It didn’t take long for consumers to start flooding the Federal Communications Commission with thousands of complaints about poor Internet service, usage caps, and speed throttles.

The complaints arrived as the FCC began formally enforcing Net Neutrality by reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service, subject to oversight by the federal agency.

Consumers used the occasion to deluge the commission about the sorry state of Internet access in the United States, whether it constituted a Net Neutrality violation or not.

National Journal obtained a sample of 50 complaints through a Freedom of Information Act request and it was clear data caps were at or near the top of the complaints list and consumers wasted no time slamming cable and phone companies over the practice.

“Our data should not be capped at 350[GB]!!!!” one consumer pleaded, likely a Suddenlink or Mediacom customer, which both have 350GB caps on certain speed tiers. “Please, please make data caps illegal!!”

No more Netflix and Hulu watching for this family: “I have to tell my kids to stop using YouTube and other services and stuff they need for school so we don’t go over the cap,” another consumer wrote, explaining that their Internet-enabled home security camera uses up a significant amount of their monthly data. “By Comcast having this data cap, I don’t have a open Internet … I also think this data cap is very inaccurate, it goes up without anybody being home, and sometimes by a lot.”

Comcast also received heat for poor performing broadband service, with one customer forced to use Wi-Fi at a local McDonalds to take an online exam because Internet service at home was so poor.

“The Comcast modem is such crap that we can’t even access the Internet,” the consumer wrote. “I’m livid.”

AT&T was roasted for speed throttling its “unlimited data” wireless plan — a practice that already resulted in a $100 million fine from the FCC for misleading consumers. AT&T is appealing.

In all, the FCC reports it received about 2,000 complaints from consumers in June, the first month Net Neutrality rules took effect. The agency has just 30 days to respond to the complaints, most lodged using this online form. The FCC may be able to answer many with a form letter because poor service and usage caps are not strict violations of Net Neutrality, unless the FCC determines the practices “unreasonably interfere” with Internet access. AT&T’s speed throttling comes a lot closer to meeting that test, because many throttled customers report their wireless data service is rendered effectively unusable once throttled.

But the broad-ranging complaints may still prove useful, suggesting to the FCC stronger rules and oversight are required for a broadband market many consider barely competitive and often customer abusive.

Seeking comment, National Journal reported the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and the U.S. Telecom Association, which both represent major Internet providers and have sued to overturn the regulations, declined to comment on the complaints.

Home Box Office and Verizon today announced an agreement that allows Verizon to distribute HBO NOW — a service targeting Internet-only customers, across all of Verizon’s wired broadband networks, with the right to extend the service to Verizon Mobile customers in the near future.

Beginning today, HBO NOW is immediately available to all Verizon FiOS and High Speed Internet customers, starting with a 30-day free trial.

After signing up, Verizon customers can access the service by downloading the HBO NOW app on their Android phone or tablet, Amazon Fire Tablet, iPhone, iPad or Apple TV and selecting “Verizon” from the drop down menu of providers. Upon initial registration, customers sign in to watch their favorite HBO programming on their mobile device or on their computer at HBONOW.com. HBO NOW is currently available through Verizon to non-FiOS TV customers for a monthly subscription of $14.99 following the introductory free offer. FiOS TV customers can continue to purchase HBO, which includes access to the award-winning HBO GO app and access to HBO content on an anywhere, anytime basis on FIOS Mobile, through existing sales channels, including by using their FiOS TV remote control.

The agreement will allow Verizon to sell HBO NOW on its forthcoming mobile video platform, potentially under the umbrella of its Go90 service, expected to enter beta testing soon. No word on if Verizon’s mobile video platform will chew through your data usage allowance.

With video streaming now accounting for at least 64 percent of all Internet traffic, it should have come as no surprise to Australia’s ISPs that as data caps are eased and popular online video services like Netflix arrive, traffic spikes would occur on their networks as well.

It surprised them anyway.

Telecom analyst Paul Budde told the WAToday newspaper “video streaming requires our ISPs to have robust infrastructure, and to use it in more sophisticated ways, and that largely caught Australia off guard. I think it’s fair to say everybody underestimated the effect of Netflix.”

Not everybody.

Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) was originally envisioned by the then Labor government as a fiber-to-the-home network capable of enormous capacity and gigabit speed. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proposed buying out the country’s existing copper phone wire infrastructure from telecom giant Telstra to scrap it. Instead of DSL and a limited number of cable broadband providers, the national fiber to the home network would provide service to the majority of Australians, with exceptionally rural residents served by wireless and/or satellite.

Conservative critics slammed the NBN as a fiscal “white elephant” that would duplicate or overrun private investment and saddle taxpayers with the construction costs. In the run up to the federal election of 2013, critics proposed to scale back the NBN as a provider of last resort that would only offer service where others did not. Others suggested a scaled-down network would be more fiscally responsible. After the votes were counted, a Coalition government was formed, run by the conservative Liberal and National parties. Within weeks, they downsized the NBN and replaced most of its governing board.

