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FCC restores net neutrality rules that ban blocking and throttling in 3-2 vote (arstechnica.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I fucking hate data caps - no reason they should exist in this day and age.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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.