Asus (TPE: 2357) has admitted that some of its WiFi routers and tablets were not FCC-compliant, and has settled the case for a $240,000 fine.

“ASUSTeK admits that its marketing of these intentional radiators violated the Commission’s rules. To resolve the investigations, ASUSTeK will pay a civil fine of $240,000 and implement a compliance plan that will extend for more than three years to ensure future compliance with the Commission’s equipment marketing rules,” a statement released by the FCC read.

The products involved were the RT-N65U 802.11n router, the RT-AC66U 802.11ac router, and the Eee Pad Slider SL101.

The case was initiated in August 2013, when rival Netgear (NASDAQ: NTGR) filed a complaint with the FCC alleging that Asus had non-compliant products on the market.

Asus’ RT-N65U 802.11n router, the RT-AC66U 802.11ac router were both praised by consumers for their functionality, performance and effective range.

The products will not be pulled from shelves in the US. Asus will have to prove to the FCC that is has implemented a compliance plan so that all future products comply with standards.

In addition to filing a complaint with the FCC, Netgear also sued Asus over claims of unfair business practices and deceptive marketing. This lawsuit has also been settled although the exact terms of the deal were not released.

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U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) again held up its review of the proposed merger of Comcast Corp (NASDAQ: CMCSA) and Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE: TWC) on Dec. 22, citing delays in getting related documents from Time Warner.

FCC said that the deal was estimated to be worth US$45 billion.

FCC said that its officials are studying if the merger is in the public interests, while the combination will come up with the giant cable company that may occupy the majority of the market in the U.S. It had self-imposed an informal 180-day countdown for the review and the process will be resumed on Jan. 12, 2015.

FCC said that Time Warner Cable has improperly withheld more than 7,000 documents that were requested by regulators, based on an “inappropriate claim of attorney-client privilege.” FCC learned that more than 31,000 requested documents were missing because of a vendor error.

Time Warner Cable, meanwhile, said that it had submitted the privileged documents in early December, but expected to deliver a revised “privilege log” sometime in mid-January.

FCC had requested Time Warner Cable to respond to its data request by Sept. 11.

In response to FCC reviewers’ concern of the delays, Time Warner Cable said that it would produce the missing documents on Dec. 22, but FCC said additional time would be needed to study new submissions.

FCC’s last pause of the review was carried out between Oct. 3 and Dec. 3, for Time Warner Cable to respond to a massive data request and then to deal with a dispute over confidentiality of documents related to agreements with media companies.

“Today’s delay is a procedural issue, not a substantive one,” Time Warner Cable Spokesman Bobby Amirshahi said in a statement. “We already have provided the FCC more than five million pages of documents and we will continue to provide the FCC everything that they need to review this transaction.”

In response, Comcast Spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said that Comcast remained on track for the review to be concluded early in 2015.

“We are confident that any outstanding documents will be produced to the FCC in an expedited manner,” she said.

The merger was first publicly announced on Feb. 13. Comcast began the regulatory review process of the deal by filing a public interest statement at the FCC on April 8, and is in the process of obtaining permission from the FCC and U.S. Department of Justice to complete the acquisition. Comcast shareholders, meanwhile, have approved the proposed merger on Oct. 8, while Time Warner’s shareholders made the same decision on Oct. 9.

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In a very politically inflammatory statement today, Senator Ted Cruz likened Net Neutrality to Obamacare, which does more harm than good to the internet’s future as the hotly contested issue of Net Neutrality ping pongs around the IT industry and Capitol Hill.

Obviously, Cruz made his statement as a response to Obama’s instruction to the FCC (including Chairman Tom Wheeler) that they need to preserve Net Neutrality by giving the FCC the regulatory powers to oversee the internet by classifying it as a Title II communications service, which would liken it to land line phone service.

The problem with such an analogy is that it likens a multi-faceted piece of legislation that Republicans oppose to a reclassification of a type of telecommunications so that it can be properly regulated (which it technically isn’t right now). The idea was not to regulate the internet in order to allow it to self-regulate, but that does not appear to have worked and now people are calling for a reclassification as a Title II common carrier service. This would require companies to treat all traffic equally and not to be able to pick and choose, which they’re technically already doing. Some may liken Obamacare to this reclassification because Obama now supports it or because it involves government regulation, but the truth is that the FCC has already been regulating internet service for quite some time, but hasn’t had the authority to enforce a truly equal internet.

“Net Neutrality” is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) November 10, 2014

Following his statement, some well known internet personalities including the creator of The Oatmeal online comic, Matthew Inman, who broke down Net Neutrality to the junior Senator in a comical, yet informed, way.

The real issue with Cruz’s tweet is that it very likely comes from a place where lobbyists are encouraging him to shoot down Net Neutrality, after all, he does take money from large telecom companies for his campaign donations. Additionally, Cruz has been emboldened by the recent election to stand up to Obama even more than he already has and to make Obamacare a central issue around next year’s Congress and to repeal it. Cruz may have gotten the attention of many by likening a conversion of internet service into a Title II telecommunications form, but by likening it to Obamacare, he has immediately turned a bi-partisan issue of Net Neutrality into a partisan issue and will encourage people to be against Net Neutrality even though it is in their best interest.

Even the EFF is behind the reclassification plan that Obama now states that he also backs, because in the past Obama has remained silent on the topic and there’s actually a good chance that with a Republican House and Senate Obama may actually find some common ground with them on Net Neutrality. The problem is that the state of the internet is so horrible with all of the oligopolies that it is virtually impossible to allow the internet to exist in an unregulated manner, there is not enough competition among internet service providers, so there is no way that consumers can simply be the driving force behind innovation and Net Neutrality. We’ve covered this topic many times over the course of the past year, and some of the most recent talks by Tom Wheeler about the lack of competition are possibly the most enlightening. Because of government intervention, these companies have been allowed to become too big and effectively have local monopolies or duopolies with very few to no places having three options for wired broadband.

Optimally, the best thing would be to have multiple internet service providers in each area, including a possible municipal broadband option, which would then compete with each other for consumers’ business and improve in order to compete with those customers. After all, that’s sort of how it used to be until AT&T bought up all of the land line companies and Comcast started gobbling up cable providers (and now wants to absorb TWC).

The post Ted Cruz Falsely Likens Net Neutrality to Obamacare appeared first on VR World.

The end of loud commercials? Definitely worth an award.

The Advanced Television Systems Committee’s (ATSC) will be awarded a Primetime Emmy Engineering Award for their successful collaboration with industry groups to end the reign of really, really loud commercials on television.

The FCC, SMPTE, and other organizations already mandate “safe level” broadcast standards for both video and audio. However, some advertisers would use heavy audio level compression to achieve much higher perceived loudness and clarity while staying within the approved decibel limits.

This advertising practice became widely popular during the 2000’s, and when the US made its official switch to all-digital television broadcasting (DTV) in June 2009, it became even worse. Because digital audio signals are perceived on a different scale than analog, producers could push compression levels to its limits.

By that point, consumers were fed up.

