EFF, Others Think It Would Be Cool If The FCC Stopped Hiding 47,000 Net Neutrality Complaints

from the there's-no-problem-if-you-can't-see-it dept

We've noted repeatedly that the Trump FCC has been engaged in some dubious-if-not-downright-comical behavior to try and justify their plan to kill popular net neutrality protections. These efforts have ranged from ignoring bot-driven fraudulent abuse of the agency's comment system to allegedly making up a DDos attack to try and downplay the "John Oliver" effect in the media, after Oliver highlighted the myopia of the FCC's efforts on his HBO program. The goal appears singular: sow doubt about the validity of the 20 million + comments made to the FCC, mostly in opposition to its plan.

FCC boss Ajit Pai has long insisted that net neutrality isn't a real problem, nor is the lack of broadband competition that creates such market dysfunction in the first place. As such, the agency under his leadership has also been fighting against FOIA requests to release the 47,000 net neutrality complaints filed with the agency since 2015. After all, they might show that net neutrality is a real problem, undermining Pai's claim that consumer protections on this front aren't necessary.

Hoping to dial up pressure on the agency, 16 consumer groups and organizations (including the EFF and the ACLU) penned a letter to the FCC this week urging them to make the complaints public. The core of their argument -- if the FCC is going to claim net neutrality protections and agency oversight of ISPs is largely unnecessary, it might be useful to discuss what the public has to say about things:

Over 47,000 consumer complaints have been submitted against ISPs since June 2015, and carriers provided approximately 18,000 responses to those complaints, and there are 1,500 emails documenting interactions between the ombudsperson and Internet users. These numbers alone should give the Commission pause. However, only a full analysis of these consumer complaints and ombudsperson documents will allow the public to fully answer questions posed in the NPRM.

Of course a full, transparent analysis of the record is the very last thing Pai and friends want, since it would clearly show the agency is ignoring the public interest to the sole benefit of a handful of well-loathed telecom duopolies. That said, the groups are quick to point out that Pai's failure to address, analyze, and release all these documents for review and comment prior to the close of the current comment deadline (which is August 30 if you haven't chimed in yet) could result in the FCC running afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act.

So while the FCC had originally claimed that releasing these comments would be too "burdensome," it has quickly shifted its position to now claim that the agency will release the complaints eventually, once they're redacted. Maybe:

"Pursuant to FOIA, the FCC must redact any personal information from the over 47,000 documents that have been requested before they can be released," a spokesperson for Pai told Ars today. "Currently, commission staffers are in the process of reviewing these documents and redacting any personal information. We anticipate releasing another batch of documents by the end of the week and will release the remainder as soon as we can."

Whether or not "as soon as we can" will be defined as "after we've finalized a vote to kill the popular rules later this year" remains to be seen.

Filed Under: eff, fcc, net neutrality

Mozilla Study: Zero Rating Isn't The Miracle Broadband Duopolies And Facebook Pretend It Is

from the on-ramp-to-nowhere dept

For years now we've explored how large ISPs have (ab)used the lack of competition in the broadband market by imposing completely arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees. But in addition to these glorified price hikes, ISPs have also long taken to exempting their own content from usage caps, while penalizing competitors -- allowing them to use this lack of broadband competition to tilt the content playing field in their favor. Incumbent ISPs have long tried to twist and distort this narrative, claiming that zero rating is the bits and bytes equivalent of a 1-800 data or free shipping.

Of course that's simply not the case, and zero rating simply shifts costs around to the benefit of entrenched mono/duopolists. Since caps and overage fees are arbitrary implementations not tied to any sound, real-world economics, the consumer isn't technically really saving anything (especially in the States, where we already pay more for data than most developed nations). And because content companies are often penalized while ISPs exempt themselves, this reduction in overall competition has very real negative cost impact on the end user.

This gross distortion of the market doesn't just benefit ISPs. Overseas, companies like Facebook have partnered with mobile carriers to cook up their own, poorly-received zero rating efforts, providing an AOL-esque portal to the internet stocked with Facebook-chosen content. Facebook tried to convince folks in India that it wasn't just trying to corner the international ad market, it was simply worried about the plight of the impoverished farmers.

