Mehlman

A telecom industry front group acknowledged today American broadband in the last decade has not won any awards for speed or price, but if you just give the industry ten more years of deregulation, there will be more competition than ever to change that.

For the Internet Innovation Alliance’s Bruce Mehlman, the cable and phone companies have done a fine job bringing broadband to Americans, especially considering the industry is only ten years old.  If you leave things the way they are today, the next decade will bring even more competition from phone and cable companies, he promises.

But consumer groups wonder exactly how a duopoly will ever deliver world class service in the next ten years when it has spent the last ten hiking prices on slow speed broadband and now wants to limit or throttle usage.

This afternoon, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered tried to referee the broadband debate, pondering whether America is a world leader in broadband or has just fallen behind Estonia.  Reporter Joel Rose was perplexed to find two widely diverging attitudes about broadband, each with their set of numbers to prove their case.

On one side, consumers and public interest groups like Consumers Union and Free Press who believe deregulation and industry consolidation has created a stagnant broadband duopoly that only innovates how it can get away with charging even higher prices.

On the other, the phone and cable companies, the groups they finance, and their friends on Capitol Hill who believe there isn’t a broadband problem in the United States to begin with and government oversight would ruin a good thing.

Compared with other nations, the United States has continued to see its standing fall in broadband rankings measuring speed, price, adoption rates, and quality.  When East European countries and former Soviet Republics now routinely deliver better broadband service than America’s cable and telephone companies, that story writes itself. Embarrassed industry defenders prefer to confine discussion of America’s broadband success story inside the U.S. borders, discounting comparisons with other countries around the world.

For Rep. Joe “I Apologize to BP” Barton (R-Texas), it’s even more simple than that.  Even questioning the free market is downright silly.

“As everybody knows, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” Barton said at a March congressional hearing to discuss broadband matters. “And y’all are trying to fix something that in most cases isn’t broke. Ninety-five percent of America has broadband.”

Industry-financed astroturf and sock puppet groups readily agree, and dismiss industry critics.

Bruce Mehlman, co-chair of the industry-supported Internet Innovation Alliance, which opposes more regulation, acknowledges that the story of broadband in the U.S. is a classic glass-half-full, glass-half-empty predicament. Still, he says he thinks broadband adoption in the U.S. is going pretty well considering broadband has only been available for 10 years.

“For the optimist, you’d say within a decade we’ve seen greater broadband deployment than you saw for cell phones, than for cable TV, than for personal computers,” Mehlman says. “It’s one of the great technology success stories in history.”

Mehlman says Americans don’t need more government intervention to make broadband faster and cheaper. “We haven’t yet and that’s in the first decade,” he says. “In the second decade, the marketplace is only going to be that much more competitive.”

Kelsey

The problems go further than that, however.

Derek Turner, research director for the public interest group Free Press, told NPR broadband rankings tell an important story. “For the providers to try to say that there’s no problem, it’s merely just a smoke screen,” he says.

Providers would prefer to measure their performance against each other instead of comparing themselves with foreign providers now routinely providing better, faster, and cheaper service than what American consumers can find.  They have to, if only because of those pesky international rankings illustrating a wired United States in decline.

Joel Kelsey at Consumers Union tells NPR there is an even bigger question here — what role broadband plays in our lives.

Because 96 percent of Americans can only get broadband from a duopoly — the phone or cable company, the only people truly singing the praises of today’s broadband marketplace are the providers themselves and their shareholders.  Consumers see a bigger problem — high prices, and particularly for rural consumers, slow speeds.

“If you talk to [the] industry,” Kelsey says, “they think of broadband as a private commercial service akin to pay TV or cable TV.”

On the other hand, Kelsey says, “There’s a lot of folks who think it is an essential input into this nation’s economy — an essential infrastructure question.”

National Public Radio reporter Joel Rose dived into the battle over broadband numbers between consumer groups and industry representatives. Is America’s broadband glass half-full or half-empty? (June 28, 2010) (4 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

A lobbying campaign to add language to a Senate bill that would retroactively apply a federal ban on a tax loophole could derail plans by Verizon to sell off landlines in 14 states to Frontier Communications.

Verizon has relied on provisions of the “Reverse Morris Trust” (RMT) — which lets companies spin-off subsidiaries that merge into smaller companies do so tax free — to dump landlines across the United States, leading to crushing debt and bankruptcy for the buyers.

The House Small Business and Infrastructure Jobs Tax Act of 2010 includes provisions killing off the tax loophole, and the measure passed the House at the end of March by a vote of 246 to 178.  But the House measure only applies to new deals, not to those already on the table.

Union officials and several public interest groups are asking consumers to contact their senators and request insertion of language in the Senate companion bill that would apply the ban retroactively to the latest Verizon deal with Frontier Communications.

