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."

Comments

Wow, just wow.

[Qzukk]

So apparently an ISP being able to tell people up front what their fees and charges will be is a

burdensome requirements [...] that impose serious and unnecessary costs

I guess this explains why big ISPs like Comcast and such manage to fuck up billing people on a regular basis. It's just too goddamn hard for companies to know what they charge for their services.

Re:Wow, just wow.

[boristdog]

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.

Re:Wow, just wow.

[gweilo8888]

No, the cost is small. It's just that the cost of institutionalized bribery (ahem, I mean lobbying) is even smaller, as far as your company is concerned. I'm sure the money your lobbyist threw around was greedily gobbled up by Trump and his cronies, though.

And no, you're being disingenuous: It's stated right in the freaking summary how it will affect the large ones too: They just split their business into multiple distinct 100,000-person "businesses", all of which are owned by Comcast or whomever. These then tell the customers that since you're only doing business with the "tiny company", you aren't entitled to any information on fees, performance or data caps. And that's the real concern here.

Re:Mom & Pop internet providers?

[Anubis IV]

I'd take it to mean ISPs like Brazos WiFi, a small ISP that operates in the rural areas close to where I live. It was started about a decade back by a lone tech guy who was frustrated that none of the major ISPs were serving the town he lived in. At this point, it's his full-time job and he's putting up a handful of new towers every year to expand his region, improve his service, and lower his prices. I'd imagine he has customers in the low thousands at this point, since he's serving several rural towns and has even started getting into the outskirts of the main cities in the area.

I'd consider that a mom and pop ISP.

Re:Mom & Pop internet providers?

[vanyel]

As a sysadmin, speaking very unofficially, from a small regional provider, and who used to single-handedly run a small local isp (which is still a withering hosting service), fees and caps had ought to be clear up front, and network capacity reporting is not a big deal. It's something you'd better be monitoring anyhow.

Re:Mom & Pop internet providers?

[WheezyJoe]

The trouble comes when these small "rural providers" get bought up by giant conglomerates. These "holding companies" can cheat the system, claiming the benefits of small when they've actually got deep deep pockets that could pay for compliance, but instead ear-mark that money to lobbyists and the "regulation hurts business" crusade.

The original exemption for ISPs with 100,000 or fewer subscribers was applied to the aggregated total of subscribers "across all affiliates," so that small ISPs owned by big holding companies wouldn't be exempt.

The new regulations change that. I think it's bad enough screaming vicious hate toward a known enemy like Comcast, but it's gotta be worse for people relying on some small service-provider that enjoys small-business exemptions but without any folksy small-business courtesy and service we're supposed to associate with small business, 'cause the small businessman sold out to an offer he don't refuse years ago, and now that "small business" is just one of a thousand pages in some nameless guy's portfolio whose only interest is income and territory.