When Facebook's plan was being debated last year, Mozilla quite-correctly pointed out that if Facebook was so worried about the poor getting access to the internet, it could... you know... actually help fund connections to the actual internet. Mozilla's now back with a new study that further deflates some of the common, bunk narratives surrounding zero rating, particularly the Facebook and ISP claim that zero rating is a wonderful "on ramp to the internet" that showers immeasurable benefits upon the backs of the poor.

More specifically, Mozilla and its international research partners found that zero rating isn't really an on ramp to anywhere useful:

"In all countries surveyed — excluding India where zero rating has been banned by the regulator — focus groups revealed that users are not coming online through zero rated services. While more research is needed, if zero rating is not actually serving as an on-ramp to bring people online, the benefits seem low, while the resulting risk of these offerings creating an anti-competitive environment is extremely high."

The study also gets to the real reason companies like Facebook are so breathlessly in love with zero rating -- it tends to keep users focused on just a handful of websites (and obviously the advertising companies like Facebook want seen). It should probably go without saying that users who are stuck with only a limited window to the internet, aren't getting the full benefits the internet has to offer. But one of Mozilla's research partners (pdf) also noted that many users of these walled garden, zero rated services wind up conflating "Facebook" with "the internet," which is one of Facebook's primary goals:

"In discussing promotions and Internet-use more broadly, respondents focus on Facebook. Some respondents from rural focus groups use Facebook and the Internet interchangeably, as, for example Internet search for them means searching within Facebook...Our findings raise concern of Facebook’s influence within Myanmar, as these zerorated promotions may serve to perpetuate its dominance and undermine widespread understanding of the distinction between its services and the ‘open Internet’.

Of course the decision to drive users to a handful of websites instead of the entire internet has a dramatic, negative impact on overall content competition. That's why India banned Facebook from engaging in this behavior, hoping to encourage efforts that help bring the real internet to the poor, not bizarre walled gardens where Facebook, Google or your ISP has the final say when it comes to the content and services you're seeing. Here in the States, where we're facing both a gutting of net neutrality rules and a looming reduction in competition thanks to mindless merger mania, we're about to get a crash course in how the "help" provided by zero rating is no real help at all.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband access, net neutrality, zero rating
Companies: facebook, mozilla

One Man's War Against Verizon's Long History Of Lies, Anti-Competitive Behavior, And Nonsense

from the we-don't-have-to-care,-we're-the-phone-company dept

In the telecom market the trifecta of holy bullshit has long been AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. And while all three companies are painfully unethical, anti-competitive, and viciously anti-consumer, Verizon has long utilized a particular finesse as it works tirelessly to prevent its regional mono/duopoly from anything closely resembling actual competition. Many of these efforts have historically teetered on the comical, and you've likely forgotten most of them.

Remember when Verizon tried to ban Bluetooth, tethering, or competing GPS apps to force you to use their inferior and expensive services? Or when it launched a shitty tech news blog, but banned reporters from talking about surveillance or net neutrality? Or that time Verizon blocked all competing mobile payment services on its phones to prop up its poorly-named and executed ISIS mobile payment service? Or when it was busted covertly modifying user packets to track users without their permission? And who could ignore its frontal assault on net neutrality, and recent comical video denying it was doing anything of the sort?

Yeah, good times.

Impressively, one man has done some yeoman's work for the rest of us and complied these and countless more examples of Verizon's anti-competitive behavior into what's the only real formal net neutrality complaint filed so far. It should be noted that there are tens of thousands of informal consumer net neutrality complaints (which the agency refuses to disclose because it might highlight how this is a real problem). But to file a formal complaint you need to pay $225, submit an ocean of paperwork, and kick off a long-train of procedural and legal fisticuffs most consumers simply don't have time for.

But after doing a painstaking amount of homework, a man named Alex Nguyen did just that:

"Nguyen is a recent college graduate living in Santa Clara, California. And for much of 2015, he spent his time digging through years of Verizon's public statements and actions, assembling more than 300 citations into a 112-page document that could well have been his master's thesis. (In fact, he studied computer science.) The document catalogs a dozen questionable actions Verizon has taken since 2012, assembling a body of evidence in an attempt to prove that the carrier has violated a number of open internet protections."

