The Federal Communications Commission voted 3–2 to impose net neutrality rules today, restoring the common-carrier regulatory framework enforced during the Obama era and then abandoned while Trump was president.
The rules prohibit Internet service providers from blocking and throttling lawful content and ban paid prioritization.
“Consumers have made clear to us they do not want their broadband provider cutting sweetheart deals, with fast lanes for some services and slow lanes for others,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said at today’s meeting.
Obligatory “Fuck Ajit Pai”
You mean the same Ashit Pai who also mismanaged and blew the $9 billion rural digital opportunity fund that was supposed to help underserved areas?
That Ashit Pai?
They do, however, allow data caps.
These new rules are not the same as the old ones and there’s definitely a handful of things that the big companies wanted that they indeed got.
I fucking hate data caps - no reason they should exist in this day and age.
No reason they should exist in any day and age.
Companies do not pay per packet. Paying more for more bandwidth or lower latency kind of makes sense because theoretically they may be prioritizing your traffic when the network is under too much load. But sending 16 petabytes costs exactly the same as 1kb in a month, assuming your connection is fast enough to handle 16 petabytes in a month.
True companies do not pay per packet but they do pay for the bandwidth. The more users that use more bandwidth consistently means the ISP needs to invest more money on throughput/links. If you have 100 users and they use 1 mbps on average you can get away with a 100mpbs link. If you have 5 users using 50mpbs on average now you need a gig link. So technically it’s not free but yeah bandwidth caps suck big time. My suggestion would be to pick a place to live near a city with a municipal broadband option.
it probably means that they would have to upgrade their little bunny hopping network technology that has about 300ms latency end to end, because god forbid you roll out a simple technology and have an easy time maintaining it.
Which is probably why they do it.
Right but if everyone sends 16 petabtyes a month the internet would collapse. Data caps do absolutely work to reduce bandwidth on a network scale. Bandwidth is measured in mbps. Limit the Mb and you reduce the necessary bandwidth.
I have a 186GB 5G monthly limit on my 10€ mobile subscription, then (supposedly) it drops to 4G speed. I’m ok with those kind of limits because they are not there to milk people.
Meanwhile in canada i have a plan from 2012 that was an unlimited plan they that geta throttled after 5gigs (it has been since upped to 20gigs now)
If its throttled its throttled to less than 200kbps and is basically useless
186 GB
Oddly specific and insane limit that nobody is ever going to reach
Source? Didn’t see anything in the article about it, and I did a quick search and couldn’t find anything that says they would be allowed to impose data caps given the verbiage in the rules
My source is the document the FCC presented as their new net neutrality rules, which can be found here:
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf
Page 317-318, Section 534-535 “Application to Data Caps”
Section 534 discusses the professor who suggests data caps should be banned, and section 535 discusses how the commission disagrees and how data caps will remain.
- We agree with Professor Jordan that the Commission can evaluate data caps under the general conduct standard. We do not at this time, however, make any blanket determinations regarding the use of data caps based on the record before us. The record demonstrates that while BIAS providers can implement data caps in ways that harm consumers or the open Internet, particularly when not deployed primarily as a means to manage congestion, data caps can also be deployed as a means to manage congestion or to offer lower-cost broadband services to consumers who use less broadband. As such, we conclude that it is appropriate to proceed incrementally with respect to data caps, and we will evaluate individual data cap practices under the general conduct standard based on the facts of each individual case, and take action as necessary.
Also, you get an upvote for asking for a source. Cheers.
I just want the removal of data caps. my Plex server is a hungry bitch
Get a business line, if you plan on staying at your current residence for longer than 3 years. Usually you can get it for a few dollars more than a residential line, and it’ll not have a data cap, plus they’re going to have a 99.99% SLA for uptime…and you’re not going to be getting some script reader if you have issues.
If you have a business line you’re still 100% getting a script reader. They just come without a foreign accent.
Unfortunately mostly true. I worked for Charter Business, and was told I was “being too helpful”. They only want people who read off the script. I moved over to the CCST group before they killed that off. I’m so happy to be away from there, that place was soul sucking.
When I supported the network at work, with many ISPs across the US… It depends on the Telco.
Comcast Business, was hand down the best Telco when it comes to business lines from my experience. At&t and Verizon were the script readers, having to argue everything to get them to do anything. Many of the cable companies, just had terrible everything. CenturyLink was very good, but awful support portal.
I had comcast business class for many years at my old house. When I downsized to my condo, I’m at the mercy of the HOA. They have comcast communities and I can’t get business class. Its not terrible but I had to pay $20/mo to upgrade to 1000mb down just to get decent upload speeds. I wish we had a local company USI, that sells fiber internet for very reasonable prices and no data caps. My son’s building has it. I moved my plex server to my friend’s house who is on USI as well just to keep my bandwidth consumption down.
I have USI for the first time after having delt with charter my whole life. It just worked. I plugged my router into the wall and the cat5 jack that was already laid in, and it just worked. Within seconds of opening my account. As advertised.
Usually charter sends some asshole who’s definitely sober and not on any lists to do awful things to your wall. Then the speeds you do get are just straight criminal.
Love my USI. It’s the way an ISP should be. Now if we could just slice the price to something more reasonable.
At least yoi are not at mercy of managment company. I don’t know how in USSA, but here before ammendments to Communication Law, you had to initiate general homeowners meeting and vote to allow ISP to place their equipment in condo/multi-flat unit/whatever you call it. The hardest part was not getting votes for it, but getting enough people to vote.
If I could get that for $43 a month out the door sure, but that is not happening from FIOS anytime soon.
Maybe if you are in the $100+ a month crew it’s a few dollars more, but I do doubt that.
Give them a call, you’d be surprised what the business line crew will do to get customers. I had a line for $60 a month that was unlimited. Doesn’t hurt to check and haggle.
I’m curious where you are that a business line doesn’t cost more than a residential one because in my area it’s three times as much. I am fortunate enough that I get symmetrical gigabit for $90 a month and although they don’t promise static IP my IP has not changed in a while.
If I wanted to get a real static IP I would have to upgrade to a business line It would cost $280 a month.
In the 3 different states that I’ve lived in, each has had business lines that allowed me to haggle with them, granted I was slightly outside of the city and I’m sure they had way less business class customers, they did haggle with me. 3 years is all I had to commit to, to get the price down to sub $100. One location I was paying just $60.
Residential is $80/Mo for me. A business plan when I last looked was $200/Mo. Wish I lived somewhere that had options other than spectrum.
None of my local ISPs have data caps on regular home internet plans. Y’all just need better ISPs.
100Mb symmetrical fiber is about $40-50 and Gigabit is about $80/mo from ours
Sounds lovely.
You are aware that most of us in the US don’t actually have options like that, correct? I’d dump my ISP in a heartbeat if those plans were available to me.
That would be because those ads are done by injecting them into content the user has requested.
Woo! At least until the next Republican Party is ready for an easy paycheck
Thanks obama
FCC Chairwoman who made this happen. She was also there voting against Ajit (Shit Pie) Pai when he pushed to overturn Obama era net neutrality back in 2017. She also initially set up the net neutrality rules during the Obama admin. She can be credited for fighting this fight for many years now on our behalf.