ATSC won the fight

Since the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act passed Congress in 2009, and the POTUS signed it into law in December 2010, the ATSC A/85 Practice has “optimized the audience listening experience by eliminating wide variation of television loudness.”

When the FCC’s new rules implementing A/85 went into effect in December 2012, the Practice was also updated to improve education and guidance for measuring loudness of surround programming, in both multichannel and 2-channel downmixed formats.

The ATSC will be awarded the Emmy at the 2015 CES Show in Las Vegas.

Check out the full press release here

The post ATSC Wins Emmy for Loud Commericals Ban appeared first on VR World.

Remember when we reported that T-Mobile was reportedly fined by the FTC for ‘Cramming’? Cramming is/was an industry practice that revolves around trying to charge customers for services that either don’t exist or services that they simply never authorized. They sneakily will put these charges in people’s bills and most people never notice the increased charges or understand what they’re for.

Well, today, AT&T has settled with the FTC and FCC for doing the exact same thing, to the tune of $105 million, $80 million of which will have to go back to consumers in the forms of refunds. $20 million will be paid out to 50 states and $5 million will be paid to the FCC in the form of fines for violating FCC rules. The FTC will be handling the refunds for AT&T customers that were ‘crammed’ and when you consider that AT&T has 100 million customers, $80 million doesn’t actually sound like that much anymore. In fact, if you were to assume they’ve crammed on average every customer at least once, that’s less than $1 per customer in terms of refund and we all know that AT&T doesn’t cram people for a single dollar.

If you were a customer of AT&T any time between now and January 1st, 2009 (which probably was negotiated by AT&T as a start date) then you might be eligible for a refund from AT&T’s fund for this cramming behavior. AT&T claims that they ended such behavior in December of 2013, very likely after the FTC or FCC sent them a very nice letter informing them that they’d been found out and that consumers had complained. Cramming is a dirty practice and should have been punished more heavily than a $105 million fine. We still don’t know the outcome of T-Mobile’s cramming case, but John Legere lashed out at the FCC and FTC and claimed that these were the big carriers going after T-Mobile, which kind of makes his whole argument invalid since AT&T is one of the two ‘big carriers’.

To claim your refund, just head over to the FTC AT&T Refund page and file your claim by May 1st, 2015.

The post AT&T Might Owe You a Refund for Cramming appeared first on VR World.

As we’ve been reporting over the course of the past few months, the FCC has issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) on Net Neutrality where the FCC’s chairman, Tom Wheeler, and the remaining 4 members of the FCC’s panel voted to approve such a notice. Upon approval, they entered a comment period which was supposed to end on July 15th, but upon that deadline coming to and end, their site became bogged down and crashed completely. As such, they extended the deadline until the end of today at midnight. Since that deadline was extended, the FCC has reported that they have now received over 1 million comments in their system regarding the Net Neutrality NPRM. In fact, the FCC’s own Gigi Sohn reported via Twitter that they had exactly 1,045,000 comments as of only a few hours ago.

Here’s your daily #netneutrality comment update. As of noon, 1,057,000 comments filed. Deadline 4 initial comments is today at midnight.

— Gigi Sohn (@GigiBSohnFCC) July 18, 2014

I honestly do not believe that the FCC or anyone expected that they would be getting over 1 million comments regarding Net Neutrality. What will be interesting is to see how the FCC will deal with all of these comments and how long it will take them to read them all. After all, they did say that they will take everyone’s comments into account and there is going to have to be some sort of way that they’ll read through them all. The FCC is usually wading through a few dozen to a few hundred comments that could easily be read by one person in a day or two. But this issue has spurred so much public interest and uproar that I believe they are not going to be able to read all of the messages that people have written to the FCC regarding Net Neutrality.

But even so, these 1 million comments send a message to the FCC and the rest of the government, that if you are going to try to mess with the internet you’re going to have to deal with a lot of very active and angry people and I can only imagine what kinds of curse words are in some of the comments left for the FCC.

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Nearly 650,000 people have left comments on the FCC’s website regarding their proposed Net Neutrality rules, which were proposed roughly 2 months ago. The comments have been open since May 15th, and will be closed on July 15th, likely with over 650,000 comments on the topic, many of which are criticizing the FCC for not taking a strong enough stance to protect consumers. The FCC’s very own Chairman Tom Wheeler even tweeted about the milestone on Friday, reminding people to continue to leave their comments.

We’ve received about 647k #netneutrality comments so far. Keep your input coming — 1st round of comments wraps up July 15.

— Tom Wheeler (@TomWheelerFCC) July 11, 2014

If you still wish to give the FCC your two cents on Net Neutrality, then you just need to add your comment to the heap here and tell them what you think. They are supposedly going to read every single one of these comments, which I don’t necessarily believe or think to be possible considering the flood that the FCC got. They rarely get anyone commenting with most topics only getting comments in the hundreds and very rarely in the thousands. However, people are becoming more aware of the FCC’s comment system and as a result, thousands have also commented on the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable as well.

Such issues regarding Net Neutrality must be addressed as soon as possible because there are certain carriers like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile that threaten to destroy Net Neutrality with their own programs that seek to enrich them and their partners. Sure, some of them are designed to make consumers happier, like T-Mobile’s free music streaming, but they still ultimately pick winners and losers without letting the apps have a level playing field on their network.

After this comment period, the FCC will supposedly reconvene and attempt to readdress these concerns at which point they may come out with new proposed rule making guidelines and then open themselves for another round of comments. This is a very long and protracted process, but people that care about the freedom of the internet should not be discouraged. Hopefully the FCC will realize how much people care and they won’t simply bend to the will of the large ISPs and carriers like their predecessors.

The post 650,000 Comment on FCC's Net Neutrality Rules appeared first on VR World.

Time Warner Cable is rolling out one of the fastest internet speeds available in the country today next month. Our sources have been indicating to us that Time Warner Cable has been in the process of rolling out a 200/300 Mbps service in the San Diego area. They already offer 100 Mbps to new customers, but many of those people will get upgraded to Time Warner Cable’s 300 Mbps service which is one of the fastest in the country. Keep in mind that this 300 Mbps service is still only over cable, so it can’t compete with Google’s 1 Gbps fiber service or the uploads that it or any fiber service can offer. But even so, moving from a 50/5 Mbps plan to a 300/20 Mbps plan for exactly the same price, nobody is going to complain about that. Additionally, this could be yet another one of Time Warner Cable’s justifications that a Comcast merger is okay because they are upgrading customers and not remaining stagnant. All of this will also help Time Warner Cable pump up their image in the eyes of the FCC who sees very little progress in terms of ISPs improving their speeds even though customers keep paying for faster and faster speeds by moving up through more expensive tiers.

As it stands right now, Time Warner Cable offers Ultimate 100 Mbps service for $64.99, Extreme 30 Mbps service for $54.99 a month, Turbo 20 Mbps service for $44.99 a month and Standard service for $34.99 a month. There’s also Basic at 3 Mbps for $29.99 a month and Everyday Low Price 2 Mbps for $14.99 a month. If you look at the current price structure, Time Warner Cable’s pricing only really makes sense at the high end with a 3x increase in speed costing you only $10 a month more.

