John Gasparini

The Internet service providers most loudly insisting they support network neutrality - Comcast and Verizon, for example - are the same companies who’ve been behind the most significant legal and political opposition to any net neutrality rules, and the same companies that have been caught time and again pushing the bounds of permissible behavior, or outright violating net neutrality principles. So, let’s give them a quick fact-check and separate the truth from the “fake news,” at least where ISP positions on net neutrality are concerned.

The Biennial Review is generally a housekeeping process, giving the Federal Communications Commission an ongoing duty to clear away truly outdated telecommunications regulations that are still on the books solely because nobody has taken the time to repeal them. It is most definitely not meant to provide an opportunity to re-argue the Commission’s most recent policy initiatives, like net neutrality, or to seek broad forbearance and deregulation to harm consumers and disadvantage smaller competitors.

Major industry incumbents need to remember that the community that fought for strong net neutrality rules and real privacy protections is watching every backdoor and loophole. We will not stand idly by while companies that fought the adoption of these policies probe for opportunities to move policy in the direction of anti-competitive, anti-consumer deregulation at the expense of the public interest.

Consumers have a lot to complain about when it comes to their cable, broadband, and wireless services. But the issue that hits closest to home is their bills - they’re too high, too confusing, and larded with hidden fees. Cable industry billing practices are a big part of how the cable industry gets away with jacking up rates at more than twice the rate of inflation over the past twenty years. It’s 2016, and this has been a problem for far too long. You know it, I know it, and the American people definitely know it.

Sen Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) office recently put out a very strong report addressing cable billing abuses and uncovering a plethora of abusive practices. And when they catch errors, not all companies fix them automatically - even when they know the bills are wrong. It’s up to consumers to catch the providers’ “mistakes” and demand refunds.