Map shows which internet provider is fastest where you live; The Hill, June 30, 2023

ALIX MARTICHOUX  , The Hill; Map shows which internet provider is fastest where you live

"Before you sign a contract and set up your wifi, you probably want to know what your options are. A map maintained by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lets you examine which internet provider offers the fastest speed where you live."

The Last Hope for Net Neutrality; Slate, October 1, 2019

April Glaser, Slate; The Last Hope for Net Neutrality

A federal appeals court upheld the FCC’s repeal of the open-internet rules. But it allowed for states to save them. 

 

"It’s confirmed: Net neutrality is legally dead. On Tuesday morning, a federal appeals court reaffirmed the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules that prohibited internet providers from blocking, slowing down, or speeding up access to websites. In a 200-page decision, the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who in 2017 vowed to “fire up a weed whacker” and destroy the regulations, which had only been on the books for about two years at the time.

 

While it’s been legal for internet providers to block access to websites since June 2018, when the FCC’s net neutrality repeal hit the books, advocates and website owners who depend on unfettered consumer access to the web were hopeful that the court would invalidate the repeal. Now, internet providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T can do whatever they want with their customers’ connections and web access as long as they state that they reserve the right to do so in their terms of service. That doesn’t mean the internet is going to change tomorrow, or that Comcast will start throttling with abandon anytime soon. But by allowing telecom companies to sell faster speeds to the websites that can afford it, the deregulation threatens the ideal of the open web—a level playing field that allows anyone to build a website that can reach anyone. 

 

There is a significant silver lining in Tuesday’s ruling, however: The court struck down the part of the FCC’s 2017 rules that attempted to preempt state net neutrality rules. That reaffirms legislation and executive orders across the country that seek to preserve the pre-2017 status quo in which companies could not mess with websites’ and customers’ access to the internet. Nine states—Hawaii, Montana, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Rhode Island, California, Montana, and Vermont—have passed their own net neutrality rules. Another 27 states have seen legislation proposed to protect net neutrality. More than 100 mayors of cities across the country likewise have pledged not to sign contracts with internet providers that violate net-neutrality principles."

The FCC just passed sweeping new rules to protect your online privacy; Washington Post, 10/27/16

Brian Fung, Washington Post; The FCC just passed sweeping new rules to protect your online privacy:

"Federal regulators have approved unprecedented new rules to ensure broadband providers do not abuse their customers' app usage and browsing history, mobile location data and other sensitive personal information generated while using the Internet.

The rules, passed Thursday in a 3-to-2 vote by the Federal Communications Commission, require Internet providers, such as Comcast and Verizon, to obtain their customers' explicit consent before using or sharing that behavioral data with third parties, such as marketing firms.

Also covered by that requirement are health data, financial information, Social Security numbers and the content of emails and other digital messages. The measure allows the FCC to impose the opt-in rule on other types of information in the future, but certain types of data, such as a customer's IP address and device identifier, are not subject to the opt-in requirement. The rules also force service providers to tell consumers clearly what data they collect and why, as well as to take steps to notify customers of data breaches."

In Kansas City, Superfast Internet And A Digital Divide; NPR, 3/9/15

Frank Morris, NPR; In Kansas City, Superfast Internet And A Digital Divide:

"Mike Scott, the president of AT&T Kansas, stands by as workers splice fiber-optic cable before sinking it into someone's back yard. Last month AT&T became the third provider broadly offering affordable, one gig Internet here. Time Warner and other providers have also boosted speeds.

"It's a fiber war so to speak," he says. "We are literally standing in the trenches of a fiber war. And I think the customer ultimately wins in all this competition."

But not everyone's a customer. In some Kansas City neighborhoods only one in five households has any type of Internet connection, let alone a fast one. Michael Liimatta runs a nonprofit called Connecting for Good that's trying to change that.

"Our center here, you might consider it to be the front lines closing the digital divide in Kansas City," he says.

Folks from this low-income neighborhood come in and use Google Fiber for free, but no one has it in the huge housing project across the street. Liimatta says he's sometimes disappointed that some of the expectations that the city had in terms of universal adoption, and loads and loads of free bandwidth, "never came to be.""

Broadband City: How New York Is Bridging Its Digital Divide; Nation, 1/8/16

Maya Wiley, Nation; Broadband City: How New York Is Bridging Its Digital Divide:

" Few would debate that the information superhighway is both an on-ramp and HOV lane for the global economy. Whether a resident needs to get online to access homework or supplemental educational tools, to search for a job or start a business, broadband is a necessity. Most may not realize how many can’t afford it. Jillian Maldonado, a South Bronx single mom who was earning $300 a week as an Avon representative is an all-too-familiar victim of the digital divide. After a long day, she would come home, make her young son dinner, and then take him past the check-cashing store, a small grocery, and the occasional drug dealer to get to the library to get him online to do his homework.

A family that doesn’t know how it will make its monthly rent payment may not have $75 a month for in-home broadband, let alone a computer. More than a third of low-income New Yorkers still do not have broadband at home. It’s why this year, for the first time in the history of the city, we added a broadband category to the capital budget and pledged $70 million over the next 10 years towards free or low-cost wireless service for low-income communities. These investments are part of the mayor’s aggressive approach to expanding broadband access."