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Here's What Happens When Broadband Companies "Self-Regulate"


Net neutrality is on the chopping block, and one drum that FCC chairman Ajit Pai keeps beating is the idea that without government intervention, broadband companies like your internet service provider and wireless carrier will regulate themselves. Let’s see what history has to say about that.

Broadband companies are already some of the most hated companies in America, but if history is any indication, it’s possible to hate them more.

There is a lot of hyperbole and partisan nonsense on both sides of the net neutrality debate right now, but instead of poking our heads into the future, let’s peek into the past. The core crux of the FCC’s claim against the necessity of net neutrality comes from the idea that the broadband companies will regulate themselves due to competition and there does not need to be any rules about it. So, have they? Of course not.

Here is just a small, non-exhaustive list of the tricks broadband companies have pulled over the years, through both the net neutrality years and before:

  • 2003—Cox and Comcast block VPNs: Back in the early internet, both Comcast and Cox Communications placed bans on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). This was before VPNs became as ubiquitous as they are now. Back then, the only people who really used VPNs were doing so to access a work computer remotely. Which made Cox and Comcast’s choices to block them even weirder.

  • 2005—Madison River Communications blocks VoIP: You probably haven’t heard of Madison River Communications, but that’s okay, it doesn’t really matter. They were a regional broadband company that was caught blocking access to Vonage. Can you imagine what would happen if a broadband company tried to block access to Skype, FaceTime or WhatsApp nowadays?

  • 2007—Comcast throttles peer-to-peer programs: Now we’re starting to get to the heart of modern day net neutrality. In 2007, Comcast was caught blocking or throttling access to BitTorrent. That included blocking lots of legit files and uses for BitTorrent, like the King James Bible. Eventually, Comcast was told to stop the practice in 2008.

  • 2010—Google and Verizon attempts to make part of the internet exempt from net neutrality: Google is pro-net neutrality now, but that hasn’t always been the case. In 2010, they teamed up with Verizon to pitch an idea that would have differentiated between wired and wireless internet, allowing wireless companies like Verizon to create their own weird version of the internet. This didn’t really go anywhere, but who knows what weird internet we’d have now if this had gone through.

  • 2012—AT&T restricts FaceTime to certain customers: In 2012, AT&T attempted to restrict user’s access to FaceTime, only allowing it if you were signed up for a specific data plan. This is a clear example of a carrier restricting apps, but AT&T decided to have fun with it by claiming that net neutrality rules do not regulate the availability of customers of applications that are preloaded on phones. Even by 2013 AT&T was still blocking anyone with an unlimited plan from accessing the app.

  • 2012—Comcast attempts to give itself a hand: At one point, Comcast attempted to make it so that if you had a Comcast subscription and you watched videos through the Xbox 360 Comcast On Demand app, then any video you streamed there wouldn’t count against your 250GB monthly data limit. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s one of the core worst-case scenarios that net neutrality proponents point to. Comcast is essentially giving preferential treatment to itself. It was a big enough issue that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings chimed in against it.

  • 2014—Comcast gives Netflix special treatment, for a cost: In 2014, Netflix shelled out extra cash to Comcast to improve “interconnection between ISPs.” This was referred to as an “HOV lane” in tech circles, not a fast lane. A fast lane sends one packet of data faster than another, an HOV lane ensures that data doesn’t travel slower than anything else. Yeah, it’s stupid. Basically, Comcast users were experiencing poor speeds for Netflix, which Comcast said was due to Netflix’s own network. To fix the issue, Netflix would have to pay up for a direct path to the Comcast network. Comcast’s reasoning was simple, Netflix accounted for a huge portion of the data on its network, so Netflix should have to pay for that. Eventually, the FCC decided that was a little fishy and decided it was ready to hear complaints about interconnection.

  • 2015—A variety of other content providers want fast lanes too: After that, the idea of a so-called HOV lane of dedicated lines spread like wildfire, with HBO, Sony, and Showtime all reportedly trying to pay someone for dedicated bandwidth.

  • 2015—AT&T throttles data plans without telling anyone, the FCC catches them: In the last year or so, we’ve seen countless new “unlimited” wireless plans appear that are riddled with fine print. Most of this fine print is simple: if you reach a certain amount of data usage, your provider will slow down your connection. Well, back in 2015, AT&T was fined $100 million for doing that without actually telling anyone. If you had an unlimited plan and used up a lot of data, AT&T would throttle your speeds. Nowadays, this is common practice in pretty much every unlimited plan, but at least they tell us about it beforehand.

  • 2016—AT&T also attempts to give itself a hand: Remember back in 2012 when Comcast tried to give its own services priority? AT&T tried to do the same thing just last year, but now it has a fancy name, “zero-rating.” One of the main features of AT&T’s DirecTV Now Streaming service was that using the service wouldn’t count against AT&T users wireless data caps. The FCC decided that violated net neutrality rules. The problem wasn’t just because it was giving itself preferential treatment though, it was also because it did so by offering “Sponsored Data” packages to other video and media companies. Doing so makes it so customers wouldn’t be charged for using specific apps or services on AT&T’s network. For the record, the reasoning behind the ruling was because it inhibits competition. More importantly though, current FCC chairman Ajit Pai has already said that he will ignore the FCCs ruling against AT&T in this case. Which, happily brings us to our last bullet point.

  • 2017—Zero-rating is still everywhere: Recently, zero-rating includes Verizon’s “data-free streaming.” So, in Verizon’s case, FiOS and TV subscribers can stream video content to their mobile device free if they’re also Verizon Wireless customers. Again, just like AT&T, this is Verizon giving users an incentive to use services it owns instead of the competition. The FCC agrees that zero-rating defies net neutrality rules, but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

Of course, it’s impossible to predict the future or to say what broadband companies will do without net neutrality moving forward. They certainly don’t have the best track record though. While the last version of net neutrality wasn’t perfect, at least there was some groundwork to build on. No content could be blocked, companies had to be transparent about their data transfer policies, and they couldn’t give preferential treatment to themselves. These are all good things and there is still plenty of room for competition. Assuming you don’t live in rural America anyway, where Backchannel points out there is still few, if any, choice for broadband providers, and where they do exist, they’re neglecting the maintenance in poorer communities.

Theoretically consumers could make broadband companies “pay for it” if they’re caught doing something shady, but that’s assuming there’s more than a one or two different options for broadband providers in your area to begin with. That’s also assuming anyone has the willpower to actually keep an eye on the annoying things these companies do.