In the Netherlands, having access to two broadband competitors isn’t enough to guarantee broadband competition, and Dutch telecom regulators are not about to deregulate Internet service in the country until consumers have more choices for broadband access.

The Dutch telecom regulator on Friday announced it will keep wholesale access regulations in place for an extra three years to guarantee KPN – the former state-owned telephone company – plays fair with competitors.

“If ACM were not to step in, there would be too little choice: Dutch telecom company KPN and cable company UPC/Ziggo would then dominate the market,” says the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) in a written statement. “In ACM’s opinion, having just two providers in these markets cannot be considered healthy competition.”

“Furthermore, KPN and UPC/Ziggo are challenged by their competitors to continue to invest in their networks and to innovate,” said Henk Don, a board member of ACM. “As a result, faster and better connections become available in the Netherlands.”

KPN

The Dutch telephone and mobile provider will be required to continue allowing competitors such as Vodafone and Tele2 access to KPN’s landline and fiber to the home networks to offer competitive broadband service. ACM reports that Dutch consumers are saving at least $312 million a year in lower Internet access pricing just by forcing KPN to allow other companies to compete using its network.

KPN isn’t hampered by the forced openness, because ACM has also given the phone company relaxed operating rules to allow it to invest in DSL upgrades including vectoring and the forthcoming G.Fast standard, which could dramatically boost broadband speeds.

Most Dutch consumers, like those in North America, realistically have a choice between one telephone and one cable company — usually Ziggo (currently merging with UPC), for broadband service. But unlike in the United States, Dutch regulators have remained wholly unconvinced an effective duopoly is subject to enough competitive pressure to protect consumers and nascent competition from upstarts. Therefore, ACM has applied regulatory checks and balances to protect the marketplace and consumers from abusive pricing and service practices.

U.S. telecom companies argue that regulations hamper investment and delay network improvements. In the Netherlands, where broadband speed rankings exceed the United States, prices are also lower.

Russian Internet Service Providers have been strongly encouraged to upgrade their service and speeds as a matter of national pride as the Kremlin encourages broadband improvements across the vast expanse of the country.

Responding to the call, regional ISP Onlime, operated by Russian telecom giant Rostelecom, has introduced new broadband packages to subscribers at prices that would make most North Americans drool:

• “100 for 500” is Onlime’s most aggressive promotion, offering unlimited 100Mbps service for 500 Russian rubles, equal to $11.47US a month on promotion. The regular rate after the promotion expires should run around $20 a month;
• 15Mbps budget Internet is regularly priced at $6.88 a month;
• 30Mbps standard service costs $9.18 a month;
• 60Mbps turbo service runs $11.47 a month;
• 80Mbps deluxe service was tariffed before the “100 for 500” promotion, and its everyday price is $16.06 a month.

Meanwhile, Russian wireless mobile operator Vimpelcom also runs wired broadband service in parts of Russia and is boosting speeds without raising prices. Customers signed up with “Beeline” in the Moscow Oblast, including the communities of Moscow, Domodedovo, Zelenograd, Sergyev-Posad, Serpukhov, Chekhov, and Lyubertsy will now receive up to 30Mbps service. You can’t beat the price. At just 350 Russian rubles, that is just over $8 a month in U.S. dollars.

The speed increases start Nov. 10.

Malone

Cable magnate John Malone has rarely had it this good at the expense of the U.S. Treasury. Using his vast wealth to hire some of the smartest tax advisers in the country, he has personally avoided hundreds of millions in U.S. taxes and shared the benefits of his tax tips with shareholders, who collectively stiffed the tax man out of more than a billion dollars in 2013.

As the Obama Administration fights with Republicans in Congress to close the loopholes, corporate executives and fellow billionaires routinely engage in tax avoidance schemes that shift their tax burden to ordinary Americans that cover the difference in the form of service cuts or higher taxes and fees to offset the lost revenue.

In 2013, Malone jumped on the “inversion” bandwagon, shifting the corporate address of Liberty Global, Inc. from Colorado to London, largely out of reach of the Internal Revenue Service.

Bloomberg News detailed Malone’s exploits over decades of “rich get richer” deals and the consequences of loopholes unavailable to most Americans that stay in the tax code at the behest of those who directly benefit from them.

Malone is fiercely protective of his $7.5 billion net worth, structuring investments, tax shelters, and end runs around tax laws in ways that often leave him with no tax liability at all.

Not everyone can afford to move their assets overseas or set up complicated charitable trusts to shelter income, but the enormously wealthy Malone can. He recently passed Ted Turner as America’s biggest private landowner, owning 2.2 million acres of property in the United States, including more than 5% of the state of Maine.