Not only that, Nguyen took the time to actually navigate the myriad of bullshit counter arguments Verizon put forth in trying to deny the fact that it is a well-documented anti-competitive ass. Some of them being, well, pretty comical:

"The complaint kicked off a back-and-forth process of objections, evidence discovery, and failed mediation to reach a resolution. Along the way, there have been some hilariously petty digressions, which Nguyen, untrained in the law, has handled patiently. At one point, Verizon objected to his definition of “Verizon” and proposed its own definition. Nguyen then objected to Verizon’s objection, saying that Verizon “copied my definition almost verbatim,” which, in fact, it had."

"With Verizon it's always, 'We're blocking these features as a fraud prevention tactic,' or 'It didn't pass our certification requirement that we're not gonna talk about,' or 'It didn't pass these requirements that were never specified,'" he told The Verge. "There's always this pattern of deception with Verizon."

After countless arguments and counter arguments taking nearly a year, Nguyen's complaint now sits in the lap of the FCC's Enforcement Bureau, which needs to either rule on the complaint, or refuse and explain why. With the current FCC boss busy bumbling toward killing the rules entirely and clumsily trying to downplay the massive backlash to his proposal, it seems unlikely that Ajit Pai and pals would want to sanction his former employer publicly or in any meaningful way. So for now the name of the game at the FCC appears to be to ignore the complaint and hope nobody notices, something that just became more difficult courtesy of this week's news coverage.

Filed Under: alex nguyen, complaint, fcc, net neutrality, open internet
Companies: verizon

AT&T Lies Again, Insists Net Neutrality Rules Will Hurt First Responders

from the chicken-little-fast-lanes dept

So one of AT&T, Comcast and Verizon's favorite bogus claims about net neutrality rules is that such consumer protections will somehow prevent the sick or disabled from getting the essential internet connectivity they need. For example, Verizon once tried to claim that the deaf and disabled would be harmed if large ISPs weren't allowed to create fast or slow lanes, or prioritize emergency traffic over say -- Netflix streams. Comcast recently tried to argue something similar, again implying that the hearing-impaired could be harmed unless ISPs are allowed to prioritize or deprioritize select classes of traffic.

But this claim that net neutrality rules somehow prevent ISPs from prioritizing essential medical technologies or other priority traffic has always been bullshit.

The FCC's 2015 open internet rules (pdf) are embedded with numerous, significant caveats when it comes to creating fast and slow lanes, and only really single out the creation of fast or slow lanes when it comes to hindering competitors. In fact, the existing rules go to great lengths to differentiate "Broadband Internet Access Service (BIAS),” (your e-mail, Netflix streams and other more ordinary traffic) from “Non-BIAS data services,” which can include everything from priority VoIP traffic to your heart monitor and other Telemedicine systems.

The fact that this talking point is complete and utter bullshit (much like the one about how net neutrality kills network investment) doesn't stop it from being circulated repeatedly by the army of politicians, think tankers, consultants, fauxcademics, and lobbyists paid to pee in the net neutrality discourse pool.

One of the core perpetrators of this myth is AT&T, which just scored a massive, lucrative $6.5 billion contract to build the nation's first, unified emergency first responder network: aka FirstNet. Speaking about the project at a recent investor event this week, AT&T's John Stephens once again trotted out this bogeyman for proud display, implying that net neutrality rules would somehow threaten first responder network traffic:

"During an appearance this morning at an investor event, AT&T’s CFO pointed out that FirstNet’s pre-emption requirements for public safety users present “a challenge with the net neutrality process because you are giving prioritized service to police, firefighters.”

“But quite frankly I think everyone would agree that that’s probably a good thing,” explained John Stephens, AT&T’s SVP and CFO. “It’s just one of the uniquenesses of some of the other arguments that we have to deal with.”

