California Shakes Off ISP Lobbyists, Embraces Real Net Neutrality

from the fat-lady-singing dept

Despite a rocky start, California has shaken off the lobbying influence of Comcast, AT&T and Verizon and passed meaningful net neutrality protections for the state's broadband residents. California's SB822, which pretty closely mirrors the FCC's discarded 2015 rules, almost had its most important parts stripped away courtesy of some early committee gamesmanship by AT&T. When that failed, ISP-connected lobbying and influence orgs tried to scare voters away from the effort by making misleading robocalls to state senior citizens insisting the bill would dramatically raise their phone bills.

Given the continued, overwhelming and bipartisan support for net neutrality, those efforts didn't work. SB822, which the EFF has called the "gold standard" for state-level rules, passed the California Assembly last Thursday, then managed to nab the necessary votes in the State Senate last Friday. It's now headed to the desk of California Governor Jerry Brown for signing:

61 out of 80 Assemblymembers - all 55 Democrats and 6 Republicans - voted for our #NetNeutrality bill. It’s great to see some bipartisanship on such an important issue. Thank you to the members from both parties who voted in favor. pic.twitter.com/Pq009bOJ5L — Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) August 30, 2018

Like most protections, the rules simply prevent ISPs from using their broadband monopolies to unfairly throttle, block, or censor competing content and services. Unlike weaker bills (like those being proposed by ISPs), the bill also takes aim at all of the creative anti-competitive efforts ISPs have been engaged in in recent years, from anti-competitive abuse of usage caps and overage fees (zero rating), to the anti-competitive abuse of interconnection points with transit operators and content companies.

With SB822's passage, the entire west coast is now covered with net neutrality rules thanks to laws passed in Oregon and Washington State; certainly not the end game most ISPs envisioned after spending millions to lobby the federal government.

You'll likely now hear ISPs, ISP lobbyists, and their literal armies of think tankers, payrolled academics, consultants and others whine incessantly for weeks about the unfairness of having to deal with numerous, discordant state-level protections. Of course none of these folks will acknowledge that's the telecom industry's fault, since this wouldn't be happening if they hadn't waged endless war on modest (by international standards), popular, and cohesive federal rules. Whatever your thoughts on net neutrality, this move was a reflection of what the public wanted (aka, Democracy).

ISPs will now shift their attention to slowing the spread of state laws, likely by suing individual states. They'll likely lean heavily on the "pre-emption" language Ajit Pai's FCC included in its net neutrality repeal at the behest of Comcast and Verizon, though early efforts by ISPs to use this language to dodge state oversight for terrible service haven't gone particularly well. Other lawyers have noted that when the FCC neutered its Title II authority under the Telecom Act at the behest of telecom monopolies, it also ironically eroded any authority to tell states what to do. Whoops.

The goal still needs to be to improve competition in the broadband space, since net neutrality violations are just a symptom of limited competition and a broken market. But until somebody in government grows a spine and is willing to stand up to deep-pocketed campaign contributors like Charter, AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink and Comcast, net neutrality rules are the next best thing. Meanwhile, there's still a chance to restore the FCC's 2015 rules courtesy of the looming lawsuits headed the FCC direction; suits that will highlight the laundry list of bizarre and shady FCC behavior that accompanied the repeal.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: broadband, california, competition, net neutrality, states rights

Companies: at&t, comcast, verizon