Slashdot Mirror
Montana Becomes First State To Implement Net Neutrality After FCC Repeal (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) signed an executive order on Monday requiring internet service providers with state contracts to abide by net neutrality principles. The order makes his state the first to push back on the Federal Communications Commission's decision to repeal the open internet rules last month. The order says that in order to receive a contract with the state government, internet service providers must not engage in blocking or throttling web content or create internet fast lanes. Those practices were all banned under the Obama-era 2015 net neutrality order. Bullock's office said the executive order goes into effect immediately, but there will be a six-month grace period for companies to ensure that they're in compliance. The governor said on Monday that he is encouraging his counterparts and legislators in other states to follow suit, promising to personally email a copy of his order to any who ask for it. Further reading: The New York Times
Of course they're empowered to do it until the Federal courts succeed in stopping them, which is years off at best pace. I'm not even sure they'd necessarily lose, states ARE allowed to have their own stricter standards in some instances than Federal. It would more likely than not come down to standing, they'd have to sue in state courts and lose and have it pushed out possibly all the way to SCOTUS. They are kind of opening a can of legal worms though, it could make them liable for damages accrued meanwhile if in the end it's struck.
Every word in that last sentence is wrong.
YOU WILL GET GET SPAM
Unpossible! Why they are a Red State, and we all KNOW that Red States are all about corporate overlords and screwing the little guy! This is clearly a lie, someone must have meant California, or New York, or Washington, or some other deep-blue State!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The dental floss tycoons have a very strong lobby in Montana and they demanded it.
I live in Montana. Not an American citizen, but proud of being here. Best place in the world.
Have you noticed that this is an executive order signed by a DEMOCRATIC governor?
Montana is disrupting the law!
Indeed. I can't understand how this is happening. Makes me worry about my future shill checks; I mean if our corporate masters can't rely on republicon trumpanzee states to do their bidding why pay? Won't anyone think of the corporations??!
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
They're the government. They can install their own wires if they like.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
You are a bit of a cunt, aren't you? Rhetorical question of course. You are.
Bullock is a Democrat. It is a strangely purple state but most governors are Democrats.
That's funny because the FCC wants to big-government-regulate away the rights of states to write their own Net Neutrality protections!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I heard they have autonomous pygmy ponies now.
It is stupid coming from a state that has almost zero pull to force anyone to do follow along with this. Now if California or New York had passed this, they are essentially powerful countries on their own and would have the pull to force companies to comply. For Montana though, Comcast can just tell them to pound ground squirrels.
Don't feed the trolls.
Sorry, but why can't the local gov org that doles out monopolies do this? This is exactly what they should be doing, your lic is not renewed without guaranteeing to net neutrality and gets yanked when you fail to do so. Hells our first line defense should be truth in advertising anybody blocking content without a court order should be having the state AG breathing down their necks.
No sir I dont like it.
All owned and paid for by Mental Toss Flycoons, worse even than the Koch brothers
Why is it that strange, conservative legislature with a liberal governor should end up more centrist with less stupid left or right wing bits.
No sir I dont like it.
When it comes for renewals, the clauses will be part of it, resulting in the state losing it's current connections too.
No..... that would be easy money for whoever is bidding against them. That could even make it worthwhile to start a brand new ISP; just to be the ONLY ISP that can service the state government.
One man, by fiat rule, dictates how a company will do business in his state and y'all are applauding.
What if he blocked CRISPR gene research to save the unborn?
W00T EXECUTIVE ORDERS!
You don't think the op believes what they wrote?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Only apply when the Democrats are running things in Washington. Otherwise, they are null and void.
Now c'mon, we can't have 50 states all deciding to do things differently, overriding the will of the people. That would be chaotic and undemocratic. As long as Republicans are in charge in Washington, that is.
So a executive order implemented and repealed at one level of government has been replaced with an executive order implemented and repeal-able at another level. When will these people learn? You're supposed to shop like-minded judges until you get one that will find a right in the Constitution. Just kidding! Use the legislature for this kind of thing, please.
...ALL of them should put in clauses allowing them to throttle. That way the govt can no longer get any internet connections. See how long it takes them to reverse the order.
EVERY ISP that's bigger than half a man in a garage implements various QoS and caching schemes (a.k.a. "throttling").