Malone spreads his vast wealth around — owning stakes in Liberty Media, Liberty Global, and Liberty Interactive, as well as pieces of News Corp., Viacom, Time Warner, Inc., QVC, Discovery Communications, the old Court TV, DirecTV, SiriusXM satellite radio, Barnes & Noble, and Expedia.com.

Malone’s influence over the U.S. tax code comes in part from his advocacy work as an unpaid director at the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank that lobbies Washington hard for lower taxes and deregulation.

Malone’s personal tax code is to avoid taxes at all costs and, where possible, let someone else pick up the tab.

Malone’s baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, was instrumental as part of Liberty Media’s deal to cash out its stake in Time Warner without paying a dime in capital gains tax. Malone walked away with $1.4 billion in tax-free cash and ownership of the baseball team. Atlanta taxpayers will be responsible for more than $300 million in costs to build the Braves a brand new stadium in the Atlanta suburbs.

SiriusXM satellite radio subscribers were notified this week of the latest rate increase, due by the end of this year.

What they may not know is Malone’s Liberty Media now owns and controls the satellite radio venture. In 2009, Malone invested $530 million in the struggling operation. But he also gained the benefits of SiriusXM’s $6 billion in tax losses that Malone used to offset taxes on Liberty’s future profits. As a fringe benefit, Malone has also boosted revenue by imposing regular rate hikes on SiriusXM customers.

Like many U.S. corporations, Malone’s various Liberty ventures store massive amounts of cash in offshore bank accounts, avoiding U.S. taxes. When Liberty contemplated tapping that offshore cash, it faced a U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent. So Liberty joined more than a dozen other U.S. corporations relocating overseas, avoid corporate taxes back home.

Although the corporation escapes a tax bill, shareholders usually do not, subject to tax for shares converted from the old U.S.-based company to the new overseas entity. Faced with owing capital gains taxes at a rate of 23.8 percent, the day before the inversion was announced, Malone transferred almost $600 million of his shares to the Malone-controlled, tax exempt LG 2013 Charitable Remainder Unitrust, avoiding much of the tax. Not satisfied with the fact he still would owe tax on the remaining $260 million of his personal stake in Liberty, the company hired Shearman & Sterling LLP to devise a strategy to get Malone (and shareholders) off the hook for any tax liability.

They found one, turning the government’s own efforts to plug tax loopholes against itself, manufacturing income that would not only satisfy the IRS’ recently hardened rules, but also let Malone & Co. escape any British tax liabilities in their new home.

“Malone threw a multi-billion dollar left hook at the Treasury Department,” said Samuel C. Thompson, a law professor at Pennsylvania State University. “They didn’t see it coming.”

As has been so often the case, the IRS eventually closed the loophole, but only after Malone exploited it.

Malone’s defenders point out all of his creative tax strategies are perfectly legal, and he is only taking advantage of existing U.S. tax laws. Detractors note America’s wealthy and powerful have exercised disproportionate influence over how those laws are written, usually through well-funded think tanks, lobbying firms, and anti-tax astroturf efforts. Most Americans lack the resources to take advantage of loopholes and benefits that require sophisticated advisers prepared to withstand any scrutiny from the IRS.

An emboldened Liberty Global is even willing to publicly signal its next tax avoidance measure.

In a filing last April, Liberty disclosed that a U.S. subsidiary will pay at least $7 billion in tax-deductible interest to its new UK parent over the next decade. Such payments are known to tax lawyers as “earnings stripping,” because the big interest deductions strip profits out of the U.S., thus cutting any U.S. tax obligation.

The practice has become so common among inverted companies headquartered overseas, Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Richard Durbin authored a bill to ban the practice. It has gone nowhere in the legislature because of objections raised primarily by Republicans, who characterize loophole closing measures as disguised “tax increases” on business.

What is Malone doing with all the money he has successfully kept out of the hands of the U.S. Treasury? He bought an Irish castle and three major Irish hotel properties. He did it using a capital gains tax holiday offered by Ireland’s government to wealthy investors willing to buy Irish real estate and retain ownership for a minimum of seven years.

The majority of 3.7 million comments received by the FCC advocate strong and unambiguous Net Neutrality protections for the Internet, but that seems to have had little impact on FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler, who is laying the groundwork for a hybrid Net Neutrality Frankenplan that would marginally protect deep pocketed content producers while leaving few, if any, protections for consumers.