Such a ban would prevent Verizon and Frontier from walking away from a $600 million dollar tax obligation.

Ironically, one of the House leaders strongly supporting the loophole-closing legislation is Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), whose district covers Frontier’s largest service area — Rochester, New York.

“This tax avoidance loophole does nothing to help people in rural communities who rely on traditional landlines for their phone service,” Slaughter said. “If these transactions are allowed to go forward, Verizon may drop landlines in 14 different states, a development that would mean a loss of jobs for workers and poor quality phone service for millions of Americans.”

For Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT), passage of the ban represents some late justice for the disastrous tax-free deal between Verizon and FairPoint Communications, which took over phone service in his state and other parts of northern New England.  FairPoint staggered under the debt load from the deal before collapsing in bankruptcy.

Slaughter

“The RMT was used by Verizon to avoid federal taxes when it sold its northern New England landline operations to FairPoint Communications in 2008,” Welch’s office noted.

“This loophole is bad for taxpayers, bad for consumers and bad for workers. By closing it and investing the savings in job creation, hardworking Americans – not corporations – will benefit,” Welch said.

The ban has special importance for West Virginia, which faces the prospect of turning over most of the state’s phone business to Frontier.

“The House has recognized the Reverse Morris Trust as a greedy grab by corporations to avoid paying their fare share of taxes,” said Elaine Harris, spokeswoman for the Communications Workers of America. “We pay our taxes. Why shouldn’t Verizon have to pay one cent on an $8 billion deal?”

“The Reverse Morris Trust was designed by Wall Street for Wall Street, not West Virginians,” said Ron Collins, a union vice president. “We’re happy Congress shares our view that the Reverse Morris Trust is a tax break for corporations, not a job-creating tool. Without this tax loophole, I don’t believe Verizon would be so eager to sell to Frontier.”

The Charleston Gazette attempted to get the views of Verizon and Frontier over the bill’s passage in the House.  Verizon spokeswoman Christy Reap declined comment. A Frontier spokesman couldn’t be reached for comment.

DC Circuit Court

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled the Federal Communications Commission has no authority to tell the nation’s largest cable operator to stop throttling broadband traffic crossing its network.  In a widely anticipated 36-page unanimous decision, the Court found the Commission exceeded its authority when it censured Comcast in 2008 for interfering with BitTorrent traffic.

The implications of the ruling could derail Commission plans to enforce Net Neutrality and implement the wide-ranging National Broadband Plan announced in March.

Judge David Tatel, writing for the court, found the Commission erred when it relied on policy statements issued by Congress as the basis for its authority to regulate broadband service:

The teaching of Southwestern Cable, Midwest Video I, Midwest Video II, and NARUC II—that policy statements alone cannot provide the basis for the Commission’s exercise of ancillary authority—derives from the “axiomatic” principle that “administrative agencies may [act] only pursuant to authority delegated to them by Congress.” Policy statements are just that—statements of policy. They are not delegations of regulatory authority.

Tatel

The seed for today’s authority-stripping ruling was first planted by the Bush Administration, which favored telecommunications deregulation.  When the FCC was tasked with finding a way to regulate fast-growing broadband, the Republican majority on the Commission was receptive to industry arguments that over-specific broadband regulation could hamper broadband development and have unintended consequences on private investment.  Urged instead to develop a general policy towards broadband, then FCC Chairman Michael Powell presided over the development of an “Internet Policy Statement” containing four informal principles the agency would rely on when assessing broadband:

1. Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
2. Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
3. Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
4. Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

The Commission’s often vague Internet Policy Statement was fatally flawed from day one, according to some legal experts.  First, the Statement was never codified by the Commission’s own rulemaking procedure.  Second, the Commission framed the broadband policy as a set of “guidelines,” a term considered legally vague.  Third, the FCC relied on the concept of “ancillary” authority — borrowing regulatory authority from so-called “policy statements” coming from Congress, to claim jurisdiction.

Even though some in the industry favored total deregulation of broadband, most providers agreed to adhere to the Four Principles, until Comcast decided it had the right to throttle down the speed of customers using file swapping software.  That violated Principle #2, and the Commission censured Comcast for purposely interfering with network traffic.

Comcast sued, claiming the Commission lacked the authority to regulate its network management policies.  Comcast first denied it was throttling broadband traffic, but later admitted the company was purposely governing the speed available to such software applications to protect their other customers.  Comcast argued that certain file swapping software does in fact harm its network (Principle #3) because the software utilizes as much broadband capacity it can find to move files back and forth.  Since Comcast customers in a neighborhood share a limited amount of bandwidth, a small number of customers ‘maxing out their connections’ running such software could potentially slow down everyone  else in the neighborhood.

Ultimately, today’s court decision agreed with Comcast — the Federal Communications Commission lacks authority over broadband.