Of course if you didn't know the net neutrality rules were carefully crafted to exempt precisely this sort of traffic from them, you might become outraged, which was Stephens' intent. The executive proceeded to double down on his falsehood:

"We have the ability today to give [FirstNet public-safety users] preferential treatment. What we’ll have by the end of the year is what we call ‘relentless pre-emption,’ such that if there’s capacity for 10 calls and 10 calls are being used, and a firefighter gets on, one of the 10 people gets booted off and the firefighter gets in,” he said. “Quite frankly, I don’t think they thought about it [when crafting net neutrality guidelines]. The FirstNet process has been around since 9/11. It came out of the 9/11 events, and so that had been out there for a long time, and so I don’t even think it was even considered.”

Right, "not even considered." Except for the fact that it was painstakingly considered, and AT&T knows it. It's a little grotesque to use the specter of 9/11 to attack popular net neutrality protections, but that's well in line with AT&T's behavior on this subject (including its recent use of the net neutrality protests to con its own customers into opposing net neutrality. In reality AT&T isn't worried about net neutrality rules harming medical services, since they've long-been exempted. AT&T's worried about one thing: any rules stopping it from abusing a lack of broadband competition to drive up prices and engage in anti-competitive behavior.

Filed Under: broadband, emergency services, fcc, first responders, john stephens, net neutrality
Companies: at&t

Congress Gives The FCC An Earful On Its Despised Plan To Kill Net Neutrality

from the Comcastic dept

At this point, more than sixteen million comments have been filed in response to the FCC's myopic plan to kill net neutrality protections, the majority of them in fierce opposition to the idea. We've also noted how more than 900 startups, countless engineers, and a wave of large companies and websites have similarly urged Ajit Pai to stop, pause, and actually listen to what the majority of the country is saying. And what they're saying is that they want Title II and net neutrality protections to remain in place to protect them from giant telecom duopolies with long histories of fiercely-anti-competitive behavior.

Unfortunately. there's no indication that the Ajit-Pai lead FCC much cares. Pai's FCC has made every effort to comically try to downplay this massive wave of opposition, and dress up the agency's blatant giant gift to Comcast, AT&T and Verizon as an ingenious attempt to somehow restore "freedom" to the internet (yeah, big fucking citation needed).

Hoping to perhaps pressure Pai further, 11 Representatives and 21 Senators last week sent a formal comment to the FCC (pdf) insisting that the agency's plan to gut net neutrality protections not only ignores the public interest, but the law as well:

We, as members of Congress who also sit on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, submit these comments out of deep concern that the FCC’s proposal to undo its net neutrality rules fundamentally and profoundly runs counter to the law. As participants either in the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 or in decisions on whether to update the Act, we write to provide our unique insight into the meaning and intent of the law.

The cornerstone of Pai's plan is to reverse the agency's 2015 decision to classify broadband providers as common carriers under the Telecommunications Act. That, in turn, is part of a long-standing AT&T, Comcast and Verizon effort to gut meaningful regulatory oversight of broadband providers and replace it with the policy equivalent of fluff and nonsense. And in a competitive market that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, since you could trust market competition to keep ISPs on their best behavior in terms of pricing, net neutrality, privacy, and everything else.

But as you might have noticed if you've looked at your Comcast bill lately, or paid any attention to the rotating crop of sleazy behavior by companies like AT&T, the broadband market isn't competitive. In fact, decades of turning a blind eye to a lack of competition has left it downright hostile to any new disruptive entrants. As such, reducing what limited protections consumers and competitors currently enjoy would have dramatic, negative repercussions on consumer wallets and the health of the internet.

And while the FCC does have the authority to interpret the Telecom Act as it sees fit (much like Wheeler did in 2015), the Senators and Representatives are quick to point out in their letter that Pai and friends are twisting Congressional intent to flimsily justify their decision to reclassify ISPs as an “information service" rather than a "telecommunications service" (you can check out our primer on this entire debate -- and why this distinction matters -- here):

"While the technology has changed, the policies to which we agreed have remained firm the law still directs the FCC to look at the network infrastructure carrying data as distinct from the services that create the data. Using today’s technology that means the law directs the FCC to look at ISP services as distinct from those services that ride over the networks.

