ISPs Won't Promise To Treat All Traffic Equally After Net Neutrality (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The FCC voted to put an end to net neutrality, giving internet providers free rein to deliver service at their own discretion. There's really only one condition here: internet providers will have to disclose their policies regarding "network management practices, performance, and commercial terms." So if ISPs want to block websites, throttle your connection, or charge certain websites more, they'll have to admit it. We're still too far out to know exactly what disclosures all the big ISPs are going to make -- the rules (or lack thereof) don't actually go into effect for another few months -- but many internet providers have been making statements throughout the year about their stance on net neutrality, which ought to give some idea of where they'll land. We reached out to 10 big or notable ISPs to see what their stances are on three core tenets of net neutrality: no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization. Not all of them answered, and the answers we did get are complicated. [The Verge reached out to Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Charter (Spectrum), Cox, Altice USA (Optimum and SuddenLink), and Google Fi and Google Fiber.]

Many ISPs say they support some or all of these core rules, but there's a big caveat there: for six of the past seven years, there have been net neutrality rules in place at the FCC. That means all of the companies we checked with have had to abide by the no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization rules. It means that they can say, and be mostly correct in saying, that they've long followed those rules. But it is, on some level, because they've had to. What actually matters is which policies ISPs say they'll keep in the future, and few are making commitments about that. In fact, all of the companies we contacted (with the exception of Google) have supported the FCC's plan to remove the current net neutrality rules. None of the ISPs we contacted will make a commitment -- or even a comment -- on paid fast lanes and prioritization. And this is really where we expect to see problems: ISPs likely won't go out and block large swaths of the web, but they may start to give subtle advantages to their own content and the content of their partners, slowly shaping who wins and loses online. Comcast: Comcast says it currently doesn't block, throttle content, or offer paid fast lanes, but hasn't committed to not doing so in the future.
AT&T: AT&T has committed to not blocking or throttling websites in the future. However, its stance around fast lanes is unclear.
Verizon: Verizon indicates that, at least in the immediate future, it will not block legal content. As for throttling and fast lanes, the company has no stance, and even seems to be excited to use the absence of rules to its advantage.
T-Mobile: T-Mobile makes no commitments to not throttle content or offer paid fast lanes and is unclear on its commitment to not blocking sites and services. It's already involved in programs that advantage some services over others.
Sprint: Sprint makes no commitments on net neutrality, but suggests it doesn't have plans to offer a service that would block sites.
Charter (Spectrum): Charter doesn't make any guarantees, but the company indicates that it's currently committed to not blocking or throttling customers.
Cox: Cox says it won't block or throttle content, even without net neutrality. It won't make commitments on zero-rating or paid fast lanes.
Altice USA (Optimum and SuddenLink): Altice doesn't currently block or throttle and suggests it will keep those policies, though without an explicit commitment. The company doesn't comment on prioritizing one service over another.
Google Fi and Google Fiber: Google doesn't make any promises regarding throttling and paid prioritization. However, it is the only company to state that it believes paid prioritization would be harmful.

Comments

No shit

[silverkniveshotmail.]

You think any company put money towards this to not benefit from it?

Re:No shit

[The Cynical Critic]

Man do you have a lot of holes in your knowledge on this subject...

First of all, other countries with similar population distributions with lower average GDP have been much more successful at building up internet infrastructure so the argument that the current state of affairs is explained by geography is provably wrong. Sure, more dense countries have it easier, but the sparcity isn't really an excuse for things to be anywhere near as bad as they are in more rural parts of the country. Even at that, it's not like companies can't charge more for connections in areas where the per-subscriber infrastructure costs are higher (they already do).

Secondly, ISPs are on the whole a very profitable industry and thus definitely have the money to spend of improving their infrastructure. However seeing how people need internet connections these days people will pay for substandard service. What this means is that in areas where companies have a monopoly, which covers a very large part of the U.S, there is little financial incentive to spend any money on new infrastructure. This is why they fight so hard against people when they decide to get together and build their own fiber, meaning that to compete they'd actually have to make the infrastructure investments they decided were unnecessary. Companies simply don't want the no competition gravy train to come to an end in these areas.

So what this all really boils down to is ISPs trying to maximise profits by minimising infrastructure investments (and ensuring that people can't get together and build their own competing infrastructure).

Re:The plural of anecdote

[PopeRatzo]

Google was recently caught reading the content of documents stored online

You mean documents stored on google servers. Did you even read the article?

Ajit Pai's recent video defending the NN decision was censored by YouTube [breitbart.com].

You are a lying sack of shit.

Here is the video of Ajit Pai being a dumbass. On YouTube. Right now.

https://youtu.be/JqONIPwidQw