However, with the new speed structures Ultimate customers will be getting 300/20 Mbps for $64.99 a month while Extreme customers will pay $54.99 a month for 200/20 Mbps speeds. We don’t know what will happen to the lower tiers, but I would expect that the Turbo customers may actually see 100 Mbps depending on what kind of a modem they have. Below that, I would expect to see Standard probably get upgraded to 30 Mbps, effectively doubling the speeds and we’d probably see basic come up to 10 Mbps to satisfy what will likely be a modified definition of Broadband by the FCC.

Time Warner Cable 300 Mbps modem compatibility

However, in order to get these 200 Mbps and 300 Mbps speeds from Time Warner Cable users will have to upgrade from their current models to the currently unavailable. The only modem that Time Warner Cable currently has on their approved list is the Arris (formerly Motorola) Surfboard SB6183. This modem is capable of 16×4 bonded channels which means it can do a maximum of 600 Mbps download and about 150 Mbps upload (theoretically). However, realistically users on Time Warner Cable will expect to see speeds of 300/20 Mbps download/upload with this modem. It has also been incredibly difficult to find any of these modems anywhere and the only place I saw any of them for sale was on eBay and surprisingly it was sold from someone in San Diego, likely testing out this new service in the area.

Needless to say, we’re very excited for this service to roll out over the course of the next month and will hopefully swap out our current SB6580 for one of these since we only use it in bridge mode as it is already as many users that have TWC’s Ultimate tier of service already do. However, if you don’t want to go out and get this modem, you should be able to still get 100 Mbps from Time Warner Cable’s service with nearly all of their approved modems.

The post Time Warner Cable Rolling Out 300 and 200 Mbps Service July 7th appeared first on VR World.

The FCC recently released their fourth Measuring Broadband America report, which I believe to be their most damning. This year’s broadband report hit on five major points:

1. Speed consistency
2. Download speed performance varies too much
3. DSL is lagging behind fiber and cable speeds
4. Consumers continue to move to faster speeds
5. Upload speeds vary sharply

In terms of speed consistency, The FCC stated that very few ISPs were delivering 100% of the speeds that they were promising to consumers. Most of the broadband ISPs claim their speeds as ‘up to’ in order to save their skin, however some ISPs like Cablevision are delivering 100% or better of advertised speeds to roughly 80% of customers roughly 80% of the time at peak periods. However, only half of ISPs delivered 90% or better of advertised speed and several ISPs delivered less than 60% or better of advertised speeds 80% of the time. This means that the other half of consumers are getting worse than that, which means a lot of people are not getting consistent speeds whatsoever. This new metric clearly indicates that a lot of ISPs still have a lot of work to do in improving the speeds that they’re promising consumers when they sell them their plans.

However, download speeds are not quite hitting the targets they should be, with some ISPs delivering less than 80% of advertised speeds. Also, in terms of broadband download speed improvements only one ISPs in the US (Qwest) saw speeds improve 10% or more (16%). All other ISPs in the US only saw their speeds improve less than 10% when compared to last year, mostly unchanged from last year. However the FCC still somehow stated that they believed overall trends were encouraging. Ten of 14 reporting ISPs show slightly improved download performance with four being virtually unchanged and only one (Verizon DSL) actually had worse performance than last year. Also, the FCC called out Windstream’s DSL service for only delivering 78% of the advertised speeds in their 1.5 Mbps speed tier (1.178Mbs effective), the worst among all ISPs in the US.

As you could tell above in our mention of download speeds, DSL is clearly struggling to keep up with fiber and cable connections with DSL ISPs like Verizon and Windstream delivering some of the worst numbers in the nation. As such, it comes as no surprise that broadband DSL is lagging behind fiber and cable speeds. Even though, in places like Europe ADSL is still delivering speeds of 20 Mbps+ which American providers are nowhere near delivering to their customers. So, there is no technological limitation here for them, merely a desire for them to deliver the bandwidth to DSL customers when they want to push customers over to fiber, cable and ethernet.

Contrary to what ISPs like Time Warner Cable are trying to lead the public to believe, people are always looking for faster speeds. If you offer 1 Gbps to people at a price they can afford and believe to be reasonable, like say Google’s 1 Gbps fiber connection, people that can afford it will absolutely without a doubt jump on it. The FCC is finding that consumers continue to move to faster speeds moving from slower tiers to higher offerings as well as through upgrades of standard offerings by ISPs. But even so, people are actively paying more for their internet just to get faster speeds, something that the ISPs aren’t openly admitting. We already know that ISPs aren’t upgrading overall speeds much (by less than 10% for the most part as stated above). But, the average of service tiers surveyed in 2013 shows an average advertised speed of 21.2 Mbps, an increase of nearly 36% from 15.6 Mbps in 2012.

The FCC also found that broadband upload speeds vary sharply, something that any consumer of internet service can easily find. With certain ISPs, like Time Warner Cable, you can get upload speeds as low as 5 Mbps even when your download speeds are as high as 100 Mbps. Their current speed tiers start with 1 Mbps upload with their 5 Mbps service and only go up to 5 Mbps even with their 100 Mbps. Certain ISPs like Verizon offer uploads of up to 35 Mbps and Frontier offers upload speeds of 25 Mbps, more than DOUBLE that of the next ISP. Both Verizon and Frontier are fiber-based ISPs  and as a result they are faster than most of their competitors and in fact no other ISP in the US came anywhere near 10 Mbps, which is incredibly depressing.

There was also a mention about problems regarding network congestion but said that they hadn’t fully compiled their data for this current report. They stated that they are looking for ways to test video services and how network congestion affects the quality of these services. However, we already know that most of the congestion is not happening due to a lack of bandwidth. We know that these issues are a result of poor peering and interconnects between tier 1 ISPs and the ‘last mile’ ISPs which are the ones that serve consumers. This is what has led to the entire debate about paid prioritization and net neutrality and whether or not these last mile ISPs such as Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon have the right to charge for prioritized traffic on their networks when they are neglecting the state of their interconnects with tier 1 ISPs as Level 3 Communications had blatantly called AT&T out for.

If you’d like to read the full report, head on over to the FCC’s Website for the Measuring Broadband America – 2014

We will continue to follow the FCC’s reports and break things down for you to better understand exactly what is going on with the state of the internet and broadband.

The post FCC Broadband Report Finds US ISPs Failing to Deliver on Many Levels appeared first on VR World.

Comcast is trying to lie to us, again. Comcast is continually changing their story about why they should be allowed to acquire Time Warner Cable, constantly looking for reasons why it won’t hamper competition or consumer choice. They look towards the fact that our mobile carriers are also our internet service providers and that they are technically competitors with Comcast. Even though, anyone that knows anything about how the mobile industry works knows that mobile industry growth and competition has almost no negative effects on landline based internet. In fact, in a lot of cases users with mobile data coverage end up getting landline service from ISPs like Comcast or Time Warner Cable because they have become so accustomed to having connectivity everywhere. Comcast is arguing that somehow they are in the same industry as our mobile carriers even though neither party’s success actually affect’s the other’s in any way. That would be like saying that Mack trucks is a competitor with Tesla because they both make vehicles, even though neither company has anything to do with another whatsoever.