The Commission’s proposal performs a historical sleight of hand that impermissibly conflates this fundamental distinction. The FCC proposes to treat network infrastructure as information services because the infrastructure gives access to the services running over their networks. The FCC contends that ISPs are therefore “offering the capability” to use the services that create the content. However this suggestion obliterates the distinction that Congress set in to law-we meant for the FCC to consider services that carry data separately from those that create data. The FCC’s proposal would therefore read this fundamental choice that we made out of the law. Under the proposal’s suggestion, no service could be a telecommunications service going forward.

The lawmakers are also quick to lambast the FCC for ignoring the massive groundswell of public opposition to reversal of the rules, as well as the agency's relentless focus on using network investment as the sole cornerstone for determining whether the rules are useful:

"Americans overwhelming support stronger and clearer privacy rules. Yet the Commission—without comment—proposes to eliminate before-the-fact protections at the FCC in favor of an enforcement-only approach. The FCC should not degrade people’s privacy rights without thorough consideration. Instead of considering these critical national priorities, the proposal single-mindedly concentrates on one issue to the exclusion of all others: the raw dollars spent on network deployment. This narrow focus is clearly contrary to the public interest—if we had intended network investment to be the sole measure by which the FCC determines policy, we would have specifically written that into the law.

The problem, of course, is that ISP lobbyists have successfully managed to submerge this debate under the idiot-din of partisan politics, despite the health of the internet and broadband competition being of benefit to everyone. Polls repeatedly find that net neutrality protections have broad, bipartisan support among consumers of all political ideologies, but by framing this as a partisan debate, ISPs and their loyal, paid allies have successfully bogged the conversation down in inane partisan fisticuffs, sadly convincing an all-too-broad segment of the public that net neutrality is "a government takeover of the internet."

As such, the fact that this particular letter was written largely by Democratic lawmakers only makes it fodder to be ignored by partisans, and it it shouldn't be. Net neutrality is about preventing massive, incumbent ISPs from abusing a lack of broadband competition in a rotating crop of obnoxious, creative ways. Were either party actually interested in shaking off ISP campaign contributions and improving said competition we might be having a different conversation, but until then net neutrality is the only thing standing between a healthy, competitive internet and the predatory whims of regional telecom duopolies.

Filed Under: ajit pai, congress, fcc, net neutrality, open internet

Here Comes The Big Push For A Really Shitty New Net Neutrality Law

from the k-street-two-step dept

So we've noted repeatedly how major ISPs aren't just pushing to have the FCC kill its existing, popular net neutrality rules. They've also been spending a lot of time and money pushing loyal politicians to support the crafting of a new net neutrality law as a replacement. Why? They know that if Congress is even capable of shrugging off its dysfunction and corruption to craft one, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Charter lawyers and lobbyists will be the ones writing it.

On the surface, having Congress craft a new law sounds like a good idea. It finally cements rules into law, and prevents the FCC rules from being created and killed repeatedly by the whims of appointed partisans. And while I've seen a lot of journalists support this route, most of them don't quite understand just how strong of a stranglehold these corporations have over state and federal lawmakers and regulators.

There's one reason ISPs support this route: they want to "put the debate to rest" with a flimsy net neutrality law that doesn't actually address any of the current net neutrality areas of contention (usage caps, interconnection, zero rating), only really outlawing things ISPs never intended to do anyway (block websites entirely). As with the FCC's flimsy 2010 rules (that were co-written by AT&T, Verizon and Google), there will be massive, tractor-trailer sized loopholes allowing them to do pretty much whatever they want, provided they at least pretend it's for the security and safety of the network.

And while this ISP push for a new net neutrality law has been smoldering under the radar for a while, it's about to be amped up dramatically. House Republicans are asking the CEOs of Facebook, Google, AT&T and Comcast to attend a public hearing in September, purportedly to "help settle the debate over net neutrality once and for all." But if you look at the language used in the invite by Rep. Greg Walden, the objective becomes more clear:

"In a letter requesting their appearance, Walden said the open internet rules put in place during the Obama administration — which subject broadband providers to utility-like regulation — “disrupted the longstanding regulatory balance that for years allowed the internet to grow and thrive."

As Pai looks to repeal them, however, it gives both sides “an opportunity to rethink the current regulatory model and build new rules from the ground up” in Congress, Walden continued.

