sb460

Three U.S. senate democrats are calling out the four major mobile carriers on their throttling and prioritisation policies. Senators Edward Markey (D – Massachusetts), Richard Blumenthal (D – Connecticut), and Ron Wyden (D – Oregon) sent joint letters to the CEOs of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, asking them to explain results from an Internet traffic testing app that indicate they’re deliberating slowing some traffic down…

We write to express our concern that mobile carriers may be inappropriately throttling and prioritizing internet traffic from common mobile apps without the knowledge of their customers.

The California legislature’s failure to pass senate bill 460 in August, following large cash payments to key lawmakers by big telecoms companies, might come back to haunt network neutrality advocates. Carried by senator Kevin de Leon (D – Los Angeles), he allowed it to be shuffled off to the side as lawmakers approved SB 822, a comprehensive net neutrality bill authored by senator Scott Wiener (D – San Francisco).

With some exceptions, SB 460 would have required state and local agencies to buy broadband service only from providers that abide by net neutrality principles.… More

Charter Communications, Comcast, AT&T and other big, monopoly model broadband providers are taking the State of Vermont to federal court, accusing it of flouting the Federal Communications Commission’s keen desire to remove any limits on their behavior. Vermont legislators passed a law earlier this year that prohibits state and local agencies from buying broadband service from companies that don’t abide by the network neutrality principles adopted by a democratic majority FCC in 2015 and overturned last year as republicans took over control of the agency.… More

Lobbying front organisations for AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Frontier and mobile carriers joined forces to mount another legal challenge to California’s new network neutrality law on Wednesday. The four are the American Cable Association (ACA), the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) and the U.S. Telephone Association (USTelecom) – they keep trying to rebrand themselves, but that’s what the initials originally stood for, and what they’re really about.

They filed a complaint and motion for an injunction in a Sacramento federal court, claiming that the network neutrality law – senate bill 822 – signed by governor Jerry Brown on Sunday is “a classic example of unconstitutional state regulation”.… More

The gears of justice are grinding on California’s newly minted network neutrality law. Yesterday, the federal court in Sacramento gave California attorney general Xavier Becerra three weeks to respond to the Trump adminstration’s attempt to nullify senate bill 822.

Signed Sunday afternoon by governor Jerry Brown, the law reinstates the core elements of the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 ban on blocking, throttling and paid prioritisation of Internet traffic on the basis of content, and also clarifies that selective zero rating is prohibited.… More

Jerry Brown doesn’t have a problem stepping into policy territory claimed by the federal government. He’s signed bills that fly in the face of Trump administration immigration policy, and carved out a place for California in international environmental diplomacy. You can add telecoms policy to that list. Yesterday, he signed senate bill 822 into law. Authored by senator Scott Weiner (D – San Francisco), it reinstates network neutrality rules that were approved by the democratic majority on the Federal Communications Commission in 2015, and quickly scrapped when republicans took over control of the FCC in 2017.… More

UPDATE 2:the Trump administration’s political hacks in the justice department were on alert – they challenged SB 822 in federal court. Quickly. Click here for more.

UPDATE: Brown approved SB 822. Click here for more.

Today is decision day for network neutrality in California. Governor Jerry Brown must either sign senate bill 822 into law, or veto it, or simply ignore it and let it become law automatically tonight, when the midnight deadline for acting passes.… More