This December 2019 marks the two-year anniversary of the Federal Communications Commission’s vote to repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order and the agency’s net neutrality consumer protections. Even though 86 percent of Americans support net neutrality and opposed the reversal, two years ago the FCC chose to side with the major broadband providers over consumers regarding who controls access to internet content, and consumers are experiencing the grave effects of that choice. Public Knowledge has detailed some of the ways broadband providers have been quietly taking advantage of an internet without net neutrality protections and where the FCC has no legal authority to police harmful conduct by broadband providers. The truth is, without net neutrality protections, the internet is slowly changing to favor the decisions of major broadband providers over consumers, and broadband providers continue to take advantage:

• Consumers’ real-time location data originating from cell phone providers -- including T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint -- is being sold to bounty hunters and others. Domestic abusers have used the easy availability of this geolocation data to stalk current and former partners. This data is also being resold on the black market. According to these wireless companies, this use of data goes against the company’s policies, but when net neutrality rules were repealed, so too was the FCC’s authority to regulate broadband privacy.
• Researchers from Northeastern University and University of Massachusetts Amherst found that almost all wireless carriers pervasively slow down internet speed for selected video streaming services. From early 2018 to early 2019, AT&T throttled Netflix 70% of the time as well as YouTube 74% of the time, but not Amazon Prime Video. T-Mobile throttled Amazon Prime Video in about 51% of the tests, but did not throttle Skype or Vimeo. While U.S. wireless carriers have long said they may slow video traffic on their networks to avoid congestion, one of the study’s authors, David Choffnes, explained that these carriers are throttling content “all the time, 24/7, and it’s not based on networks being overloaded.” No throttling internet traffic is a core net neutrality principle.  
• Broadband provider Cox Communications is offering a “fast lane” for gamers who pay $15 more per month. If net neutrality protections existed, broadband providers cannot set up “fast lanes”—also known as “paid prioritization”—to force users to pay more for prioritized access to the internet. 
• Frontier Communications is charging its customers a $10 monthly modem rental fee even if they already own their modems. If users buy their own modem to avoid such fees, the ISP will still charge them as if they are renting one. The FCC used to have broadband oversight authority to address this problematic behavior, but without such authority, the FCC has told Congress that this is now the FTC’s problem to deal with. 

As communications networks have become more ubiquitous, and more deeply imbedded in every aspect of our society, old silos are breaking down. We can no longer think of our country’s economic success, our security, and our geo-political relations as distinct issues. The networks that intertwine people tie these issues together, and I’m encouraged that we’re increasingly thinking about them holistically. With that theme in mind, I want to highlight three areas where we’re still working to make our policies fit the 5G era: communications infrastructure, security, and democratic engagement. Our prosperity in the coming decades will depend on how well we work to get all Americans connected, ensure the security of those connections, and use technology to protect our democratic values. Here's what we need to do to make that vision a reality.

• We must work to connect all Americans to modern communications infrastructure.
• We must take steps to ensure that our economic interconnectedness makes us more, not less, secure.
• All of the investments I have just described are at risk if we don’t take steps to protect our democracy and democratic values.

What's happening with rural broadband? Hundreds of thousands of Georgians have been asking this question for several years now. These voices are being heard, as lawmakers in Atlanta and Washington have launched several rural broadband initiatives. Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) signed Senate Bill 2 (SB 2) on April 26, 2019, authorizing electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) to provide broadband services. Being a retail broadband provider may not be feasible for many EMCs, but SB 2 also provides all EMCs greater latitude to leverage their own infrastructure—power lines and rights of ways, etc.—to help remove barriers to broadband deployment for other service providers.

[Bill Verner is Senior Vice President with Georgia Electric Membership Corp., a statewide trade association representing 41 electric cooperatives in Georgia, Oglethorpe Power Corp., Georgia Transmission Corp. and Georgia System Operations Corp.​]

Messages by a Sprint executive revealed in federal court suggested he thought an acquisition by T-Mobile might push up mobile-service prices for consumers, undercutting T-Mobile’s argument that its deal will benefit Americans. The text messages, presented by attorneys for a coalition of states suing to block the deal on antitrust grounds, were sent in October 2017 by Roger Sole, Sprint’s chief marketing officer, to Sprint’s then-CEO Marcelo Claure. Sole wrote that customer prices could rise an average $5 per user if a deal went through. He added that prices could also rise at AT&T and Verizon once the wireless market consolidated to three competitors from four. At the time, Sprint and T-Mobile were negotiating terms of an acquisition.

The trade war between China and the US has centered largely on escalating tariffs. But in many rural communities, the focus has shifted to the security of networks for which Chinese giants Huawei and ZTE have long provided equipment. As the 5G future approaches, the US is pushing small carriers to rip out and replace whatever parts of their infrastructure come from China, no matter the cost. The Federal Communication Commission first proposed the drastic overhaul at the end of October, suggesting that access to FCC subsidies from the $8.5 billion Universal Service Fund be contingent on removing all Huawei and ZTE equipment. The FCC unanimously approved the initiative on November 22, setting off a wave of protests from the small mobile companies who now have to figure out how to do that—and how to pay for it. All the major US wireless providers—including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile—cut Chinese equipment manufacturers out of their networks years ago to avoid this potential sticking point. But small rural carriers, which often struggle to stay profitable, bought Huawei and ZTE tech in recent years because they undercut competitors. The FCC decision puts those operators on the hook for a replacement process that could cost a billion dollars or more industry-wide.