Now that we’ve addressed that and Comcast’s BS, we wanted to talk about Comcast’s latest set of lies. This primarily has to go around the fact that they are talking about implementing data caps within the next 5 years, but are now saying that they won’t actually have data caps. How do you say? Well, with ‘unlimited’ internet of course! Except, this unlimited internet is actually exactly as it was called by the press. A data cap with an overage fee. You know something that we’ve been experiencing in the mobile industry. Except, in the mobile industry we have more competition and there are actually carriers you can switch to in most areas that actually offers real unlimited. With lanline internet service providers like Comcast, you are usually locked in to 1 or 2 ISPs and you are totally stuck. So, Comcast wants to increase their profitability and to enable themselves to copycat what the mobile carriers are doing. Cap your data and then charge you for overages, you know, overages on a wired connection where bandwidth is far less limited than on wireless connections.

This is all on top of the fact that Comcast is continually charging their users an outrageous amount of money for services if they don’t want to be hampered by Comcast’s network policies. How do you do that? You have to subscribe to their ‘business’ internet plans which are nothing more than unrestricted versions of the exact same internet service delivered to residential customers. An ARS editor is paying $133 a month for his 50/10 Mbps internet service through Comcast Business and that is quite literally double what I’m paying with Time Warner Cable for 55/5 Mbps. So you can imagine my excitement for Time Warner Cable to get acquired by Comcast, because Comcast says that they won’t raise prices on consumers but they also won’t lower them, which is also BS. They will just employ so many restrictions on the people that are paying for the same level of service that they will be forced to pay more (Comcast Business) in order to get rid of them.

Comcast’s Full Page Newspaper Ad promoting the Time Warner Cable Merger, credit DSLReports

But wait, it gets better, Comcast is also trying to market themselves as protectors of Net Neutrality, even though they’re effectively the definition of anti-net neutrality with their fees that they charge Netflix in order to deliver a reasonable level of service to their customers. You know, paid prioritization, the fundamental thing that will ruin net neutrality? In a full page newspaper ad, Comcast tried to buoy support for their Time Warner Cable acquisition deal by promoting themselves as a check list of things that consumers would want. The list goes: Net Neutrality Protection (HA), Faster Internet (Faster how?), More Reliable and Secure Network (How is Comcast any more reliable or secure than Time Warner Cable?), Low Cost Internet Through Internet Essentials (only available to low-income consumers), Over 1 Million Wi-Fi Hotspots (who needs those anymore? do we live in 2004?) and last but not least “All of The Above.” I shit you not, they actually make consumers think that all of those things are going to be delivered by Comcast, at the same time. When in reality you can’t have faster internet speeds if you’re paying for the absolute minimum service (Internet Essentials) and that service is only available to low-income consumers and nobody else.

So, as you can tell, Comcast is full of lies and deceit and they will continue to push legislation and policies that are fundamentally anti-consumer, including the Time Warner Cable deal. Also, don’t forget that Comcast is the reason why the entire state of Pennsylvania (their home state) has a law that FORBIDS any sort of municipal broadband service, because you know, that would be competition.

The post Why Comcast is Lying to Us, Again appeared first on VR World.

Comcast is trying to lie to us, again. Comcast is continually changing their story about why they should be allowed to acquire Time Warner Cable, constantly looking for reasons why it won’t hamper competition or consumer choice. They look towards the fact that our mobile carriers are also our internet service providers and that they are technically competitors with Comcast. Even though, anyone that knows anything about how the mobile industry works knows that mobile industry growth and competition has almost no negative effects on landline based internet. In fact, in a lot of cases users with mobile data coverage end up getting landline service from ISPs like Comcast or Time Warner Cable because they have become so accustomed to having connectivity everywhere. Comcast is arguing that somehow they are in the same industry as our mobile carriers even though neither party’s success actually affect’s the other’s in any way. That would be like saying that Mack trucks is a competitor with Tesla because they both make vehicles, even though neither company has anything to do with another whatsoever.

Now that we’ve addressed that and Comcast’s BS, we wanted to talk about Comcast’s latest set of lies. This primarily has to go around the fact that they are talking about implementing data caps within the next 5 years, but are now saying that they won’t actually have data caps. How do you say? Well, with ‘unlimited’ internet of course! Except, this unlimited internet is actually exactly as it was called by the press. A data cap with an overage fee. You know something that we’ve been experiencing in the mobile industry. Except, in the mobile industry we have more competition and there are actually carriers you can switch to in most areas that actually offers real unlimited. With lanline internet service providers like Comcast, you are usually locked in to 1 or 2 ISPs and you are totally stuck. So, Comcast wants to increase their profitability and to enable themselves to copycat what the mobile carriers are doing. Cap your data and then charge you for overages, you know, overages on a wired connection where bandwidth is far less limited than on wireless connections.

This is all on top of the fact that Comcast is continually charging their users an outrageous amount of money for services if they don’t want to be hampered by Comcast’s network policies. How do you do that? You have to subscribe to their ‘business’ internet plans which are nothing more than unrestricted versions of the exact same internet service delivered to residential customers. An ARS editor is paying $133 a month for his 50/10 Mbps internet service through Comcast Business and that is quite literally double what I’m paying with Time Warner Cable for 55/5 Mbps. So you can imagine my excitement for Time Warner Cable to get acquired by Comcast, because Comcast says that they won’t raise prices on consumers but they also won’t lower them, which is also BS. They will just employ so many restrictions on the people that are paying for the same level of service that they will be forced to pay more (Comcast Business) in order to get rid of them.

Comcast’s Full Page Newspaper Ad promoting the Time Warner Cable Merger, credit DSLReports

But wait, it gets better, Comcast is also trying to market themselves as protectors of Net Neutrality, even though they’re effectively the definition of anti-net neutrality with their fees that they charge Netflix in order to deliver a reasonable level of service to their customers. You know, paid prioritization, the fundamental thing that will ruin net neutrality? In a full page newspaper ad, Comcast tried to buoy support for their Time Warner Cable acquisition deal by promoting themselves as a check list of things that consumers would want. The list goes: Net Neutrality Protection (HA), Faster Internet (Faster how?), More Reliable and Secure Network (How is Comcast any more reliable or secure than Time Warner Cable?), Low Cost Internet Through Internet Essentials (only available to low-income consumers), Over 1 Million Wi-Fi Hotspots (who needs those anymore? do we live in 2004?) and last but not least “All of The Above.” I shit you not, they actually make consumers think that all of those things are going to be delivered by Comcast, at the same time. When in reality you can’t have faster internet speeds if you’re paying for the absolute minimum service (Internet Essentials) and that service is only available to low-income consumers and nobody else.

So, as you can tell, Comcast is full of lies and deceit and they will continue to push legislation and policies that are fundamentally anti-consumer, including the Time Warner Cable deal. Also, don’t forget that Comcast is the reason why the entire state of Pennsylvania (their home state) has a law that FORBIDS any sort of municipal broadband service, because you know, that would be competition.

