Deprioritized Broadband

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There is an interesting trend of internet service providers selling broadband products that are not always guaranteed to be at the same speed and quality as other customers. I've especially noticed this practice in recent years from big fixed wireless providers that sell home broadband using cellular spectrum. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have all reserved the right to throttle customers any time that the network gets too busy. It’s easy to understand why cellular companies would throttle home broadband customer first—they are protecting their cellular customers. I’m sure all of the FWA providers are happy with the new revenues coming from FWA, but T-Mobile is not going to let the home broadband for 6.4 million FWA customers threaten the experience of 130 cellular customers. I’ve been thinking about all of these plans and net neutrality. It’s not clear to me that this practice violates that principle. Is having customers agree to save money by being deprioritized the same as charging somebody else more to get a better priority?


Deprioritized Broadband