The Trump administration’s new FCC Chairperson, a former Verizon lawyer, plans to make two major changes in FCC policy. Both of these changes could severely impact individual consumers and small businesses.
Net Neutrality – This rule says Internet service providers (ISPs) the largest of which is Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner are allowed to slow speeds or completely block websites, and charge the websites fees to use the maximum speed allowed. This means that companies like Facebook, Netflix, Google and YouTube will be slowed down unless they pay a fee to the ISP. Ultimately these costs will be passed on to the consumer. Throttling, as it’s known, will happen regardless of the speed the consumer pays for. You can pay for highest speed Internet, but Netflix could still be slow for you if they refuse to pay a fee. (This practice was eliminated by the Obama administration.)
Subscriber Privacy – In a recent rule change the FCC now allows ISPs to sell subscriber information, including your web surfing habits, to advertisers or any other group willing to pay. As of this moment, Comcast is allowed to collect surfing data regardless of whether or not you opt out of cookies on websites you visit, and they can sell that data to anyone at any price without permission.
These two rules which were put in place in the past are under threat. Congress and the Senate both tried to pass these laws but failed under the outrage of citizens like us.
This is critically important to Mediastead clients! You could be forced to pay fees to ISPs in order to have your websites seen by everyone at their maximum speed. There is no regulation preventing a type of “private taxation” which offers zero benefit to you or to your customers.
On behalf of our clients and Mediastead, are senior partners have written letters to the two members of Congress, 10th district Thomas Marino and 11th District Lou Barletta, that serve the bulk of our clients. We encourage our clients to use this letter as a sample and write to their own House Representative on your letterhead.
Congress has the abillity to throttle the power of ISPs and their rogue FCC administrator. Please tell the Trump administration and the FCC that Net Neutrality and customer privacy are essential.
An open letter on net neutrality to Congressman Barletta and Congressman Marino(PDF)