Network Neutrality

A new study has found the Federal Communications Commission’s primary justification for repealing network neutrality was indisputably false. For years, big Internet service providers and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai have told anyone who’d listen that the FCC’s net neutrality rules, passed in 2015 and repealed in 2018 in a flurry of controversy and alleged fraud, dramatically stifled broadband investment across the US.

This paper examines the impacts of net neutrality rule changes in the United States in 2010, 2015, and 2017 on telecommunication industry investment levels. The paper tackles the issue with a comprehensive dataset with full time series coverage for all SEC-registered telecommunications firms from 2009 to 2018. The author tracks new capital expenditures incurred, which reflects new investment decisions made rather than old investment decisions materialized, with quarterly data and exact issuance dates.

In 2018, the Federal Communications Commission’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order reversed its 2015 decision to apply common carrier regulation to broadband Internet access services under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Empirical evidence indicating negative investment effects of the regulation played a key role in this reversal, though the quantification of these investment effects were a matter of substantial controversy. This article surveys the studies cited in the recent decision and the FCC’s scrutiny of them.

Like their south side University of Chicago economists, the Editorial Board of the Tribune waxes poetic and snarky about the virtues of the marketplace and how it can solve any and all network neutrality ills. The Editorial Board dismisses a particularly egregious throttling episode as “humiliating customer service failure” for Verizon when the company’s software automatically slowed transmission speeds of California first responder handsets as they tackled life and property threatening fires.  Does deliberate slowing down of transmission speed and commensurate service degradation wa

After years of frustration that Silicon Valley companies seemed to get special treatment in Washington, telecommunications giants are finally (re)gaining the upper hand. They are now starting to feel more able to compete with tech giants as they all jockey to dominate how we communicate and access information.

The Federal Communications Commission voted to nix network neutrality, effective June 2018. A year-plus later, broadband download and upload speeds have quickened rather than slowed. Internet providers haven’t bifurcated service into different speeds for rich and poor households. Mobile networks, too, move data more swiftly than before. Broadband investment in better technology again has accelerated. Who knows, maybe the internet providers are lying in wait to pounce on their customers. Where’s the internet Cybergeddon the naysayers predicted, and predicted, and predicted?

Waiting. That’s the name of the game for those anticipating the DC Circuit’s decision on the Federal Communications Commission's Restoring Internet Freedom order repealing Title II rules for broadband. The case was argued on Feb 1, 2019, so the Court could hand down a ruling any day now. But regardless of whether the decision is uphold or overturn, Americans deserve action on network neutrality from Congress. Statutory permanence for internet openness is the only way to end the ongoing uncertainty shrouding the internet ecosystem due to ever-changing rules.

A broad coalition of some of the largest network neutrality advocacy groups is launching an activism site and pledge, which asks all 2020 presidential candidates to support strong net neutrality and reject telecom donations. “It’s not enough for candidates to simply say they support net neutrality,” said Mark Stanley, director of communications for Demand Progress.  “We’re looking for specific commitments from candidates to appoint commissioners who will restore the Title II-based net neutrality protections repealed by the [Federal Communications Commission], and who will close dangerous lo

Every facet of society depends on broadband connectivity.  2020 presidential candidate Gov Jay Inslee’s (D-WA) is committed to confronting the rural broadband challenge, by:

US wireless carriers have long said they may slow video traffic on their networks to avoid congestion and bottlenecks. But new research shows the throttling happens pretty much everywhere all the time.