Net Neutrality Is Over Monday, But Experts Say ISPs Will Wait To Screw Us (inverse.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inverse: Parts of the Federal Communication Commission's repeal of net neutrality is slated to take effect on April 23, causing worry among internet users who fear the worst from their internet service providers. However, many experts believe there won't be immediate changes come Monday, but that ISPs will wait until users aren't paying attention to make their move. "Don't expect any changes right out of the gate," Dary Merckens, CTO of Gunner Technology, tells Inverse. Merckens specializes in JavaScript development for government and business, and sees why ISPs would want to lay low for a while before enacting real changes. "It would be a PR nightmare for ISPs if they introduced sweeping changes immediately after the repeal of net neutrality," he says.

While parts of the FCC's new plan will go into effect on Monday, the majority of the order still doesn't have a date for when it will be official. Specific rules that modify data collection requirements still have to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget, and the earliest that can happen is on April 27. Tech experts and consumer policy advocates don't expect changes to happen right away, as ISPs will likely avoid any large-scale changes in order to convince policymakers that the net neutrality repeal was no big deal after all.

Comments

As if broadband providers worried about PR

[Powercntrl]

My neighborhood is served by Spectrum (Charter Communications). They have a whole one-and-a-half stars on Yelp. Their prices suck, and they send lots of junk mail, even if you're already a customer. Oh, they also frequently call you on your cell phone and attempt to up-sell you, too (even when you're on the do-not-call list, and have told them repeatedly you do not want marketing calls). Their broadband service is also prone to many random brief outages. Short of starting a cable channel where their executives murder kittens on live TV, I can't imagine their reputation sinking much lower.

We have no other choice of land-based high speed provider. AT&T no longer offers DSL, and they have no plans to ever offer U-Verse. The only other competing providers are cellular networks, which don't offer the kind of data allowance you'd need for a home internet connection. Spectrum literally has a monopoly over the markets they serve. If they decided tomorrow that Netflix is now an extra $5/mo, or online gaming is an extra $15/mo, the choices are "cough it up", or "do without."

Lawsuits

[riverat1]

There are a bunch of lawsuits in the pipeline over net neutrality. I imagine the ISPs will at least wait until they start to see how they will be resolved before they do anything serious to change the current situation.

Re:Net Neutering To-day, Democracy Gone To-morrow?

[elrous0]

The only difference between Democrats and Republicans are the excuses they use for censorship.

Still more lying headlines

[jbmartin6]

Merckens specializes in JavaScript development for government and business

That is the only person quoted in the article, and that quote is the only thing establishing his "expert" status. Unclear how that translates to "expert in what ISPs will or will not do".

Re:Just like Global Warming

[GameboyRMH]

It's screwing us already, the people in Puerto Rico, Barbuda, Dominica, NYC and California wildfire country have already been screwed hard.

Trump won the Primary in a Landslide

[rsilvergun]

See here. Your narrative is incorrect.

People voted Trump because they're hurting economically and being ignored. Trump won the General because Hilary kept ignoring those people and campaigned in Red States instead of Swing States. There's other factors (Russia, Hillary's poor health, the 30 years of bad press she got) but that's the big one.

What's funny is if you look at Trump's policy he's pretty much Hilary Clinton but with a tinge of Racism and bigger tax cuts for the rich. He supports DACA, TPP, backed down on health care & H1-Bs and didn't get us out of the 7 wars we're in and just started #8 and he filled the swamp with the same Goldman Sachs people who are always in charge (America's Royalty).

I don't think any of this matters. The Dems are on track to run another right of center insider and Trump will do his shtick and the Dems will lose again. Because why vote for some milktoast Dem who'll do nothing for you when Trump at least gives lipserves. False hope is better than no hope.

Re:Statist Control of Internet Access Now Loosened

[_Sharp'r_]

Um.... if you're going to accuse someone of liking Comcast, then you probably need to have them having said something in favor of Comcast, which I haven't. Ever.

So for the record, I've never had service from Comcast, nor worked for them, but I don't like them on general principles because 1. I don't like cable companies in general (and) 2. People I know who have had Comcast didn't like them.

I'll even go ahead and stipulate that I don't like the vast majority of cable internet and DSL providers in the U.S. I prefer services which don't rely on government-granted monopoly access to infrastructure.

Now that that's out of the way, the FCC repeal of Net Neutrality rules is still good, limiting the FCC's ability to manipulate and control Internet access in the U.S., it's not going to cause any major issues for Internet users (because they aren't stupid and companies make more money giving people what they want), it will result in more flexibility and lower costs (a little) between users and their ISPs (because the FCC won't be telling them how to organize their business based on outdated and lobbyist views of the ISP industry and they won't be requiring as much regulatory compliance paperwork), and if your ISP decides to defraud you, you can still enforce your contract against them or else leave them for another one, or even start your own.