That way the govt can no longer get any internet connections.
Already there, man.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't get it. Why do you want ISPs to throttle your internet connection at their whim? Maybe you would also like telcos to "throttle" your voice calls unless made to "telco's partners". How about cars that can only use approved fuel, where "approved" means gas stations have paid money to the car manufacturer?
What happens if you try?
With auto manufacturers, we've seen a situation where a state (CA) has different regulations than others or the feds, and the market decided that it's easier to just comply with their law than to have two (or more) products. Are you sure ISPs who operate both intrastate and interstate, might not use a similar optimization?
Less important, but...
If you otherwise can't find it in the US constitution, then the 10th amendment will say who is empowered. We can just go look there, if needed.
And if you can find a situation where Montana people use the Internet to interact with Montana's government or Montana's businesses, then whatever networks they use will need to comply with whatever intrastate regulations may be in place. If you want to have laxer rules for when someone is talking to someone out of state, that's fine. Just don't break Montana law when doing intrastate stuff.
IANAL but state laws like this essentially become federal laws for the purpose of business (provided they're actually enforced). Introducing red tape and risk to the money making schemes intended to deliver consumers to the content delivery dark ages with all the associated billing models makes such bullshit unpalatable to the sort of pointy haired bastards fighting against net neutrality.
Irrelevant. He/she may or may not believe it but it's obviously intended to ruffle the feathers of left leaning readers. It's a pretty poor and obvious effort with the usual words and phrases like "leftist", "big government", "unamerican". I mean "amazing industry"? C'mon.
this is embarrassingly stupid
This is fine; you might want to actually read beyond the pure BS clickbait title and into at least part of the summary. All Montana is doing is setting contractual requirements; ISPs are free to accept the terms or not. If the state can't find anyone willing to accept the requirements they can change them or do some other thing that makes them happy. Either way it's all volitionary and entirely reasonable.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I'm pleased to see this sort of thing happening at a local level. If every municipality enacts a hodgepodge of badly written net neutrality laws then telecom providers will be too scared to do anything even approaching the slow lanes for stupid people models of their fantasies and their opponents will be far too numerous to challenge in court.
It's exactly the way these litigious corporate greedheads operate so it will be wonderful to see them get a taste of their own medicine.
Ok so, let's say for example, Verizon wants to say fuck you to NN, but still sell service in MN.
They create a subsidiary for all MN government contracts that obeys the law, but then keep their main Verizon branch for all non-government "contracts". Boom, done.
I put contracts in quotes because when prices go up every damn month, it is not a contract.
Comcast was already serving Montana so poorly they lost any bargaining force they have in the matter, too, or this wouldn't have happened.
... the ISPs has a router/traffic shaper ready to do whatever the heck ISP management wants to do with them--speed them up, slow them down, drop them altogether--so I can't see how this will help much. The surrounding states need to join in. And then the states around those states. Repeat as needed.
Sure, Comcast could do that, but they wouldn't be eligible for contracts with any governing entities in that state. They could also do that with privacy rules as well, and there's all of about zero that the federal government can do about it.
They can probably also force an ISPs hand to do this in other states as well. Essentially what is happening is the state government is boycotting the ISP, and state contracts are quite lucrative. As far as I know, the federal government can't force the state governments to do business with specific companies, unless that state was boycotting them for religious, minority, or sexual orientation reasons. Since few ISPs offer services in that state, most can brush this off, but it wouldn't take very many states to do exactly this to essentially force it to happen to basically every ISP.
At&t, Verizon, Comcast, frontier, and Cox would without a doubt lose more revenue by facing a government boycott in any one state than they would stand to gain by breaking net neutrality. We're talking schools, libraries, DMVs, and potentially any nonprofit that receives state government funding.
While they're at it, they should also boycott ISPs that issue needlessly burdensome data caps given to fixed line residential customers.
Hannah Montana!
I'm pretty sure that's collusion (unless they all do it completely independently - which is unlikely). Collusion is illegal in the United States. That doesn't seem to stop a number of companies from doing it, but not many are willing do so to cause specific harm to a government body. That's playing with fire.