The Wall Street Journal reported late last week that Wheeler is considering a “hybrid” approach, separating broadband into two distinct services:

• Retail Broadband, sold to consumers, would continue as a broadly deregulated service, allowing ISPs to set prices and policies with little, if any, oversight. Wheeler’s plan would allow providers to freely implement usage-based pricing, establish paid fast lanes at the request of customers, and permit ISPs to continue exempting preferred content from usage pricing while charging customers extra to access content from “non-preferred partners;”
• Wholesale Broadband, the connection between your ISP and content producers, would be reclassified under Title II and subject to common carrier regulations, which would allow the FCC to police deals between your provider and services like Netflix.

Wheeler’s proposal would offer significant protection to wealthy content producers like Netflix, Amazon.com, broadcasters and Hollywood studios, but would leave consumers completely exposed to providers’ pricing tricks, usage caps/consumption billing, and paid fast lanes that could leave unpaid content vulnerable to network deterioration, especially during peak usage times.

Large telecommunications companies argue that deregulation promotes broadband investment and expansion to create world-class service. But years of statistics and comparisons with other countries suggest deregulation has not inspired sufficient competition to keep prices in check and force regular network upgrades. In fact, competition is much more robust at the wholesale level, while the majority of retail consumers have a choice of just one or two providers that receive almost no oversight. Those providers are now exercising their market power to further monetize broadband usage to boost profits and raise prices.

Wheeler’s proposal would ignore the wishes of more than three million Americans that want comprehensive Net Neutrality protections, as well as those of President Barack Obama, who has called for a ban on paid fast lanes. A senior White House official signaled Thursday the administration has concerns about Wheeler’s proposal, noting “the president has made it abundantly clear that any outcome must protect net neutrality and ban paid prioritization—and has called for all necessary steps to safeguard an open Internet.”

“This Frankenstein proposal is no treat for Internet users, and they shouldn’t be tricked,” consumer group Free Press CEO Craig Aaron said in a statement. “No matter how you dress it up, any rules that don’t clearly restore the agency’s authority and prevent specialized fast lanes and paid prioritization aren’t real Net Neutrality.”

Broadband providers don’t like Wheeler’s plan either. Verizon last week sent comments to the FCC warning any attempt to reclassify broadband under Title II “could not withstand judicial review.” Others, including the industry-backed U.S. Telecom Association, promised swift legal action against Wheeler’s proposal.

Aaron believes the last thing broadband needs is another “hybrid” plan.

“The FCC has already tried twice before to invent new classifications on the fly instead of clear rules grounded in the law,” Aaron said. “And twice their efforts have been rejected. This flimsy fabrication will be no different. And this approach will only serve to squander the political support of millions and millions of Americans who have weighed in at the agency asking for strong rules that will stand up in court.”

“Verizon’s treatment of the news is a testament to the need for strong Net Neutrality protections.”

Sugarstring’s logo is as twisty as its editorial policies.

Verizon Wireless’ launch of Sugarstring, a high-budget tech news website targeting millennial 20-somethings with tech and lifestyle news they can use seemed innocent enough until its editor revealed in a private e-mail Verizon considers reporting on electronic spying and Net Neutrality issues “verboten.”

Verizon is deeply embroiled in both issues and evidently has no interest spending money enlightening the masses, so it has told its staff (but not you) both topics are forbidden.

The Daily Dot reported the revelation straight from Cole Stryker, Sugarstring’s editor.

“I’ve been hired to edit SugarString.com,” writes Stryker in a recruiting email to Daily Dot’s Patrick Howell O’Neill. “Downside is there are two verboten topics (spying and net neutrality), but I’ve been given wide berth to cover pretty much all other topics that touch tech in some way.”

Verizon’s cavalier censorship policies say a lot about the company’s interest in controlling the messages that people see and read online. The news site is intended to be a high-profile destination for Verizon Wireless’ mobile customers and will logically get significant exposure from the company bankrolling it.

Verizon might argue that since it pays the bills, it has a right to decide what information should pass through its websites. It is hardly a big stretch for them to argue that if they own the wires over which you receive Internet service, they should have a say in what travels across those as well.

Censorship need not be crude and obvious as it often was on foreign propaganda broadcasts during the Cold War. Today’s “news management” is much more subtle and more insidious.

Take RT (formerly Russia Today), the Moscow-based 24/7 English-language news network. Although dropped by many major cable systems including Time Warner Cable after Russian troops invaded eastern Ukraine, the network is still growing and finding more places on the air around the world.

Radio Moscow during the Cold War represented a more overt form of propaganda. Corporations like Verizon have learned to be more subtle.

