Cable Companies Are Astroturfing Fake Consumer Support to End Net Neutrality
http://www.vice.com/read/cables-companies-are-astroturfing-fake-consumer-support-to-end-net-neutrality?noredirection=true
Activists protesting outside FCC headquarters in Washington, DC, on May 15, 2014.
Cable Companies Are Astroturfing Fake Consumer Support to End Net Neutrality
By Lee Fang Jun 5 2014
Consumer advocates everywhere are demanding that the Federal Communication Commission continue down its current path for shelving net neutrality and allowing a two-tiered internet. That is, if cable company-created front groups and other industry-funded organizations are to be believed.
The controversy, at the moment, rests on a legal distinction. A federal lawsuit filed by Verizon has forced the FCC into a corner by creating a standard under which effective net-neutrality ruleswhich ensure all internet traffic is treated equallycan only be reached, according to most analysts, by classifying the internet as a "common carrier," or in other words, a public utility. Such a distinction would allow the FCC to demand that internet service providers, like Comcast or Verizon, are not allowed to create internet slow lanes and fast lanes.
To the surprise of probably no one, ISPs are enraged at the prospect of being classified as a utility and are fighting back. But the attacks are not fully transparent. Many of the organizations protesting a move toward classifying ISPs as a utility, which is the only likely option for enacting net neutrality, are funded by the ISP lobby.
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A disclosure obtained by VICE from the National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA), a trade group for ISPs, shows that the bulk of Broadband for America's recent $3.5 million budget is funded through a $2 million donation from NCTA. Last month, Broadband for America wrote a letter to the FCC bluntly demanding that the agency categorically reject any effort toward designating broadband as a public utility. It wasn't signed by any internet consumer advocates, as the Sununu-Ford letter suggests. The signatures on the letter reads like a who's who of ISP industry presidents and CEOs, including AT&T's Randall Stephenson, Cox Communications' Patrick Esser, NCTA president (and former FCC commissioner) Michael Powell, Verizon's Lowell McAdam, and Comcast's Brian Roberts.