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."

It's already started

[twdorris]

They're already priming the pump. I saw a Comcast commercial just two days ago that was claiming how great their new, faster service was going to be and it "included Netflix". I nearly dropped my plate. It's coming. ISPs will treat websites like channels soon enough and you're going to need to buy packaged bundles to get the websites you want.

Re:It's already started

[JaredOfEuropa]

ISPs will treat websites like channels

This, in 6 words, is why we need Net Neutrality, in case anyone is still asking why.

Re:Back in the real world

[LavouraArcaica]

I don't think things are black/or/white.

They won't block websites using this words. They will turn this into some kind of euphemism. Like: "You exceeded your monthly quota of broadband". At the same time, they will give you a few websites where this quota doesn't apply. It's already happening - slowly and in a very polite way, but it's happening.

I'm from Brazil. Here we have companies that give you unlimited data on WhatsApp. But if you want to use Telegram or Signal or whatever-the-fuck-you-want, your data will be charged. Think about it: after 25 days on the month, it is very likely that a significant amount of people on such kind of plans won't have access to Telegram/WhatsApp-competitor. This IS a BLOCK. It's bad for business, it's bad for us and it is bad for free speech.