesn't count e-mailed comments.)
For contrast, "In the Matter of Connect America Fund A National Broadband Plan for Our Future High-Cost Universal Service Support" has 165 submitted comments.

This means that the Network Neutrality comment area received 1,717% more comments than the more normal "fund a national broadband plan" comment area.

No, 3.7 million might not be big compared to the entire voting public, but it's big compared to the usual FCC commenting group.

Re:"You don't like our Internet . . . ?"

[Jason Levine]

In many cases, the ISP networks were built using taxpayer money. Sometimes, this money was given with the promise that everyone in the area would get high speed wired broadband. Then, in many cases, the promises were broken and nobody took the ISPs to task. (See Verizon and New Jersey.)

Re:So.

[Bite The Pillow]

We did "vote for the a candidate who will push for net neutrality". Pre-election, Obama was for neutrality. The following quote says it has not changed, at least as of August 5, 2014.

One of the issues around net neutrality is whether you are creating different rates or charges for different content providers. That's the big controversy here. So you have big, wealthy media companies who might be willing to pay more and also charge more for spectrum, more bandwidth on the Internet so they can stream movies faster. I personally, the position of my administration, as well as a lot of the companies here, is that you donâ(TM)t want to start getting a differentiation in how accessible the Internet is to different users. You want to leave it open so the next Google and the next Facebook can succeed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

So, we did what you said. 3.7 million out of 211 million is not a significant gauge of public opinion, but it shouldn't matter, because we voted for the right guy.

Are you going to change your statement to emphasize the word "push", as if they have to actively work on the issue? And then further clarify a chain of command where people have to listen to the President's opinion? Your logic checks out, but facts are lacking.

Re:We are fucked

[Chas]

My guess is we are fucked.

No. Being "fucked" implied some modicum of informed consent.

The proper term is "ass-raped without even the courtesy of a reach-around".