Karl Bode

Even if the Federal Communications Commission wins in court, large Internet serivce providers still need to find a way to prevent any future FCCs from simply reinstating the network neutrality rules. That’s why the same giant ISPs that backed the FCC’s assault on net neutrality are now pushing for a “legislative solution” in Congress. The goal: they want a law that contains so many loopholes as to be effectively meaningless, yet prevents the FCC from crafting any real, tough laws down the road.

A popular claim by [telecom industry lobbyists, policy vessels, and loyal lawmakers] is that network neutrality rules are somehow preventing people who are sick or disabled from gaining access to essential medical services they need to survive. Despite the fact that the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules clearly exempt medical services from the ban on uncompetitive paid prioritization, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has consistently tried to claim otherwise.

In a blog post, AT&T lobbyist Bob Quinn tried to argue that the immense criticism being levied at the Federal Communications Commission for its decision to scrap net neutrality is based largely on “misinformation” and “rhetorical excess.”  "We will not block websites, we will not throttle or degrade internet traffic based on content, and we will not unfairly discriminate in our treatment of internet traffic (all consistent with the rules that were adopted—and that we supported—in 2010, and the rules in place today.)”

As internet service providers have poured millions of dollars into killing net neutrality protections, they have made one common refrain: that the Federal Communications Commission's fairly modest net neutrality rules somehow destroyed network investment in the United States. Never mind that any time a journalist fact checks these claims they find they're indisputably false.

A few years ago Charter simplified their speed tiers, offering just 30 Mbps down, 4 Mbps up and 100 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up tiers. Now according to user comments in our forums, Charter is bumping 30 Mbps customers to 100 Mbps and 100 Mbps to 120 Mbps at no additional charge. So far the speed hike is focused on the St. Louis area, though additional markets should be coming.

"Effective Tuesday, June 10, 2014, existing eligible Residential Charter Internet customers in the St. Louis, Missouri, metro area will receive an automatic increase to their Internet speed for no additional cost," the notification states. "The St Louis market is the only Charter area to provide New Pricing and Packaging (NPP) customers 100 Mbps of download speed and upload speeds of 4 Mbps."

Based on what Charter is telling subscribers, 100 Mbps will be the new base tier (though most cable companies offer a slower "lite" tier if you threaten to quit), and the company's 120 Mbps Ultra tier will be the company's premium offering, providing faster speed as capacity allows. Users will need to reboot their modem for the new speeds to take effect.

[Commentary] Comcast’s David Cohen is a lobbyist in all the ways you'd expect a lobbyist to be, from hob knobbing with regulators and fund raising for President Barack Obama, to penning a litany of awful editorials about bad policy in papers nationwide.

Every month or so Cohen can be found busily pretending the US broadband market is competitive, or pretending that the United States' mediocre showing in every meaningful global broadband stat actually means we're leading the world at broadband. Yet despite spending the lion's share of his time lobbying, Cohen doesn't have to follow the disclosure rules for lobbyists -- and hasn't since 2007 -- because he's able to simply pretend he doesn't spend much time lobbying, by asserting that he spends less than 20 percent of his time lobbying, thereby disqualifying him from the title.

By technically not being a lobbyist while being a very obvious lobbyist, Cohen is also allowed to dance around Obama's rules prohibiting lobbyists from having close ties to the Administration.

[March 7]