The post Why Comcast is Lying to Us, Again appeared first on VR World.

So, even after all of the huffing and puffing the FCC have decided to pass 3 to 2 (along party lines) their Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) that would in the FCC’s eyes promote an ‘open’ internet, which is really a farce. As we had already reported, the FCC got quite a clear indication via their public comment session on Twitter that the public was not happy with this NPRM that they were planning to vote on today. Yet, even though they claim to ‘listen’ to our comments they still passed the NPRM and now move into the 60 day + 60 day periods of comment seeking with the first 60 days being for initial comment seeking followed by replies. Frankly, it all seems entirely like a gigantic farce, especially when you consider that the ISPs are already doing so much to prevent the existence of an open internet and the FCC has done nothing. Even though, to be fair, the Congress hasn’t given them an ample amount of regulatory powers to properly chastise ISPs and carriers for their behavior (if they actually wanted to).

In addition to the recognition of a possible Title II Classification which would make internet service providers common carriers in their proposal the FCC stated the following:

• Proposes to retain the definitions and scope of the 2010 rules, which governed broadband Internet access service providers, but not services like enterprise services, Internet traffic exchange and specialized services.
• Proposes to enhance the existing transparency rule, which was upheld by the D.C. Circuit. The proposed enhancements would provide consumers, edge providers, and the Commission with tailored disclosures, including  nformation on the nature of congestion that impacts consumers’ use of online services and timely notice of new practices.
• As part of the revived “no-blocking” rule, proposes ensuring that all who use the Internet can enjoy robust, fast and dynamic Internet access.
• Tentatively concludes that priority service offered exclusively by a broadband provider to an affiliate should be considered illegal until proven otherwise.
• Asks how to devise a rigorous, multi-factor “screen” to analyze whether any conduct hurts consumers, competition, free expression and civic engagement, and other criteria under a legal standard termed “commercial reasonableness.”
• Asks a series of detailed questions about what legal authority provides the most effective means of keeping the Internet open: Section 706 or Title II.
• Proposes a multi-faceted process to promptly resolve and head off disputes, including an ombudsperson to act as a watchdog on behalf of consumers and start-ups and small businesses.

Ultimately, there is no denying that some of these things are good, but the question will be whether or not the FCC will be specific enough with these rules to make them effective enough to really properly protect the internet. As of right now, the current set of rules which were set in 2010 were stricken down by a federal court, allowing companies to continue to participate in bottlenecking behavior and prioritization practices which the FCC technically states that they find illegal. They are also asking what they believe would give them the most rule making power, even though the majority of pro-internet groups have been pushing for a Title II classification well before the FCC debate reached a national level.

One thing we do know, keep sending emails to the FCC and keep making sure they know how you feel about these proposed rules. If you would like to leave a comment with the FCC during their 2 month comment period, please feel free to head on over to the FCC’s official comment form for Net Neutrality.

The post FCC Passes Proposed Net Neutrality Rules appeared first on VR World.

The FCC recently decided that they would have a Twitter chat with the public via Twitter using the hashtag #FCCNetNeutrality. Using this hashtag, for an hour, Gigi Sohn the FCC’s Special Counsel for External Affairs would answer questions for the FCC’s Office of the Chairman. Which would essentially mean that she is representing the Chairman, Tom Wheeler, even though he didn’t participate directly in the chat itself. So many people started asking questions and tweeting and retweeting the #FCCNetNeutrality hashtag that it became the number one trending topic on Twitter at that time.

FCC Net Neutrality

In addition to responding to users that tweeted the #FCCNetNeutrality hastag, Gigi Sohn actually responded to me as one of the people asking about Net Neutrality. I was complaining (as us journalists usually do) about the fact that the FCC is constantly talking about and asking about comment from the public but doesn’t actually tell us how our comments affect their decision making process. Surprisingly enough, Gigi responded directly to me, which I must admit is very honorable of her to do considering how hostile much of the Net Neutrality crowd has been. Most of my negativity about this comment process has been with the fact that the email responses that I got from Chairman Wheeler and the Open Internet initiative were effectively the exact same email with a few formatting differences. Sure, they were probably getting bombarded by the public, but that’s kind of their own fault, really.

Ultimately, it appears that the FCC is being somewhat responsive to the public’s desire to be heard and protect the internet. The way that FCC Chairman Tom Wheller talked about Net Neutrality with his Open Internet initiative simply didn’t rub a lot of people the right way. This is primarily because of the vague nature of his proposal and the fact that it didn’t really protect the internet in a way that would make it the successful medium it has been for so long. Obviously, his past reflects quite poorly upon his motives and a lot of people question whether or not the FCC is capable of properly regulating the ISPs considering how many of them are former telecom executives and how many of them will likely go back to working for those companies after their terms end.

There has been a lot of talk that if the FCC wants to regulate Net Neutrality and protect an ‘Open Internet’ that they should reclassify ISPs as common carriers and to regulate them that way. However, many people, including Tom Wheeler see that as a nuclear option, even though they haven’t quite explained what is wrong with that perspective on things. After all, the current ISPs have already taken $200 billion of our money to build a nationwide broadband fiber service and to this day we basically haven’t seen a shred of that. Meanwhile, the ISPs continue to charge more money for worse service while claiming that they are getting better and better as the US gets left behind by countries like Korea.

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The FCC recently decided that they would have a Twitter chat with the public via Twitter using the hashtag #FCCNetNeutrality. Using this hashtag, for an hour, Gigi Sohn the FCC’s Special Counsel for External Affairs would answer questions for the FCC’s Office of the Chairman. Which would essentially mean that she is representing the Chairman, Tom Wheeler, even though he didn’t participate directly in the chat itself. So many people started asking questions and tweeting and retweeting the #FCCNetNeutrality hashtag that it became the number one trending topic on Twitter at that time.

FCC Net Neutrality

In addition to responding to users that tweeted the #FCCNetNeutrality hastag, Gigi Sohn actually responded to me as one of the people asking about Net Neutrality. I was complaining (as us journalists usually do) about the fact that the FCC is constantly talking about and asking about comment from the public but doesn’t actually tell us how our comments affect their decision making process. Surprisingly enough, Gigi responded directly to me, which I must admit is very honorable of her to do considering how hostile much of the Net Neutrality crowd has been. Most of my negativity about this comment process has been with the fact that the email responses that I got from Chairman Wheeler and the Open Internet initiative were effectively the exact same email with a few formatting differences. Sure, they were probably getting bombarded by the public, but that’s kind of their own fault, really.

Ultimately, it appears that the FCC is being somewhat responsive to the public’s desire to be heard and protect the internet. The way that FCC Chairman Tom Wheller talked about Net Neutrality with his Open Internet initiative simply didn’t rub a lot of people the right way. This is primarily because of the vague nature of his proposal and the fact that it didn’t really protect the internet in a way that would make it the successful medium it has been for so long. Obviously, his past reflects quite poorly upon his motives and a lot of people question whether or not the FCC is capable of properly regulating the ISPs considering how many of them are former telecom executives and how many of them will likely go back to working for those companies after their terms end.