“With your help, I know we can craft a fair, predictable and sustainable solution that not only benefits edge providers and internet service providers, but also the billions of consumers worldwide that deserve a free and open internet,” he told chief executives in his letter requesting their help.

On the surface, if you're willing to ignore the false claims about how net neutrality stifled the telecom sector, this all sounds lovely.

Of course if you've been playing along at home, many of these Silicon Valley companies aren't the net neutrality supporters they claim to be. Google hasn't given much of a shit about net neutrality since around 2010 or so when it began pushing harder into the fixed-line broadband (Google Fiber) and wireless (Project Fi, Android) markets. Facebook likes to occasionally pretend to support net neutrality, but internationally has been trampling the concept repeatedly. Even Netflix, a one-time staunch supporter of net neutrality, has softened its stance now that it's large and wealthy enough to afford AT&T, Comcast and Verizon troll tolls.

So what will be framed as a "consensus" for "a fair, predictable and sustainable solution" is really just going to be a bunch of massive companies getting together and throwing their support behind what will inevitably be a shitty law that's a far cry from the semi-tough, popular protections we have now. They want this whole debate settled because there's money to be made ignoring consumer welfare. And they want it settled with legislation that looks like its protecting consumers and the open internet, but sanctions all of the bad ideas ISPs have been chomping at the bit to implement for years (caps, overage fees, zero rating).

And if you read a lot of the media reports on this subject, you'll consistently find reporters helping to push this entire narrative with comments like this:

"That vicious cycle has left both sides of the debate pining for Congress, not the FCC, to broker a resolution on net neutrality, so that the government’s approach to internet policy doesn’t change depending on which party is in power — or who prevails in federal courtrooms."

Except "both sides" aren't pining for new legislation. Net neutrality supporters have repeatedly stated there's a wonderful, zero-cost, no effort way to protect net neutrality: keep the current FCC rules in place. The drum beat for new legislation is primarily coming from ISPs, who again want to replace the existing rules with the legislative equivalent of fluff and nonsense. As the summer rolls along and fall approaches, supporters of net neutrality need to pay attention and better understand the real nature of this legislative push, or the healthy, competitive and open internet is going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble.

Filed Under: broadband, congress, fcc, net neutrality, open internet
Companies: amazon, facebook, google

Verizon Throttles Netflix Subscribers In 'Test' It Doesn't Inform Customers About

from the just-the-beginning dept

So for years Verizon Wireless refused to compete on price, insisting that the company's network was just so incredible, it didn't have to. Then came increased competition from T-Mobile, which forced the company to not only start competing a little more seriously on price, but to bring back unlimited data plans Verizon had spent years telling customers they didn't need. And while Wall Street cries about this rise in competition hurting earnings at least once a week, it has generally been a good thing for consumers.

But there's two things waiting just over the horizon that could ruin everybody's good time. One is a looming merger between Sprint and T-Mobile, which would significantly reduce competition in the wireless sector, eliminating much of the pressure on mobile providers to compete. The other is the impending death of net neutrality protections at the FCC, which currently keep these carriers from abusing this lack of competition to drive up costs and hamper content competitors.

But another, important part of net neutrality rules is the requirement that carriers are clear about just what kind of connection you're buying. Last week, Verizon apparently got a running start in being less transparent when it decided to begin throttling its wireless customers without telling anybody. Users at Reddit began noticing that when they streamed Netflix content or accessed Netflix's Fast.com speedtest, their connections were magically limited to 10 Mbps. When they used other companies' speedtests or used a VPN to mask their traffic, they received the full speed of their mobile connections.

To be clear, being restricted to 10 Mbps isn't that big of a deal in and of itself. 10 Mbps is more than enough to stream video at 1080p60 and 1440p30, though users say they're running into buffering at 1440p60 or 4K (not that most users care about 4K content on mobile devices anyway). But it was the fact that Verizon couldn't be bothered to tell anybody this was happening that's raising a few eyebrows. And when pressed, Verizon was only willing to give a rather vague answer about how they were simply conducting "tests" that didn't hurt anybody:

"We've been doing network testing over the past few days to optimize the performance of video applications on our network. The testing should be completed shortly. The customer video experience was not affected."