Netflix’s launch increased traffic passing through Australia’s ISPs by 50 percent, from 30 to 50Gbps in just one week, and growing.

Plans for a national fiber to the home network similar to Verizon FiOS were dropped, replaced with fiber to the neighborhood technology somewhat comparable to AT&T U-verse or Bell Fibe. Instead of gigabit fiber, Australians would rely on a motley mix of technologies including wireless broadband, DSL, VDSL, cable, and in areas where the work had begun under the earlier government, a limited amount of fiber.

In hindsight, the penny wise-pound foolish approach to broadband upgrades has begun to haunt the conservatives, who have already broken several commitments regarding the promised performance of the downsized network and are likely to break several more, forcing more costly upgrades that would have been unnecessary if the government remained focused on an all-fiber network.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has admitted the new NBN will not be able to deliver 25Mbps service to all Australians by 2016. Only 43 percent of the country will get that speed, partly because of technical compromises engineers have been forced to make to accommodate the legacy copper network that isn’t going anywhere.

Think Broadband called the fiber to the neighborhood NBN “a farce” that has led to lowest common denominator broadband. A need to co-exist with ADSL2+ technology already offered to Australians has constrained any speed benefits available from offering faster DSL variants like VDSL2. Customers qualified for VDSL2 broadband speeds will be limited to a maximum of 12Mbps to avoid interfering with existing ADSL2+ services already deployed to other customers. Only multi-dwelling units escape this limitation because those buildings typically host their own DSLAM, which provides service to each customer inside the building. In those cases, customers are limited to a maximum of 25Mbps, not exactly broadband nirvana. The NBN is predicting it will take at least a year to take the bandwidth limits off VDSL2.

The need for further upgrades as a result of traffic growth breaks another firm commitment from the conservative government.

NBN executive chairman Ziggy Switkowski told reporters in 2013 that technology used in the NBN would not need to be upgraded for at least five years after construction.

“The NBN would not need to upgraded sooner than five years of construction of the first access technology,” Switkowski said. “It is economically more efficient to upgrade over time rather than build a future-proof technology in a field where fast-changing technology is the norm.”

Since Switkowski made that statement two years ago, other providers around the world have gravitated towards fiber optics, believing its capacity and upgradability makes it the best future-proof technology available to handle the kind of traffic growth also now being seen in Australia. At the start of 2015, 315,000 Australians were signed up for online video services. Today, more than two million subscribe, with Netflix adding more than a million customers in less than four months after it launched down under.

Many ISPs offer larger data caps or remove them altogether for “preferred partner” streaming services like Netflix. With usage caps in place, some customers would have used up an entire month’s allowance after just one night watching Netflix.

But the online viewing has created problems for several ISPs, especially during peak usage times. iiNet reports up to 25% of all its network traffic now comes from Netflix. As a result iiNet is accelerating network upgrades.

Customers still reliant on the NBN’s partial copper network are also reporting slowdowns, especially in the evening. The NBN will have to upgrade its backbone connection as well as the last mile connection it maintains with customers who often share access through a DSLAM. The more customers use their connections for Netflix, the greater the likelihood of congestion slowdowns until capacity upgrades are completed.

Hackett

Optus worries its customers have extended Internet peak time usage by almost 90 minutes each night as they watch online streaming instead of free-to-air TV. Telstra adds it also faces a strain from “well over half” of the traffic on its network now consisting of video content.

This may explain why Internet entrepreneur and NBN co-board director Simon Hackett wishes the fiber to the neighborhood technology would disappear and be replaced by true fiber to the home service.

“It sucks,” Hackett told an audience at the Rewind/Fast Forward event in Sydney in March, referring to the fiber to the neighborhood technology. His mission is to try and make the government’s priority for cheaper broadband infrastructure “as least worse as possible.”

“Fiber-to the-[neighborhood] is the least-exciting part of the current policy, no arguments,” he added. “If I could wave a wand, it’s the bit I’d erase.”

Another cost of the Coalition government’s slimmed-down Internet expansion is already clear.

According to Netflix’s own ISP speed index, which ranks providers on the quality of streaming Netflix on their networks, Australia lags well behind the top speeds of dozens of other developed nations, including Mexico and Argentina.

But even those anemic speeds come at a high cost to ISPs, charged a connectivity virtual circuit charge (CVC) by NBN costing $12.91 per 1Mbps. The fee is designed to help recoup network construction and upgrade costs. But the fee was set before the online video wave reached Australia. iiNet boss David Buckingham worries he will have to charge customers a “Netflix tax” of $19.18 a month for moderate Netflix viewing to recoup enough money to pay the CVC fees. If a viewer wants to watch a 4K video stream, Buckingham predicts ISPs will have to place a surcharge of $44.26 a month on occasional 4K viewing, if customers can even sustain such a video on NBN’s often anemic broadband connections.