There has been a lot of talk that if the FCC wants to regulate Net Neutrality and protect an ‘Open Internet’ that they should reclassify ISPs as common carriers and to regulate them that way. However, many people, including Tom Wheeler see that as a nuclear option, even though they haven’t quite explained what is wrong with that perspective on things. After all, the current ISPs have already taken $200 billion of our money to build a nationwide broadband fiber service and to this day we basically haven’t seen a shred of that. Meanwhile, the ISPs continue to charge more money for worse service while claiming that they are getting better and better as the US gets left behind by countries like Korea.

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Most people don’t quite understand what Net Neutrality is all about or how important it is to the future of the United States as a knowledge economy, especially one driven by software companies that rely on fair internet behavior to survive. Without Net Neutrality, we could never have a Facebook, Twitter, Google, Snapchat, Instagram or plenty of other cloud-based internet businesses. However, it appears that Apple has chosen not to take a side in the Net Neutrality debate, by not signing a letter signed by virtually every other major tech company in opposition to the new Net Neutrality proposed law.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Apple’s own business model generally operates within closed circles and closed distribution models? Or perhaps it could be because Apple is still on Comcast’s side, probably pushing for their merger with Time Warner since there have been talks that Apple is looking to launch a TV service in conjunction with Comcast. Or perhaps its because Apple is ready and willing to pay any and all necessary ISP fees in order to gain an advantage over their current competition which isn’t flush with as much cash and likely would suffer from new internet “Fast Lane” business practices. Ultimately, Apple can afford to buy themselves whatever they want, Beats included, and they may see this as a competitive advantage to allow their competitors to not pay for the faster service while they do, giving them an advantage that they simply didn’t have before.

I don’t know exactly what’s going through Apple’s management’s heads, but if they honestly think that a more restricted internet is for the benefit of their business, they’re sorely wrong. If anything, it will ultimately result in the downfall of most software companies and businesses which so wonderfully feed Apple’s app ecosystem. In the end, Apple should be joining their competition to work together to fight these ridiculous FCC regulations and to push for a free and fair internet. We know Apple can afford to.

Perhaps they simply weren’t made aware of the petition/letter, but I find that highly doubtful considering how many of their competitors have already done so. I think they’re being cautious and don’t want to take any sides, even though the sides of this are quite clear and the ISPs are trying to buy themselves protection.

The post Why Isn't Apple Opposed to New Net Neutrality Proposal? appeared first on VR World.

In yet another public blog about new neutrality and the open internet, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, has once again tried to clarify where he stands on the open internet and net neutrality, while almost entirely focusing on the open internet and trying to define exactly what it means. In his blog post, Tom Wheeler tries to quell some of the backlash of some of his statements and previous blogs in a way that placates the masses that are currently angry with the FCC and their proposed rules for open internet standards that would effectively create a “fast lane” for companies that pay for that access to ISPs.

Tom Wheeler states that the idea of net neutrality and/or an open internet has been discussed for a decade without any lasting results and that today the internet’s openness is mostly decided on an ad hoc basis by big companies. He also says that any further delays will only exacerbate the problem. Not just that, but the NPRM (notice of proposed rule making) is seeking input on the best way to protect and promote the open internet. Even though, Wheeler fails to admit or recognize that much of those failures have been as a result of the fact that Congress has failed to pass any legislation and that the FCC has failed to enforce any rules that they have put in place.

He then brings up the Verizon v. FCC court case and how the court laid out a blueprint for how the FCC could use Section 706 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act to create open internet rules that would stick. Tom believes that this court ruling was an invitation to do this and he fully intends to do so, and once again, they ask for comment on this approach in their NPRM. But he fails to say in any way how he will use this invitation to protect the open internet anywhere in his letter or any previous blogs. We literally know nothing about how he proposes to create an open internet using that law and the court’s guidance. Because he believes that creating any laws or rules that ignore the Verizon v FCC court decision will merely result in more years of delays  and ultimately would accomplish nothing.

I do not believe we should leave the market unprotected for multiple more years while lawyers for the biggest corporate players tie the FCC’s protections up in court.  Notwithstanding this, all regulatory options remain on the table. If the proposal before us now turns out to be insufficient or if we observe anyone taking advantage of the rule, I won’t hesitate to use Title II. However, unlike with Title II, we can use the court’s roadmap to implement Open Internet regulation now rather than endure additional years of litigation and delay.

If you want to read his whole post verbatim, I highly recommend you head on over to the FCC’s official blog to read it, as it is quite lengthy, so we paraphrased a lot of it above.

As for the post  itself? Wheeler expressly clarifies what “commercially reasonable” finally means, as they’ve been throwing that term around ever since the whole dust up about the NPRM happened and the whole internet got all up in arms about it. His clarification is a very specific one and establishes a very specific set of tests and examples that won’t pass the “commercially reasonable” test.

Let me be clear, however, as to what I believe is not “commercially reasonable” on the Internet:

• Something that harms consumers is not commercially reasonable. For instance, degrading service in order to create a new “fast lane” would be shut down.
• Something that harms competition is not commercially reasonable. For instance, degrading overall service so as to force consumers and content companies to a higher priced tier would be shut down.
• Providing exclusive, prioritized service to an affiliate is not commercially reasonable. For instance, a broadband provider that also owns a sports network should not be able to give a commercial advantage to that network over another competitive sports network wishing to reach viewers over the Internet.
• Something that curbs the free exercise of speech and civic engagement is not commercially reasonable. For instance, if the creators of new Internet content or services had to seek permission from ISPs or pay special fees to be seen online such action should be shut down.

If you were to go off these four different tests alone, Wheeler’s proposed rules don’t seem as ridiculous, but the truth is that his idea of commercially reasonable doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be the one that a court will interpret or any future FCC Chairman. Additionally, in the whole of the document, Title II is mentioned four times with a few of those being a mention that they can always go that route if necessary, yet he continues to state it as an option rather than a solution. I’m just not sure why he continually avoids trying to reclassify internet service as a common carrier to protect and regulate consumers. Perhaps, because if he does that, the NSA, CIA, FBI and all other agencies will actually need to get warrants from a judge to intercept communications over the internet. Because as a Title I, or unclassified, they have a lot more freedom to do what they want, and I suspect there’s a lot of internal politics within Washington D.C. that doesn’t want internet service to be reclassified. It is the nuclear option, and I think its the only weapon we’ve got left because the ISPs want to maintain the status quo and keep growing their control.

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In an attempt to placate the FCC, DoJ, FTC and basically every government agency on earth against their acquisition of Time Warner Cable, Comcast has announced that they will be divesting 3.9 million subscribers from the potential Comcast-TimeWarnerCable merger. This new announcement is a huge farce on the part of Comcast attempting to make it look like they’re seriously divesting from certain markets and giving subscribers to Charter. When in reality this new deal they are proposing actually muddies the waters further than a straight Comcast-TimeWarner acquisition and lines Comcast up for a quiet re-acquisition of those 3.9 million subscribers as well as “New Charter” which will be a new version of the current Charter Communications that will be eastablished to enable this deal.