So while Verizon's throttling shouldn't be construed as the end of the world, you'd probably understand why Verizon, one of the most vocal opponents of net neutrality, would raise a few eyebrows by conducting tests like this without telling anybody. Consumer groups like Public Knowledge were quick to point out that one of the benefits of net neutrality rules is the assurance it gives customers that it can trust what carriers are saying:

"The guidelines distinguishing ‘throttling’ from ‘reasonable network management’ developed as part of the FCC’s investigation into T-Mobile’s Binge On service provided precisely this certainty. Unfortunately, Chairman Pai’s decision to rescind the report and to reopen the net neutrality proceeding have created massive uncertainty and suspicion.

“Before, Verizon could simply point to the FCC guidelines to reassure their customers. Today, we must look to Chairman Pai to tell us whether subscribers have anything more to rely on than Verizon’s promises. Rather than undermining consumer confidence and creating needless confusion, Chairman Pai should end his misguided efforts to roll back the FCC’s net neutrality rules any further."

As the net neutrality protections (and the FCC's authority overall) are slowly but surely gutted, this uncertainty is only going to grow. Carriers will begin pushing to see just what kind of behavior Ajit Pai's FCC will let them get away with, and given Pai is repeatedly on record believing neither net neutrality nor a lack of competition are real problems, there's not going to be much, if any, regulatory pressure to behave. Combine that with a major reduction in competition from a looming wave of Trump-approved mergers and acquisitions, and there's certain to be less organic market or regulatory pressure keeping these mono/duopolies in line.

Filed Under: fcc, net neutrality, tests, throttling
Companies: netflix, verizon

Supposed Stickler For Transparency, FCC Boss Won't Release Net Neutrality Complaints

from the only-transparent-when-it-suits-Comcast dept

When Ajit Pai was first appointed as the new head of the FCC, he promised to be a stickler for transparency at the agency. And in one way he followed through, by making it standard operating procedure to now publish FCC orders a month before they're voted on (even though former staffers and consumer advocates believe he only did so to give ISP lobbyists more time to construct counter-arguments and their legal and policy assaults). Elsewhere, this supposed dedication to transparency has been decidedly lacking however, especially in regards to his efforts to repeal net neutrality protections.

When he first proposed killing popular net neutrality protections (pdf), he insisted he would proceed "in a far more transparent way than the FCC did" when it first crafted the rules in 2015. But Pai has also long tried to argue that a lack of broadband competition (and the resulting symptom of this disease that is net neutrality violations) isn't a real problem, despite the obvious, repeated evidence to the contrary.

There's of course some very solid evidence that can clarify whether or not net neutrality is a "solution in need of a problem," and that's the 47,000 (give or take) complaints consumers have filed with the FCC since the rules were passed in 2015. Back in May, the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request to obtain copies of these complaints, and urged the FCC to extend the public comment period on the net neutrality proceeding for sixty days, providing time to analyze the data.

The group has repeatedly argued these complaints are relevant in analyzing whether or not Pai's attempt to repeal the rules runs contrary to the public interest:

"The commission's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes overturning the net neutrality rules asks the public for comment on various issues. The NHMC points out that the document asks the public if there is "evidence of actual harm to consumers" or evidence that Internet access has improved since the net neutrality rules were approved. Those questions could be answered by releasing all the net neutrality complaints, the group says.

"These questions seek evidence that the Commission holds in its exclusive possession," the NHMC said in its motion for a delay.

Not too surprisingly, Pai's FCC is blocking the release of these complaints, insisting that providing public access to the complaints would be "unreasonably burdensome." The NHMC, also unsurprisingly, isn't particularly impressed with the agency's justification for withholding the complaints:

"The FCC's denial of our motion is shortsighted, denies the public critical information, and flies in the face of their acknowledgment that they have received over 47,000 open Internet complaints since the 2015 net neutrality rules were enacted. It should give the public pause that the agency with exclusive control over regulating Internet service providers refuses to share such information with the public. The information is within the FCC’s exclusive control and was completely ignored in the NPRM."