They're a rural state and the governor knows damn well he won't survive reelection if his constituents are getting screwed over by big city folk. It's the same reason the FCC backed down on reclassifying Mobile internet as broadband and didn't lower the speed caps for it. The Republican party is heavily dependent on rural voters. The American political system is built in such a way as to grant them disproportionate amounts of voting power; most notably the Senate and Electral college but there are other examples. What's more rural voter's interests often don't align with city voters, making them prime candidates for politicking. OTOH, there's lots of good reason for rural voters to oppose the Republican party. The Republicans have to be careful right now or they'll lose those voters and with them the country.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Obama signed it into law in 2015. We didn't have any net neutrality problems before he signed it so repelling something that was never an issue in the first place is a nonissue
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Montana isn't exactly swimming in money. They're 35th in the nation on per capital GDP. And as a Red state they probably don't have the tax dollars to do that or the political will to raise those tax dollars. There's actually probably enough money coming in from subsidies but if you tried to shift those from grants that go to cable companies & AT&T to building public infrastructure you'd probably get shut down by corruption. Getting public lines run would require a seismic shift in their politics.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Given the continuous progressive demands for the destruction of rural cultures, the Republicans are safe. As long as we keep entertaining the leftist idiots, we're going to keep losing to the Republicans.
Someone on /. smarter than I, already proposed it. Make net neutrality a prerequisite for access to public right-of-way. I think it should even be written to include forfeiture of installed infrastructure if you are found in violation and have to vacate.
Yup this means absolutely nothing for the average person. I doubt businesses that pay for commercial service are going to have throttling either....
love is just extroverted narcissism
What exactly do you find stupid about a state exerting its rights? They granted the ISP a near-monopoly, you think they aren't also within their rights to impose conditions on the terms they've laid out?
And supported by a Republican Secretary of State. http://www.dailyinterlake.com/letters_to_the_editor/20171203/internet_neutrality_is_good_for_business
That doesn't necessarily make it trolling. Here's the definition:
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Every word in that last sentence is wrong.
Care to explain why? I know the Commerce Clause gets abused a lot, but this seems like one of those rare times where it legitimately fits.
No he's probably paid to post whatever his boss tells him. We have many right-leaning slashdotters, nutters, and rightwing nutters. With a few notable exceptions most of them actually have good or excellent karma!!
With some exception slashdot is rather tolerant of reasonably articulate or insightful viewpoints that go against it's generally liberal status quo. The reason we have extremely low quality buzzword filled shitposts like that one is because some Shillco associate is able to easily make his post quota here since we don't ban and don't require registration. Not only that but he'll be likely to get poster involvement which seems to be a recent requirement to meet post count. Presumably so they don't wander about the internet posting places that nobody goes.
How would your group of ISPs handle defectors? All it takes is for one of them to be a for-profit business, and then instead of closing in Montana like all the other ISPs, they just comply with the law and get all the business.
Imagine you ran one of the ISPs implementing your plan. You kiss your wife goodbye that morning, knowing that when you come home later, you'll be unemployed, but at least you'll have had the spiteful last word and Montana won't have any ISPs anymore. You'll win. All that copper and fiber will be silent. You arrive to work for the last time. Your company is in violation of the terrible law, and you wait, and finally: there is the mailman with the certified letter! You open it, as a mere formality: "Yadda yada, cease and desist, fines will accrue, yadda yadda" IT'S ON!!
You compose your devastating reply to the state government: "my way or the highway. So long, suckers!!" and you pull the plug. There's an eery silence when you realize all the fans that you used to ignore, are now silent. Montana does not have Internet. You chuckle sadistically. You won. You would check with your partners to see if they pulled their plugs too, but you have no connectivity at the office anymore, so you have to just assume that everyone kept faith.
You go home. Gonna be a stay-at-home-dad now. No internet to amuse you, but no unfair regulations either. Gonna live Ted Kaczynski style. Yes, you won. You pull into the driveway.
Huh. That's funny. There's a flyer on your door. "Sign up for Cajun Net, Montana's only ISP!" That bastard Cajun Hell. He said he was going to go out of business too, but instead he decided to comply with the law and take all the money. GREED. Fucking greed. Why does greed have to ruin everything?!?