Time Warner will divest 1.4 million of their video subscribers to “New Charter” which will 100% own the old Charter and 33% of the “SpinCo” which is going to be a publicly traded company that will take on the 2.5 million video subscribers that Comcast has “divested” from, even though 77% of that “SpinCo” remains to be accounted for by Comcast and how much of that remainder they will own. They also haven’t said how much they will be selling these divested customers to the “New Charter” for nor how much of a stake in SpinCo they will have, which i suspect will be bigger than anyone wants to believe. I suspect that Comcast will take a fairly large share of this new “SpinCo” even though Charter will be contracted to operate it and hold 33% of the shares.

This is all being done by Comcast to reduce their overall subscriber base numbers to levels that make them appear smaller and less monopolistic even though the land line internet services are much more important to us and the future of the company. They are not talking about internet subscribers whatsoever but rather video subscribers, which, if you remove 3.9 million from a unified Comcast-Time Warner merger, would bring the new company down from about 33 million to  28 million, a mere drop in the bucket of around 11%. This is merely a symbolic gesture on the part of Comcast to placate the regulators that say that Comcast and Time Warner Cable need to divest in order to be able to move forward with the acquisition. In my eyes, no divestment is good enough to allow the two companies to merge, especially knowing Comcast’s behavior with competitors like Netflix. And the weirdest part is that their plan to divest of the 3.9 million video subscribers would ultimately create Charter as the second biggest cable operator in the nation after Comcast-Time Warner Cable and they would have a pretty significant hand/stake in that venture’s creation, meaning that they wouldn’t have much trouble gobbling it up if they felt like it.

All of this stinks really badly and I simply don’t see how consumers stand to benefit from this acquisition whatsoever. Sure, it furthers Comcast’s thirst for acquisition, more subscribers and more growth as well as Time Warner Cable’s desire to be bought out by someone bigger so that they can move on from their ‘skimpy’ profits. It also satisfies Charter’s desires to expand as they were once a suitor of Time Warner Cable, prior to Comcast, and now they get 1.4 million of Time Warner Cable’s subscribers AND they also get to manage 2.5 million of Comcast’s ‘SpinCo’ new cable operator entity. So, yes, the companies will be happy, but they will ultimately screw the customers more than anything else and this complicated deal serves no real benefit other than scale to Comcast. Their plans to divest are merely a bone to throw to the regulators so that the regulators can say that Comcast made an effort to be ‘fair’ and balance out the market power across the market even though Comcast + Time Warner Cable would still be more than 4 times bigger after the plan to divest as their next biggest cable competitor.

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So, late last week the good people over at Netflix that have been battling the ludicrous battle with the ISPs posted a blog about why they believe Comcast’s behavior is something that they vehemently oppose. While the post itself talks about their opposition of ‘ISP tolls’ where ISPs like Comcast charge them more money to deliver their content to consumers more quickly, they also mentioned their opposition to the Comcast-TWC merger. Netflix’s Kevin Florance, VP of Content Delivery at Netflix, took the time in their post to explain how their performance had been suffering with Comcast customers and amid talks with Comcast eventually came to the conclusion that they would need to bend to Comcast’s demands and pay the company for a direct connection pipe to Comcast’s networks. Netflix works with companies like Level 3 communications, Cogent, XO and other transit networks in order to provide interconnection across different networks and assist in the delivery of their content at high speeds to those ISPs. This is already something that Comcast is paying for in order to deliver a good level of video quality to their customers on various ISPs, however, Comcast has allowed these interconnecting providers’ connections to their networks to clog up and instead has told Netflix they must pay for a dedicated pipe into their network. The reason why these transit networks are so important is because they can carry traffic over longer distances and provide access to every network in the internet (rather than a single ISP like Comcast). They are providing a service that is beneficial to the entire internet as a whole and the content providers that wish to improve their connectedness across the net.

Now, there is no denying that Comcast is the biggest ISP in the United States, but by them forcing people to pay for faster access to their networks they are making it virtually impossible for any upstart or fledgling business to compete with much larger and more established businesses. In fact, because they are the biggest ISP they should not be allowed to do any of these kinds of things specifically because of its impact on the greater Internet. If Comcast starts violating Net Neutrality (which they already are) and starts making people pay (like Netflix) for faster pipes and passing those costs on to consumers it hurts everyone except for the ISPs who are already making a ton of money but want to protect their ‘legacy’ businesses.

Netflix is arguing that because they are spending all of the money to send their traffic directly to Comcast and that the data isn’t traveling long distances that they are not actually paying any transit fees at all to Comcast, but in fact paying Netflix in order to get access to their customer base. This, they believe is the form of an ISP toll which should not be allowed or encouraged by anyone. Because, ultimately, Comcast is double dipping on the same traffic by charging the customers they have for getting access to the internet to sites like Netflix and then charging sites like Netflix to get access to their customers. Not just that, even thought there are multiple CDNs and transit providers out there competing for business, they all ultimately stop at Comcast and the end result is still the same with Comcast throttling whatever traffic they want at the consumer’s end because they still ultimately control the ‘last mile(s)’ of traffic. Netflix actually showed an example of what happened when they started cooperating with Comcast’s racket. Yes, I said it. Comcast is participating in racketeering. Sure, Comcast will say whatever they want to in order to claim that their networks are struggling under the load of heavy video traffic, but the ultimate truth is that they’re making money hand over fist and aren’t suffering at all. While Netflix can’t openly say it, they’re clearly implying that Comcast has created an issue here that really doesn’t exist and are extorting money out of people to help ‘solve’ it.

As you can see in the graph above, from Netflix, Comcast is clearly operating a racket where by magically installing (and paying for) a direct interconnection with Comcast they are suddenly elevated from VHS quality video to 720P+ quality, a more than doubling of video quality. This is supported by real testing that Netflix has been doing over the past few years where they test their direct connection to various ISPs and determine who has the best quality connection to Netflix. Before Netflix installed the direct connection to Comcast, Comcast was ranked some of the worst among internet service providers (they’re the biggest in the US) in terms of speed, delivering a connection of 1.51 Mbps, after the direct interconnection was installed Comcast suddenly shot up to 2.5 Mbps (5th place among big ISPs) and finally joined the ranks of all the other internet service providers in the US with a reasonable connection speed, making AT&T Uverse the worst of the biggest ISPs. They are now 3rd among the top 6 ISPs, but realistically among larger ISPs their average historical speed still puts them in 5th and among ALL ISPs it puts them in 28th. Since the rankings have continually expanded month to month we cannot accurately state what number they were pre-direct connection.

Internet Service Provider speeds when connecting to netflix

The post Netflix Calls Out Comcast, Comcast is Ruining the Internet for All appeared first on VR World.