If you've been playing along at home, refusing to release valid user complaints outlining genuine net neutrality concerns runs in line with the agency's attempts to downplay public opposition to its proposal. That has also included turning a blind eye to fraud and abuse of the FCC's comment system, which is currently being filled with bot-crafted industry "support" for the FCC's tone-deaf plan. The goal, consistently, has been to downplay public support for net neutrality, while pushing the illusion that repealing the rules is anything more than a giant, shameless gift to AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

And while Ajit Pai clearly thinks he can bulldoze his way through transparency and operational apathy concerns, these are all certain to come up again during the inevitable lawsuits against the agency -- all of which will highlight how Pai and friends blatantly ignored the public interest to the exclusive benefit of a handful of extremely-unpopular duopolists.

Filed Under: ajit pai, complaints, fcc, net neutrality, transparency

AT&T Tricked Its Customers Into Opposing Net Neutrality

from the with-friends-like-these dept

As most of you probably noticed, last week saw a massive, online protest against FCC boss Ajit Pai's plan to completely ignore consumer welfare and gut popular net neutrality protections. Giant ISPs like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon responded to the protest in the way they've always done: by comically insisting that the press somehow got it wrong, and these companies actually really love net neutrality -- despite a decade of documented anti-competitive behavior, and the fact they've spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to kill any meaningful neutrality protections.

AT&T took things a bit further by hysterically saying the company loved net neutrality so much, it too would be participating in the protest -- a PR ploy that was pretty soundly ridiculed by ourselves and others. But a deeper look at AT&T's "participation" in the protest found that AT&T used the opportunity to trick its customers into opposing real net neutrality protections -- and convinced many to root against their own self interests.

The Verge was the first to notice that AT&T spent the day sending e-mails and other notifications to customers professing the company's dedication to net neutrality. These missives even showed up on AT&T set top boxes, as several users noted on Twitter:

These notifications have several variations. But all of them directed AT&T customers to this AT&T website where they were informed that AT&T really loves net neutrality (narrator: they don't), and were told to fill out a form letter AT&T said it would forward on to "the FCC and your officials." But the letter doesn't actually support net neutrality. What it supports is the gutting of the existing popular protections and replacement with a Congressional law:

"Simply put, it is time to stop this regulatory see-saw. Consumers need a set of basic online protection and competition rules put in place that will last longer than the next Presidential administration. Congress should pass a law to ensure consumers are always protected and all internet companies compete on a level playing field under a single set of rules."

So in an ideal world, having Congress craft a net neutrality law makes sense -- especially since it would end the game of partisan patty cake that occurs every time a new administration takes office, potentially ending fifteen years of net neutrality debate. The problem, as we've noted several times, is that we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a world where Congress is bogged down in immense partisan dysfunction, and companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have immense control over both federal and state-level lawmakers.

Their control is so complete, they're often the ones writing awful, anti-competition, protectionist state and federal telecom law. There's a reason AT&T wants to gut the existing, popular rules and replace it with a new law: it knows it will be the one writing it. As such, you can be certain the law -- assuming it got passed at all (not at all likely) would be filled with so many loopholes as to be utterly useless. Despite this grotesque corruption and dysfunction being fairly apparent to anybody with eyes, many reporters have bought into this argument for a new law.

Fortunately a few reporters have been able to see through AT&T's bullshit on this front:

This is all cleverly worded bullshit from people who actually want to dismantle a responsive regulatory agency and cede responsibility back to Congress, which is much slower to act and, where the ISPs are concerned, can be easily bought. All of these ISPs continue to say they love net neutrality with fingers crossed behind their backs.

Make no mistake: AT&T doesn't care about healthy internet competition, level playing fields, or consumer welfare. Its goal is to gut all meaningful oversight of one of the least liked, and least competitive industries in America, and replace it with the policy equivalent of fluff and nonsense. And while there's still many folks that somehow believe that blindly deregulating companies like Comcast will magically result in good ISP behavior and telecom utopia, history has shown us time and time again that logic only tends to make the problem worse.

There's a far simpler way to settle the issue and protect consumers and startups, and that's to leave the existing net neutrality rules alone.

Filed Under: fcc, lies, net neutrality, tricks
Companies: at&t