You decide, "We'll see about this! I'll just give Cajun Hell a call. We had a suicide pact and he fucking welched!" (And yes, this is exactly the kind of thing I would do to you. I'm a bad man!) You're about to angrily stomp through the door before you realize the phone isn't going to work, and your mobile should be down too-- wait, you pull out your mobile phone and it's up. Shit, did Cajun Hell already buy all the accounts? Is he taking all the mobile money too? Fuck!! "Well, I'll just make one last phone call on this thing, to cancel my account!" Oh, this is going to be good. You are going to give the customer service rep such a berating. Ha!
After your phone call where you abuse my innocent CSR, you remind yourself: You won. You tear up the flyer. You explain to your wife and kids that we don't need any stinking Internet access. They're a distraction anyway. It's time to get back to your bible studies. You won!
And whereever I am, whatever I'm doing, I feel the pinprick of your spite on my neck. Your anger has physically manifest. Finally, I will pay for my treachery! But just then, I use one of your former customers' hundred dollar bills to rub my neck. Aaahh, it's gone. You lost.
Don't let this happen to you. No suicide pacts!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
This is too funnys. You libtards go about the "censorship" then you come up with conspiracy theory of such magnitudes. So lame. Many Americans like me have caught up to you now and know when your bias shows.
The Commerce Clause forces state government to buy internet service that doesn't meet their needs and expectations?
Because that's what an executive order like this actually does, it specifies that ISPs that don't follow net neutrality principles are not suitable services for the state government to use. It doesn't technically protect anybody else, but since in any given state the government is likely the largest single purchaser of internet service, it makes it much more likely that ISPs will provide a neutral internet.
Nope, see, you have it wrong as well. I am forever amazed at the rarity of reading comprehension.
Montana's terms require a provider to practice net neutrally. Not just on behalf of Montana, but on behalf of all of the providers customers, including "average person." Extrapolated to many states and other large institutions it could mean NN becomes a defacto requirement for all ISPs and all of their customers.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Sorry but executive orders issued by a state governor do not override Federal law.
It's hard to see how states could lose such a case. They aren't forbidding companies from operating in their state, they are stating conditions for companies to have state contracts.
Not sure that would be a smart move for Comcast. That would essentially REQUIRE the state to provide broadband to its citizens. Comcast does NOT want to get states into that business.
One of the things Trump has made a big deal out of is returning rights/control over things to the States. Montana is now doing precisely that. We'll see if they're swatted down for it or not.
just an order. not a law.
once again you fail to make it concrete and once we're not watching it will change. and not in consumers favor.
It's a genius move. Where would any internet company go, where they have to pay extortion fees to ISPs or to a state where they don't?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Easy: By not allowing monopolies (which ISPs are in many areas) to give preference to their own services you increase competition.
Why do you like monopolies and restriction of competition?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Poe's Law, it's not just fore religious nutjobs anymore.
Yes, I do actually think we have arrived at the point where we do have idiots who actually believe this bullshit. Being exposed long enough to media that keep droning on with the mantra can do this to you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So? Not all Republicans are religious nutjobs, just like not all Democrats are braindead SJWs.
Decent politicians do actually exist. They're few and far between and you have to look carefully for them, but when you found one, treasure him or her and keep voting for her, because it's all that stands between you and having another dud in an office.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1) Don't understand states rights.
2) Don't understand how net neutrality could exist in a regional way.
You're a fucking idiot. Everything about your post is wrong. Must be embarrassing since you posted with your user account, now we all know how dumb you are.
What do conspiracies and censorship have
To do with each other? Nothing you say? Pointless post is pointless. We see right thru you.
And what law would that be?
great first step but meaningless until the governor enforces the Sherman Act or state equivalent against the "ISPs"
Comcast AT&T etc. typically demand an exclusivity clause in their contracts before provisioning wires in a geographic area. that's an illegal monopoly.
and that is the cause of non NN junk like "zero rating" their TV shit while throttling Netflix, etc.
it's the railroads and the oil companies. it's the 16th century robber barons along the Rhine river.
Comcast doesn't serve Montana. Where the hell are you guys even getting this from? It was an example company. Did anyone even read the artic...oh wait..hold on. I remembered where I was. Of course not.
Montana has internet? Really?
I want net neutrality, but this is embarrassingly stupid. You can't have net neutrality in one state on a practical level to begin with, and this is definitely not something the states are empowered to do beside that.