It seems as if we’ve been talking about this way too long, and in fact, we have been. So long, that even then Senator Obama had pledged Net Neutrality laws if he was elected President. Alas, President Obama has more than failed to deliver on his promise of Net Neutrality, he has allowed the ISPs and the FCC to run amok in ways that seriously jeopardize the US’ position of the leader of the internet. The NSA revelations regarding their spying on global network traffic hasn’t helped much in the US’ position either, but ultimately these new proposed FCC rules would make it difficult for our knowledge-based economy to be effective. After all, without all of these internet companies, the US would likely be in a deep deep depression. A short list includes Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Netflix, just to name a few. All of these companies would be affected if ISPs like Comcast and Time Warner Cable were allowed to meddle with users’ traffic in ways that ultimately result in a poorer experience for consumers or businesses because of their pay-to-play models. Net Neutrality simply isn’t beneficial for these enormous cable and ISPs.

Why is this happening? Because the three biggest ISPs in America also happen to deliver a TV service in addition to Internet, and for some, this is their bread and butter. Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner cable alone serve more than half of the broadband customers in the US and there have been talks about a Comcast and Time Warner merger, making the combined company nearly twice the size of their nearest competitor. They want to protect their content that they’re selling to consumers and if they can’t they’ll charge their competitors a fee for ‘faster’ service. As of right now, Netflix is forced to pay Comcast a fee in order to ensure that their streaming service is delivered to customers uninhibited, which is just wrong when you consider that ISPs (and cable companies as a whole) are effectively local monopolies. In most markets you have one or two options for internet service which are generally Comcast or Time Warner and/or AT&T Uverse. There are a few exceptions, but this is more the rule than the exception. As a result, they effectively operate without any competitive pressure and are allowed to essentially charge whatever prices they want to, which is why Google’s Fiber rollout has challenged them so seriously. Google offers speeds 10-20x faster than the fastest speeds that their competitors are offering and naturally, they want to stop this.

Now, getting back to the FCC and Net Neutrality, the real problem here is that the FCC has continued to choose to classify internet broadband service as a Class I Telecommunications Service, which effectively takes the regulation of these companies out of the hands of the FCC. Since if they were to classify the ISPs as Class II Telecommunications Services, they would be given full right to regulate these providers and it would force those companies to provide their services without ANY interference of services. The FCC is looking to meet on May 15th with Chairman Tom Wheeler at the helm to discuss how they will implement new Net Neutrality rules that will be implemented as a result of the court ruling regarding Net Neutrality that was passed down in January. All of this furor about the Net Neutrality proposal was sparked by a Wall Street Journal (paywalled) article that claimed that the new rules would introduce, “new rules on Internet traffic that would allow broadband providers to charge companies a premium for access to their fastest lanes.” Tom Wheeler countered this article with a blog that explains exactly what his stance is stating, “There has been a great deal of misinformation that has recently surfaced regarding the draft Open Internet Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that we will today circulate to the Commission.” He followed this up by stating the following,

           The Notice proposes the reinstatement of the Open Internet concepts adopted by the Commission in 2010 and subsequently remanded by the D.C. Circuit. The Notice does not change the underlying goals of transparency, no blocking of lawful content, and no unreasonable discrimination among users established by the 2010 Rule. The Notice does follow the roadmap established by the Court as to how to enforce rules of the road that protect an Open Internet and asks for further comments on the approach.

It is my intention to conclude this proceeding and have enforceable rules by the end of the year.

To be very direct, the proposal would establish that behavior harmful to consumers or competition by limiting the openness of the Internet will not be permitted.

Incorrect accounts have reported that the earlier policies of the Commission have been abandoned. Two points are relevant here:

1. The Court of Appeals made it clear that the FCC could stop harmful conduct if it were found to not be “commercially reasonable.” Acting within the constraints of the Court’s decision, the Notice will propose rules that establish a high bar for what is “commercially reasonable.” In addition, the Notice will seek ideas on other approaches to achieve this important goal consistent with the Court’s decision. The Notice will also observe that the Commission believes it has the authority under Supreme Court precedent to identify behavior that is flatly illegal.
2. It should be noted that even Title II regulation (which many have sought and which remains a clear alternative) only bans “unjust and unreasonable discrimination.”

The allegation that it will result in anti-competitive price increases for consumers is also unfounded. That is exactly what the “commercially unreasonable” test will protect against: harm to competition and consumers stemming from abusive market activity.

To be clear, this is what the Notice will propose:

1. That all ISPs must transparently disclose to their subscribers and users all relevant information as to the policies that govern their network;
2. That no legal content may be blocked; and
3. That ISPs may not act in a commercially unreasonable manner to harm the Internet, including favoring the traffic from an affiliated entity.

If you clearly read his statement, you can see that he feels as though the FCC is being attacked unjustly about Net Neutrality and that classifying these ISPs as Class II does not resolve the problem because it only bans “unjust and unreasonable discrimination.” However, he states that the beliefs that the new rules would result in higher costs and worse service are unfounded, even though he fails to recognize the $200 billion that the American Tax Payers have given these ISPs to strengthen and speed up their networks with fiber and to this day only Verizon and Google offer fiber to the premises to only a few million lucky customers. These companies simply cannot be trusted to obey Net Neutrality and operate on the premise of what is “commercially unreasonable” because to most broadband providers data caps and speed caps are “commercially reasonable” in order to protect their bottom line and ensure profitability (which they ALL have). Last year, Time Warner made $2 billion which pales in comparison to AT&T’s $18 billion and Comcast’s $6.8 billion, so these companies profitability isn’t necessarily in jeopardy if things are allowed to continue as they are right now. However, they all recognize the importance of internet content and media, most of which they don’t own and directly compete with. So, in the longhaul, there is a chance that these services could challenge these ISPs’ bottom line, but the real truth is that these companies should be considered utilities, not simply broadband providers. After all, in the end, they enjoy the same competitive protections in the US that many water and electricity companies do and those companies are regulated very heavily. Not to mention the essential nature of internet service in today’s society where most people prioritize their critical needs as power, water, food and internet, with some prioritizing internet over water or food.

So, in the end, the FCC wants to protect themselves politically without slapping any heavy Net Neutrality regulation on these ISPs and still ‘protect’ the “Open Internet” even though they have failed to do so, so far. Ultimately, what needs to happen is that the companies who’s entire business rides on Net Neutrality need to step up and use their lobbying power to squash the influence of these cable and media companies on the FCC. After all, Obama is best friends with Comcast’s Executive Vice President and chief of “corporate communications, government and regulatory affairs, public affairs, legal affairs, corporate administration and community investment.” Essentially, he is their Lobbyist-in-Chief. Which is why Obama’s relationship with him causes such concern about the Executive Branch’s supposed role in checking the power of different branches of the government. Even though, technically, the FCC falls under the jurisdiction of Congress because they are supposedly an independent branch of the government. And since the Congress has been so incredibly dysfunctional they have done almost nothing to actually regulate the FCC effectively. And the members of the FCC are actually appointed by none other than Obama himself and approved by Congress until they can become officers of the FCC. We won’t even talk about the revolving door of members of the telecommunications industry working on the FCC’s panel, including Tom Wheeler. Ultimately, these 5 commissioners may determine the future of Net Neutrality and even more importantly the US economy for decades to come, and that isn’t an exaggeration by any measure.

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