Steve Humiston

Tampering with speeds

• Sprint is slowing traffic to Skype, which is owned by its competitor, Microsoft.
• The largest telecom companies are slowing internet traffic to and from popular apps like YouTube and Netflix.

Playing favorites with data caps

• AT&T is openly advertising that cellular customers can stream the company’s DirecTV Now product without it counting against monthly data caps. Meanwhile, all of the competing video services like Sling TV, Hulu, YouTube TV, Netflix, or Amazon Prime count against AT&T data caps — and video can quickly chew through a monthly data plan’s download allotment. AT&T’s behavior is almost a pure textbook example of why net neutrality rules were put into place — to stop ISPs from putting competitor’s products at a disadvantage. AT&T is the biggest cellular provider in the country and this creates a huge advantage for DirecTV Now. All of the major cellular carriers are doing something similar in allowing some video to not count against the monthly data cap, but AT&T is the only one pushing their own product.

Throttling bandwidth and network traffic

• A study led by Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that internet service providers are “giving a fixed amount of bandwidth — typically something in the range of one and a half megabits per second to four megabits per second — to video traffic, but they don’t impose these limits on other network traffic.” This slowing down of internet speeds is called throttling, and according to researcher Dave Choffnes, “nearly every U.S. cell phone provider” is doing it.
• Verizon has been throttling County Fire, the fire department charged with responding to California wildfires. “This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services,” says Fire Chief Anthony Bowden. “Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire’s ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services.”

Orchestrating “free” giveaways

• Verizon FiOS recently began giving free Netflix for a year to new broadband customers. AT&T also started giving out free HBO to new customers last year. This practice is more subtle than the cellular carrier practice of blocking or throttling content. One of the purposes of net neutrality was for ISPs to not discriminate against web traffic. By giving away free video services, the landline broadband companies are promoting specific web services over competitors. Smaller, start up ISP providers who don’t have large media services to give away for free are placed at a disadvantage, even though their cost or service may be superior.

The digital divide between those with broadband internet access and those without — disproportionately people of color, rural, and low-income — has never been more stark than it has been during the pandemic, as schools, health care providers, jobs, and other everyday necessities have moved online. As such, broadband access has rightly been a focal point of the American Jobs Plan and the latest COVID relief package. But we need to talk about what broadband access really means. If ISPs are dictating what content we can access, then a subscription to broadband service is considerably less meaningful. To fulfill its purpose, the internet must remain free and open. That means we need to restore net neutrality now.

IT'S ABOUT TIME.. and hopefully that'll help streaming services... they are being slowly eaten into 1 company ... i liked when I had choices.

Respite said:

Weird how no warning was ever needed for people to not drive while wearing a Meta Quest.