We are a collection of states that can generally do what they want. You have it wrong, my friend. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The usual Commerce Clause that gives the federal government the authority to regulate interstate commerce, even as extended as it is, can hardly be used to override a state from placing equal access requirements on local services.
The Last Jedi was the first decent S.W. movie since the original trilogy.
Rogue One.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
While they're at it, they should also boycott ISPs that issue needlessly burdensome data caps given to fixed line residential customers
While agreeing with the rest of your post, this stuck out. What do you mean by needlessly burdensome?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Why is it that strange, conservative legislature with a liberal governor should end up more centrist with less stupid left or right wing bits.
Because that's how it used to be? People working together to solve problems? States have power over the federal government and I'm glad a small state is using it instead of just complaining.
Rogue One was a reasonable sci-fi movie. Last Jedi was a good Star Wars movie.
Completely off topic but Rogue One!
The ending space battle where the rebel fleet warps in right on top of those two star destroyers is the best space battle Star Wars has ever seen
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
This should be fine because Republicans are in favor of deferring to the states. Well, unless the states want to do something they don't agree with...
the country far right. Way right of anything Nixon or Reagan ever did. Clinton wanted to be president but needed Wallstreet's money. He formed an alliance of social progressives and right wing economists. This didn't hurt too much since the .com boom was going on so the massive tax cuts and funding cuts to social programs and education largely went unnoticed.
Thing is, when he was done shifting the Democratic party to the right he put the Republican party in a bad spot. They were little more than Democrats with a mild streak of bigotry. So to maintain their own identity they moved right themselves. Meanwhile all the corporate money pouring in was just gas on the fire.
Bernie & his crew are trying to shift the Dems back to the left, but the corportists have their claws pretty deep in the DNC. Even the election of Trump wasn't enough to shock them loose. Not sure what's gonna happen, but if the country keeps moving to the right we're gonna get authoritarianism.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's about time someone invoked the 10th amendment. Though, Montana may end up with the most congested links.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
You're an idiot. In your mind unless all 50 states simultaneously implement net neutrality, it's just not worth pursuing.
And yes, individual states can implement their own net neutrality laws. There is no federal law preventing them from doing so.
All it takes is a big enough state and then things change.... like say California. If any internet provider wants to do business with the government of the 8th largest economic power on the planet, then they must follow net neutrality in their business practices.
This would have an effect on all big providers wishing to do business with the state government and hence might likely be de facto Net Neutrality for the rest of the country as well.
The citizens really don't want net neutrality by a wide margin even if politicians find it to their monetary benefit to support getting rid of net neutrality.
That will be some creative networking.
A wealthy gated community wants to set up their own community broadband.
A municipality wants to set up broadband services.
An industrial estate wants to give exiting and new business total ISP freedom via their own new network.
Will state bureaucrats now demand the use of existing monopoly telco providers as only they legally meet the new state NN rules?
The state will enforce connections only to a set of NN approved ISP and a telco monopoly?
Did the state gov help the gated community, industrial estate, municipality build their own new private sector network?
Now the state gov wants to use a takings clause to enforce only selected state approved NN telcos can be an ISP for the private networks to connect to the internet with?
The state regulates what a NN ISP is and demands any private network wanting the internet have to connect with a telco the state has found to be NN ready?
A state enforced mandatory NN monopoly ISP gets state protection. Want to be a network? Have to prove to the state your NN just like the existing telco monopoly.
Lawyers, experts and billable hours to show state bureaucrats a new ISP is NN compliant. The existing telco monopoly thats NN ready can just set that NN standard so the state can enforce rules so no competition can enter the telco market.
A selection of ISP that are NN ready that connect to the state approved NN ready telco.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
is thus unamerican
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Know what else is unamerican? Education, culture, experience, worldliness and happiness.
> You can't have net neutrality in one state on a practical level to begin with
yes. you. can.
net neutrality is all about the last mile. and guess where that last mile is in Montana?
IT'S IN FUCKING MONTANA
why? net neutrality is about the last mile. interstate commerce doesn't apply here.
it's about imposing the will of the people of Montana.
suck it.
yeah. but federal law does not limit regulations Montana can apply to businesses operating in Montana. there's no overriding going on here.
needlessly burdensome=existing
What is this mythical "truth in advertising" that you speak of?
