News

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, ISP-endorsed frontman and villain of a theoretical future Revenge of the Nerds reboot, is trying to dupe everyone into believing abandoning open-internet principles is inevitable because no opponents have any convincing arguments.

Rep. Michael Doyle accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai of pursuing an agenda that harms both consumers and small businesses.

The Federal Communications Commission should investigate whether Verizon Wireless violated Net Neutrality rules by throttling video applications on its mobile network, advocacy group Free Press says.

New legislation introduced today by Reps. David Price and Jared Huffman would protect local television markets across the country from corporate consolidation by permanently ending the so-called “UHF discount,” an obsolete FCC loophole that the Trump administration wants to revive to benefit right-wing media conglomerates.

Congress has asked some of the country’s largest broadband providers and tech companies to testify at an upcoming hearing about Net Neutrality. Watchdog Free Press Action Fund criticized Rep. Greg Walden for apparently failing to invite small companies or consumer advocates to the hearing.

Trump’s FCC chief, Ajit Pai, was in the hot seat Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
Democratic lawmakers are not happy with President Trump’s top telecom regulator, former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai. And that’s putting it mildly.

WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R–Oregon) announced his plans to invite the CEOs of the largest phone, cable and internet companies to a September hearing on “ground rules for the internet.”

It’s hardly surprising that Sinclair would face speculation over its plans for the future. The company is already the nation’s largest owner of TV stations, and it will grow to an unprecedented size if the FCC approves its bid for Tribune Media. And Sinclair has drawn more and more fire from critics — notably HBO’s John Oliver — for the increasingly conservative tilt to its local newscasts through “must-run” commentary segments and coverage decisions mandated at the corporate level.

I’ve been thinking about news that surfaced last week around Verizon throttling speeds for video content on its wireless network. Customers reported seeing their speeds capped at about 10 megabits per second for Netflix and YouTube streaming, and some suggested the caps were causing performance issues by degrading video quality.

Faced with reports that it was slowing down mobile video streams, Verizon acknowledged on Friday that it was testing a new traffic-management system.