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California Bill Would Restore, Strengthen Net Neutrality Protections (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Mercury News: With the FCC order to repeal net neutrality rules set to take effect next week, a bill that would restore those regulations in California will get its first hearing Tuesday (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). SB 822, written by State Sen. Scott D. Wiener, D-San Francisco, is backed by big names including Tom Wheeler, the Obama-appointed former Federal Communications Commission chairman who wrote the 2015 Open Internet Order. Wheeler is joined by former FCC commissioners Michael Copps and Gloria Tristani in advocating for SB 822, which would in some ways be stronger than the net neutrality rules put in place under President Obama's administration after more than a decade of legal and political wrangling. Those rules required equal treatment of all internet traffic, and prohibited the establishment of internet slow and fast lanes. Wiener's bill would also prohibit "zero rating," in which internet providers exempt certain content, sites and services from data caps. In addition, it would prohibit public agencies in the state from signing contracts with ISPs that violate net neutrality principles, and call for internet service providers to be transparent about their practices and offerings.
California: showing the rest of the US how to do it since 1850.
You are welcome on my lawn.
are shitting themselves in fear and have begun dumping a ton of lobbying money into the capital. They've likely screwed themselves much as they did in court before the FCC dropped their action against them. By arguing out both sides of their mouth and also through their ass, they've put themselves into the unenviable position of dealing with a patchwork of laws instead of a single set of regulations. It's not as if this was an unforeseen outcome. It's quite the opposite given public opinion on the issue.
However, for reasons of nothing but plain insatiable greed the biggest ISPs decided to try anyway.
It's worked quite well in NZ before.
Currently we have zero rating available for mobile customers, you can buy a "socialiser" pack for your mobile plan, so Facebook et al. don't count towards your data caps.
Many many years ago I had a cable plan where NZ traffic was counted at 10%, so if you used local services (back in the day where DC++ was popular) and you effectively had 10x your data limit. Most local traffic between ISPs went through free peer exchanges while international traffic was costly for ISP's.
I'm sure there are ISP's that offer other zero rating plans for the likes of TV streaming.
I guess it would be different if an ISP had a monopoly in any area, but wholesale and retail has been split by with government regulation. Any ISP can serve any customer, whether it's via DSL or Fibre. It's only wireless ISP's that run their physical networks.