Prior to California’s new law, AT&T allowed customers who subscribed to both its mobile broadband and streaming video services unfettered mobile access to the streaming video service, without this use counting against the customer’s mobile data cap. We’re already experiencing the negative effects of new net neutrality rules-particularly in California.
And at the state level, California has already enacted its own net neutrality law. President Biden’s administration fervently supports restoring the 2015 rules in some fashion. Nevertheless, America is poised to, once again, reverse course on this issue. 5G services, both fixed and mobile, are poised to offer even more broadband choices to American consumers, even in hard-to-reach rural areas. And Americans today face more, not fewer, choices for broadband Internet service than ever before. Absent net neutrality rules, broadband providers have done nothing to stop American consumers from reaching the content of their choice without blocking, throttling, or harmful paid prioritization. Net neutrality proponents’ fears haven’t panned out because their foundational assumption-that only net neutrality rules keep broadband providers from harming consumers -has proven false. Ironically, it’s these so-called “edge providers”-Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like-and not Internet providers, that have been recently criticized for their content gatekeeping decisions. And as for VoIP, Zoom and Teams have become the undisputed kings of work-from-home teleconferencing since their rise in March 2020. Disney also entered the streaming fray with Disney+. In turn, YouTube and Hulu launched their own skinny bundles.
Instead of cutting off access to their online competitors, AT&T and Sling launched “AT&T Now” and “Sling TV” skinny bundles to compete with the likes of Netflix. Ditto access to FaceTime or Skype, to steer customers towards cable providers’ own VoIP offerings.
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For example, a cable operator, acting monopolistically, could theoretically seek to throttle customers’ access to Netflix or other streaming video options that compete with their own cable TV offering. telecom companies, which don’t face net neutrality rules, dwarf their highly-regulated counterparts in the EU and comparable nations.īut what about the other major net neutrality concern-namely, “gatekeeping?” That is, the notion that Internet providers have “ the economic incentives and technical ability” to restrict customers’ access to certain websites and services, to the benefit of their own offerings. This was due in part to the fact that investments per capita by U.S. Throughout the COVID crisis, American broadband companies, absent “net neutrality,” provided customers with significantly higher speeds than Europe or elsewhere that had net neutrality rules. history outside of a recession-investment rose in 20 following their repeal. in 20 following the imposition of net neutrality rules-for the first time in U.S. While broadband investment declined in the U.S. These and more were the prognostications of countless “net neutrality” proponents at the time.īut as the millions of Americans who have been attending Zoom meetings, composing emails, gaming, and streaming countless movies and TV shows from home for the past year-plus well know by now, none of the parade of horrors promised by the repeal of net neutrality actually happened. Remember when the FCC’s 2017 repeal of “net neutrality” rules was going to make the Internet load “ one word at a time?” When it was going to “ destroy everything that makes the internet great?” When it was on a path to hasten the death of the Internet? Much has been made about “ the big lie” in contemporary politics.
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