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FCC Votes To Lift Net Neutrality Transparency Rules For Smaller Internet Providers (theverge.com)
The Federal Communications Commission today voted to lift transparency requirements for smaller internet providers. According to The Verge, "Internet providers with fewer than 250,000 subscribers will not be required to disclose information on network performance, fees, and data caps, thanks to this rule change. The commission had initially exempted internet providers with fewer than 100,000 subscribers with the intention of revisiting the issue later to determine whether a higher or lower figure was appropriate." From the report: The rule passed in a 2-1 vote, with Republicans saying the reporting requirements unfairly burdened smaller ISPs with additional work. Only Democratic commissioner Mignon Clyburn opposed. Clyburn argued that the disclosures were an important consumer protection that was far from overbearing on businesses, particularly ones this large. Clyburn also argued that the rule would allow larger internet providers to avoid disclosing information by simply breaking their service areas up into different subsidiaries. Republican commissioner Michael O'Rielly voted in favor of the change, saying he actually would have preferred the subscriber exemption to be even higher. And commission chairman Ajit Pai said the rules were necessary to protect "mom and pop internet service providers" from "burdensome requirements [...] that impose serious and unnecessary costs."
Well, you know only the BIG ISPs are able to afford things like computers, which can automatically calculate things like fees and bandwidth usage.
It's these poor "Mom and Pop" providers that are still keeping all their records on paper, and have to manually copy every packet from one internet tube to the next. It's REALLY exhausting. Can you imagine if they had to add up all the numbers and write a report for each and every subscriber every month? That would truly be burdensome. Someone needs to help these poor overworked people.