Gizmodo

Millions of records that the Federal Communications Commission’s top lawyer once fought to hold back from state law enforcement officials now serve as key evidence in a year-long probe into cases of Americans being impersonated during the agency’s latest net neutrality proceeding.

Widespread internet outages knocked down Cloudflare, the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Amazon, Hulu, and a slew of other sites on the morning of Aug 30, and it’s apparently all because of a single internet service provider: CenturyLink. Given that Cloudflare’s online security services are designed to keep websites up and running, when it went down, so did dozens of the popular sites and services that rely on it, including Discord, Feedly, and League of Legends. Cloudflare began seeing “an increased level of HTTP 5xx class errors” early Aug 30 morning.

Let’s face it: A 25 Mbps download speed isn’t enough internet these days. It wasn’t necessarily enough before the current pandemic, but with many families now working and going to school from home, those with the minimum broadband speed have probably discovered there isn’t enough bandwidth to go around. Which is why it’s time for the Federal Communications Commission to change its already weak definition of minimum broadband, a measly 25 Mbps download, 3 Mbps upload, to something that accurately reflects the internet needs of households today.

Over the past month, healthcare providers from psychiatrists to family physicians have rushed to telemedicine through video conferencing or healthcare apps. Treating homebound patients virtually can soften the blow of an infectious disease outbreak like Covid-19, experts say, by reducing traffic to hospitals and doctor’s offices already struggling with limited resources and higher infection risks. It works the other way, too; telemedicine allows quarantined doctors to work from home.

The death of federal network neutrality protections in the US didn’t only give Internet service providers license to penalize customers who don’t agree to buy their services. It also pointlessly mystified the process whereby consumers acquire the most basic, unsimplified details about their home internet’s price, speed, and capacity.

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) wrote a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai asking if he would like to correct his testimony delivered to the House Commerce Committee at an oversight hearing May 15. Warning FCC Pai that “lying to Congress is a federal crime,” Rep Eshoo wrote there existed a “chasm” between what Chairman Pai told the committee and what Rep Eshoo herself heard from other FCC officials following the meeting.