Cable Companies Refuse To Put Their Breathless Love Of Net Neutrality Down In Writing

from the words-are-but-wind dept

Apparently, giant broadband providers don't much want to put their sudden, mysterious love of net neutrality into writing. Last week, the FCC voted to begin killing net neutrality, opening the door to a 90-day comment period ahead of a broader rule-killing vote later this year. In the wake of the move, the same large ISPs that have spent a decade trying to kill meaningful regulatory oversight comically went out of their way to (falsely) claim that the killing of the rules doesn't mean all that much -- because these duopolies love net neutrality so much any hard rules simply aren't necessary.

Verizon went so far as to publish a violently misleading video claiming that net neutrality isn't dying and large ISPs aren't trying to kill it. Comcast's top lobbyist David Cohen penned a blog post claiming that the FCC was only trying to "protect the open internet" from "dangerous and inappropriate Title II." And the day before the FCC voted to begin killing the rules, the cable industry's biggest lobbying organization (the NCTA) took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post, pledging the cable industry's "commitment to an open internet":

Today we posted a full-page ad in @washingtonpost reaffirming our commitment to an open internet. Read the story: https://t.co/YTVQPoK0ty pic.twitter.com/sP4rgrJDz6 — NCTA - Internet & TV (@NCTAitv) May 17, 2017

Over in a corresponding blog post, the NCTA pushed a load of disingenuous prattle insisting that the cable industry will remain on its best behavior after the current FCC gets done dismantling all manner of consumer protections (net neutrality is only one small part of what the agency is up to):

"The cable industry is proud to be America’s largest residential broadband internet provider and we’ve always embraced and delivered a truly open internet experience to consumers. Why? Because it’s what consumers demand and what makes our business grow and thrive. It’s really that simple...No matter what happens with this new FCC proceeding or whatever regulatory model comes next, we will continue to provide an open internet experience for our customers, and we remain willing to work with all parties on ways to promote internet freedom and continued technological progress."

Of course if you recall Comcast's decision to throttle all upstream BitTorrent traffic, use zero rating to hamstring video competitors, or witnessed the rise of unnecessary usage caps and overage fees, you probably recognize that statement as the heaping pile of horse shit that it is.

The Consumerist amusingly reached out to each of the NCTA's 24 cable company members to see if they'd be willing to sign a contract putting their adoration of the open internet into some kind of bonding contract with consumers. Three companies were unreachable, fourteen companies never wrote or called back, and only one company was willing to provide a statement; a complete and total non-answer from Cox Communications:

"Cox has always been committed to providing an open Internet experience for our customers and reversing the classification of Internet services will not change our commitment,” a representative for the company told Consumerist. "We do not block, throttle or otherwise interfere with consumers’ desire to go where they want on the Internet. A stated pledge like that in our contracts with customers is something we are looking into as the debate continues."

In other words, of the twenty-four cable companies claiming to breathlessly adore net neutrality, not one of them was willing to put that adoration into writing. That's because there's one reason these companies are pushing to gut these protections and put all telecom oversight in the hands of an overextended and ill-suited FTC: so nobody can stop them from finding creative ways to abuse the lack of last-mile broadband competition. Anything else is pretense.

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Filed Under: broadband, net neutrality, open internet