Itâ(TM)s possibly a legal workaround to Pai preventing states countering his actions. Here Montana isnâ(TM)t really countering his actions, instead it is just a requirement for government contracts, which just happen to have and intended side effect
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Actually, they might be thinking of the corporations. No Net Neutrality hurts pretty much any company that isn't an ISP. And as far as I know, no major ISPs are based in Montana. So, for any Montana corporations, this is a good thing.
Oh look, I'm talking about star wars everywhere I go, in any forum, and any context. You're so cool, buddy.
Why would you think it is years off at best? Recent history shows that there are apparently plenty of judges out west more then willing to issue injunctions against government actions that they personally don't like even when there's zero Constitutional authority to do so. And the rest of us are supposed to just bow down to the black robed un-elected overlords and do what ever they say.
The only thing that will do is make providers weigh the money they'll make from state contracts against the money they'll lose under this regulation.
My guess is the state will have a hard time getting Internet service.
You mean like how the age of drinking is a state law and yet all decided to go along with it somehow? Nice law you have there. Would be a shame if something happens to it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It's hard to see how states could lose such a case. They aren't forbidding companies from operating in their state, they are stating conditions for companies to have state contracts.
True, but sadly pointless.
Its like gun control, if one state bans it, you can just hop over the border and buy what you like. Net Neutrality needs to be protected nationally or it cant be protected at all because Bastard Telecom can just route all Montana traffic through a "friendlier" state where they can hobble it to their hearts delight.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
So? Not all Republicans are religious nutjobs, just like not all Democrats are braindead SJWs.
Decent politicians do actually exist. They're few and far between and you have to look carefully for them, but when you found one, treasure him or her and keep voting for her, because it's all that stands between you and having another dud in an office.
I've always just assumed titles like RINO an DINO were just American words for what we in the ROTW would describe as a centrist.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
kek.
Its like gun control, if one state bans it, you can just hop over the border and buy what you like.
You are comparing orange with apple. Do you mean those who want faster speed and would pay for it would have to hop over to another state to get the service (cable/fiber optic) line crossing back to their houses? One is a physical product/item, the other is a service. They are different.
Why don't we have mail neutrality? Why do rich people get to send packages faster than poor people? I DEMAND MAIL NEUTRALITY NOW!
Because net neutrality principles can't be upheld.
I don't have a specific definition, but some caps are reasonable. For example, that time Verizon mentioned booting a guy who was doing north of 10TB a month. You just can't have every residential customer do that, or else the backbone pipe will be prohibitively expensive to the point that residential customers are effectively paying business tier pricing.
Cox however does a 1tb cap, even on their gig service. We already know that the last mile isn't saturated, because when this happens, there ends up being plenty of complaints in the usual places. That did not happen prior to adding the cap. Furthermore, before they added that hard cap, they had a 2TB soft cap that they never actually enforced, but somehow it magically needs to be 1TB right when they add the hard cap where you have to pay extra?
But even if you look past all of that, if they did an oversubscription of 50:1 for residential customers (this is the industry norm) then they should be making plenty of money. Especially given the fact that Cox's per mbit is insanely high compared to the competition. You basically have to pay $170 a month for gig service, otherwise you'll quickly get nickel and dimed pretty harshly by the cap.
Montana residents voted this guy in. THEY can deal with the consequences.... Simples.....
OTOH, given network neutrality, hard caps are the way to respond to the high network usage that Netflix etc consume.
What those caps should be seems like it would be hard to regulate. In theory, competition would be the solution, but in reality, meaningful competition is just not going to happen for the majority of households.
1 TB does seem low for a GB fibre connection and even worse if they start charging by the MB if you go over rather then just throttling the connection.
Really the solution seems to be to treat ISP's as a utility. Where I am, hydro, the phone company, the gas company and such have to apply to a utilities commission to raise rates and have to explain their reasoning for the hike with hikes often rejected or limited more then requested. This would mean that profits are basically limited and whether that would go over in the States is hard to say, it hasn't happened here, though in theory any Province should be able to do it as I believe it is a Provincial responsibility rather then Federal.
BTW, my cap is 250 GB on a fixed mobile (4G) connection (only available for remote rural customers) for $85 a month here in BC which seems reasonable to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The commerce clause gives the federal government the ability to regulate business that crosses state lines. It doesn't forbid states from regulating that business within its own borders.