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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."
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.
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.
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