RT is nothing like what shortwave listeners used to endure from English-language Radio Moscow World Service during the Communist years. You couldn’t miss that station. Broadcasting on up to 47 frequencies simultaneously, 24 hours a day, it was easily the most commonly encountered signal on the shortwave dial. Plodding features like, “On the Occasion of the 45th Anniversary of the Stunning Achievements of World Socialism,” or “The Voices of Soviet Public Opinion Demand Peace and Progress for the Non-Aligned World” (Part 36) were everything you might expect and less.

Radio Moscow boldly told listeners in its series, “The History of the Soviet Union, the Socialist Revolution, and Its Aims and Results,” that elections in the USSR were superior to those in other countries because the government took the money out of politics. Only by putting national infrastructure entirely in the hands of the people, along with public ownership of the means of production, can a nation achieve true democracy. They didn’t bother to mention the USSR was a one-party state, which made elections pro-forma, or that the entire Soviet economy was a basket case since the days of Leonid Brezhnev. (10:01) You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

Radio Moscow has been replaced by RT Television, which in the post-Soviet era now exists primarily to boost all-things Putin. The propaganda has been sharpened up by employing U.S. reporters and moving to the far more subtle practice of “self-censorship.” A former RT reporter fed up with increasingly strident propaganda over the matter of Russia, Crimea and the Ukraine quit live on the air. In a later interview on CNN, Liz Wahl told Anderson Cooper that RT’s staff was made up mostly of impressionable young people eager to win favor from RT’s management. They quickly learned and accepted that certain points of view or story subjects were either frowned upon or outright verboten. Instead of being sent to a gulag for disobedience, those straying from Putin’s party line were taken off stories, reassigned to menial work, or shunned. Who wants that?

Avoiding certain topics or points of view at the behest of corporate management (or the state) is just as insidious as directly slanting the news to one’s favor. Few real journalists would accept a job (or stay) at a news organization that was compromised by coverage limits or editorial interference that came from conflict with a corporate or political agenda.

That Verizon chooses to ban stories that embarrass Verizon, such as Edward Snowden’s revelations that Verizon voluntarily provided the National Security Agency (NSA) the phone records of all of its customers and is still actively engaged in tracking its customers’ web activities, does not mean it is going to block you from visiting CNN.com tomorrow. That Verizon doesn’t want to fuel the public consciousness of Net Neutrality is understanding considering the company has paid its lawyers plenty to fight the principle in court, openly admitting it favors paid fast lanes for traffic. But Verizon is clearly on a road that, if unchecked, eventually leads to content and traffic manipulation.

Verizon steps far over the line of jounalistic integrity informing editors to avoid both issues while saying nothing to readers and it isn’t the first time Verizon has crossed the line.

Tim Karr from Free Press reminds us Verizon has a very different view about the First Amendment that the rest of us:

In a 2012 legal brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Verizon mangled the intent of the First Amendment to claim that the Constitution gives the phone company the right to control everyone’s online information. In the brief, which was part of the company’s successful bid to overturn the FCC’s Open Internet Order — Verizon argued that the First Amendment gives it the right to serve as the Internet’s editor-in-chief. The company’s attorneys claimed that “broadband providers possess ‘editorial discretion.'” even when they are “transmitting the speech of others.”

Verizon continued in this vein, asserting that “Just as a newspaper is entitled to decide which content to publish and where, broadband providers may feature some content over others.” And that means that Verizon could privilege its SugarString version of the news over the content of real news sites, because the company believes it should be able to “give differential pricing or priority access” to its own content.

What Verizon cannot “manage,” it wants the right to censor:

In 2007, Verizon Wireless blocked NARAL Pro-Choice America efforts to use its mobile text-message program to communicate with NARAL members. Initially Verizon told NARAL that it had banned the messages for being “controversial and unsavory.” After the blocking was reported in the New York Times, the phone company backpedaled and lifted the ban. The text-message blocking was a simple glitch, a Verizon spokesman declared, and the company felt really, really bad about it.

When it comes to a question of customer freedom vs. profits, Verizon follows the money every time:

In 2011, Free Press and others caught Verizon Wireless blocking people from using tethering applications on their phones. Verizon had asked Google to remove 11 free tethering applications from the Android marketplace. These applications allowed users to circumvent Verizon’s $20 tethering fee and turn their smartphones into Wi-Fi hotspots on their own. By blocking those applications, Verizon violated a Net Neutrality pledge it made to the FCC as a condition of the 2008 airwaves auction.

All of these examples challenge Verizon’s ongoing assertion it has no incentive to censor, block, or interfere with online content, making Net Neutrality unnecessary. You have just seen another example of why Net Neutrality is urgently needed. Verizon has demonstrated repeatedly it puts its own interests above its customers, so regulators should respond with a clear, unambiguous, and robustly enforced policy of Net Neutrality that protects the interests of you and I.