Some experts fear costs will continue to rise as the government eventually recognizes its budget-priced NBN is saddled with obsolete technology that will need expensive upgrades sooner than most think.

Instead of staying focused on fiber optics, technology the former Rudd government suggested would offer Australians gigabit speeds almost immediately and would have plenty of capacity for traffic, the conservative, constrained, “more affordable” NBN is leaving many customers with no better than 12Mbps with a future promise to deliver 50Mbps some day. There is little value for money from that.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Local TV stations are plugging one of the last major holes in mobile video: streaming their news to phones and tablets. The move presents yet another challenge to cable and satellite providers, which are grappling with the widespread online availability of content.

This fall, 112 U.S. stations will begin streaming live newscasts through an app called NewsOn, one of several planned “over-the-top” offerings delivered online without a pay TV subscription.

And Verizon Digital Media Services, which offers technology that enables streaming on a wide variety of screens, is in talks with owners of more than 300 affiliates that want to supply programing directly to consumers over the Internet, Ralf Jacob, chief revenue officer, told Reuters. Stations could use the technology to stream news or other local programing.

Local broadcasters, like cable networks, are trying to adapt to the changing preferences of viewers, who increasingly want to watch programs on their own schedules. The challenge for local news programs will be to satisfy demand for mobile video without undermining audience numbers for traditional broadcasts, which generate hefty fees from cable operators as well as higher ad rates than online programing.

After years of isolated experiments with mobile news, a critical mass of the local TV industry is seizing on the idea. If they are successful, they could both increase viewing by current consumers and attract new ones, especially a younger generation of viewers who prefer watching television programing on mobile devices. But if current viewers “cut the cord,” or drop pay TV service, broadcast stations and cable operators could both suffer.

Broadcasters are eager to follow audiences who are looking outside the television for news and entertainment, said Emily Barr, president and CEO of Graham Media Group, which owns five broadcast stations and is experimenting with mobile apps for newscasts.

Pay TV still reaches 100 million households, but the industry lost 0.5 percent of its customers in the 12 months through March, according to MoffettNathanson analysts. Distributors have countered by offering customers their own apps with broadcast and cable networks.

“It’s a hedge of where the marketplace is going,” said Justin Nielson, senior research analyst at SNL Kagan.

Local broadcasters receive fees from pay TV providers based on the number of subscribers, amounting to $6.3 billion in 2015, SNL Kagan predicts. Returns from advertising are forecast to reach $21.1 billion this year.

One illustration of the risks of getting it wrong is in Britain, where the British Broadcasting Corporation recently announced job cuts because viewers have moved from TV viewing to tablets and mobile devices, which cut its TV license fees.

NEWS LEADS CHANGE

Until recently, local U.S. programing was limited in over-the-top video, since the rights to much of what local stations run is held by other parties.

Local newscasts, however, are owned by the stations themselves, so they don’t need to negotiate streaming rights.

NewsOn, which will run ads, will offer live local newscasts from 84 U.S. markets, including eight of the top 10. The five station groups that have signed up are the ABC Owned Television Station Group, Cox Media Group, Hearst Television, Media General and Raycom Media.

Other stations plan to offer more news on their own apps or expand them to more devices.

In Cincinnati, E.W. Scripps sells a subscription for ABC-affiliated station WCPO with additional stories not seen on TV, as well as free movie screenings and other perks. It has an on-demand news app in Phoenix on Microsoft’s Xbox and Apple Inc’s set-top box.

Tegna, the broadcast and digital company spun off from Gannett, is considering streaming local entertainment programing such as video of a morning radio show. Stations can now reach viewers any time of day, said Dave Lougee, president of Tegna’s broadcasting division, and “we want to be ubiquitous.”

BIG PARTNERSHIPS

Local affiliates also are trying to join streaming video packages, but they don’t own all the rights to stream shows they broadcast.

CBS has signed up more than 100,000 for its $6-a-month CBS All Access online video subscription, with more than 100 local stations. But during NFL football, viewers get a message that says the game “is not yet available for live stream.”

Fox, CBS and NBC stations are on Sony Corp’s PlayStation Vue, a streaming package launched this year in five markets.

Satellite TV provider Dish Network Corp wants local broadcasters on Sling TV, an online service it launched in February, but needs to work out programing rights with dozens of affiliates.

Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch said he expects to work on sorting that out over the next twelve months. “Over time you’ll see us launching something local,” he said.

(By Lisa Richwine; Reporting by Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Malathi Nayak in New York; Editing by Peter Henderson and Sue Horton)