It's the last chance to tell the FCC to respect Net Neutrality

Jul 18, 2014 14:59 GMT  ·  By

Today is the deadline set by the FCC for sending opinions about the proposed set of rules regarding the open Internet, after the body decided to extend things from July 15.

The FCC said that there was a sudden wave of interest in the topic on the last minute, which took down the site. Considering both issues, they decided to extend the deadline until Friday, July 18, midnight Eastern time to make sure everyone has a chance to share their opinion.

Those interested still have time to tell the FCC what they think of the new set of rules by going to fcc.gov/comments and clicking the Proceeding #14-28 or sending an email to [email protected]. Last Friday, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler took to Twitter to reveal that there had been 647,000 opinions shared on the topic at the time.

Back in January, a court told the FCC that it had no legal power of imposing Net Neutrality rules on ISPs. Tom Wheeler later unveiled a set of rules that would enable ISPs to charge various companies more to get their services across at proper speeds. Access to this “fast lane” would be done only after the FCC approves whatever peering deals ISPs are trying to sign and with the condition that everyone else’s speeds wouldn’t be throttled.

This isn’t possible because the fast lane doesn’t exist. The only way for this difference to be possible is if these companies are given full access to the bandwidth, while the other content is slowed down.

Tech companies, as well as activists have opposed the deal pointing out all its flaws and the fact that the rules aren’t ones to guarantee Net Neutrality, but rather the opposite.

The only way to solve the crisis and to avoid ISPs to abuse their status by claiming money from both customers and companies is for the FCC to simply reclassify the service providers under Title II, turning them into common carriers and transforming the Internet into a basic utility, like water and electricity.

This would simply require some paperwork from the FCC and would be the simple way to solve the problem without going to court all over again.

Some ISPs have already come forth saying that they abide by Net Neutrality rules by their own accord. Considering that one of these statements came from Comcast is quite hilarious. During the first few months of the year, before Netflix agreed to sign a peering deal with Comcast, its speed was dropping considerably pushing the video streaming company to say that their traffic was being throttled with. Furthermore, just by signing the aforementioned deal with Netflix, Comcast stops “abiding” by the Net Neutrality concept which calls for all content to be treated the same.