How the Latest Net Neutrality Action Affects Tampa Bay
The Senate approved a resolution May 16, 2018 to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) net neutrality repeal. However, many Hillsborough County residents aren’t sure what it actually entails. As many other unpopular laws and policies amongst the majority of Americans are being pushed through at the federal level of government, net neutrality stood at the forefront along with healthcare, foreign policy, immigration, and taxes to name a few. As of recent, poll numbers show the original repeal from December was over 80% unpopular amongst Americans. Now that the Senate has approved the resolution to retain net neutrality, what does it actually mean for the Tampa Bay residents?
Photo courtesy of NPR
There are several Internet Service Providers (ISP) in the Tampa Bay area, which include Frontier, Xfinity, and Charter Spectrum. In one form or another, each company has faced lawsuits in the past for their role in slowing down Internet speed. For example, the Attorney General of New York, Eric T. Schneiderman, sued Time Warner Cable, which later merged with Bright House Network to become Charter Communications, for slow broadband speeds in February 2017. According to documents from the Attorney General of New York’s lawsuit, a senior Time Warner Cable executive said in a 2011 email that the company wanted content networks (i.e., Netflix) to pay additional fees for access – mind you this is the same company (Charter Spectrum) now in the Tampa region. Ultimately, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Network agreed to terms on net neutrality, which would end in seven years, as conditions to the merger. Only time will tell how some of these companies will conduct themselves, unless the ruling is changed again or legislation is passed to block the FCC’s rollback decision.
In the beginning, net neutrality was coined by a law professor, Tim Wu, but not officially utilized by the FCC, as they referred to it simply as the Open Internet. The principle of net neutrality is that all Internet traffic be treated equal (i.e., e-mail, digital files, streaming videos.) To some, this may seem like common sense; however, opponents think this may limit competition amongst broadband providers and those providers won’t recoup their investments. In layman’s term, if a company places billions of dollars into fiber optic cables, they would like to think that websites and streaming applications wouldn’t be able to freeload off of their services. Some of the major providers have been known in the past to intentionally slow down Internet traffic from specific websites or applications. Now in the 21st century, proponents of net neutrality have argued that the Internet has become an everyday necessity, also known as ‘public good’ which is similar to water, gas, electric, and phone networks. Additionally, net neutrality provides avenues for smaller companies to enter the competitive marketplace against the industry titans. Therefore, net neutrality regulations would ensure fair pricing and access.
Within the local area, there are several federal legislators that are proponents for net neutrality. Of those legislators, U.S. Representative Charlie Crist and Kathy Castor have joined along with several other Florida Congressional members in writing a letter to the Florida State Attorney General, Pam Bondi, about their disappointment in her not joining 18 other state attorney generals’ opposition on the FCC’s decision to rollback net neutrality. There has been a House bill introduced in Congress, H.R. 4585 (Save Net Neutrality Act of 2017), to save net neutrality. It’s hard to predict if this bill will succeed with a Republican majority Congress. In addition to this, several state attorney general offices have filed lawsuits against the FCC for its rollback decision. So in the meantime, you the constituents must continue to demand the Attorney General of Florida and other state or federal legislators to act on this matter in any way possible.