It also did the industry one better by warning any regulatory authority the Commission believes it has over broadband better be backed up with specific authority granted by Congress, or the court may find those policies vulnerable as well.

In short, the court just fired a warning shot suggesting the FCC has no authority to enact Net Neutrality protections or the National Broadband Plan, at least not under Kevin Martin’s flawed approach.

The ruling comes as no surprise.  The attorney for the FCC found a hostile reception from the court during oral arguments back in January.  Where was the specific authority, granted by Congress, to oversee broadband policy they asked?  Why is the Commission relying on general principles to govern broadband?  By the end of the session, the FCC’s lead attorney was foreshadowing the imminent loss of his case by asking the court to make the decision against the FCC a teachable moment — giving advice in the ruling as to how to write policies that -will- survive a court test.  The court wasted no time telling the attorney that wasn’t their job.

Public interest groups and others advocating Net Neutrality and the National Broadband Plan issued statements warning about the implications of an industry freed from regulatory oversight.

S. Derek Turner, research director for Free Press:

“The decision has forced the FCC into an existential crisis, leaving the agency unable to protect consumers in the broadband marketplace, and unable to implement the National Broadband Plan. As a result of this decision, the FCC has virtually no power to stop Comcast from blocking Web sites. The FCC has virtually no power to make policies to bring broadband to rural America, to promote competition, to protect consumer privacy or truth in billing. This cannot be an acceptable outcome for the American public and requires immediate FCC action to re-establish legal authority.

“This crisis is not a result of a weak congressional law, but a direct consequence of the previous two Commissions’ misguided and overzealous attempts to completely deregulate America’s communications networks. Past FCC actions created a huge loophole in the law that leaves the agency unable to protect consumer privacy or promote universal broadband access.

“The FCC must have the authority to carry out its consumer protection and public interest mission in the 21st-century broadband marketplace. The current Commission did not create this existential crisis, but it now has no choice but to face these tough jurisdictional questions head on, and do what is necessary to protect consumers and promote competition.”

Ryan Singel – Wired Magazine:

A broadband company could, for instance, ink a deal with Microsoft to transfer all attempts to reach Google.com to Bing.com. The only recourse a user would have, under the ruling, would be to switch to a different provider — assuming, of course, they had an alternative to switch to.

Companies can also now prohibit you from using a wireless router you bought at the store, forcing you to use one they rent out — just as they do with cable boxes. They could also decide to charge you a fee every time you upgrade your computer, or even block you from using certain models, just as the nation’s mobile phone carriers do today.

While this might seem like a win for the nation’s broadband and wireless companies, the ruling could be so strong that it boomerangs on them. For instance, if the FCC is left without the power to implement key portions of the National Broadband Plan — a so-far popular idea — then Congress or the FCC may have to find a way to restore power to the commission. That could leave the FCC stronger than it was before the ruling.

Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge:

“Today’s Appeals Court decision means there are no protections in the law for consumers’ broadband services. Companies selling Internet access are free to play favorites with content on their networks, to throttle certain applications or simply to block others. In addition, as of now, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) ambitious National Broadband Plan to help boost the economy is in legal limbo. The ability of the FCC to support broadband through universal service is in jeopardy, as is the agency’s ability to protect consumer privacy, ensure access to broadband-based emergency communications or promote access to broadband for the disabled. In our view, the FCC needs to move quickly and decisively to make sure that consumers are not left at the mercy of telephone and cable companies.

“If it chooses, the Commission can continue to roll the dice and let the courts decide each time it wants to try to put some consumer protections on a broadband service. The court decision left open that option.

“We have a different idea. The FCC should immediately start a proceeding bringing Internet access service back under some common carrier regulation similar to that used for decades. Some parts of the Communications Act, which prohibit unjust and unreasonable discrimination, could be applied here. The Commission would not have to impose a heavy regulatory burden on the telephone and cable companies, yet consumers could once again have the benefit of legal protections and the Broadband Plan could go forward. The American public deserves no less.

“We need to emphasize that no one is talking about regulating ‘the Internet.’ No one is talking about regulating search engines or Web sites. We are talking about re-applying policies to a telecommunications service that the FCC incorrectly abandoned. That is the most simple solution and it’s the correct one.”

The FCC, despite the decisive loss in court, claims it will carry on.

“Today’s decision invalidated the prior commission’s approach, but in no way disagreed with the importance of preserving a free and open Internet,” FCC spokeswoman Jen Howard said in a statement.

Nick Summers, writing for Newsweek’s ‘Techtonic Shifts’ blog, believes FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is likely to aggressively respond to today’s court decision by employing the “nuclear option,” reclassifying broadband Internet as a communication service just like the nation’s phone system, bringing it fully under FCC regulation.

Would Genachowski go that far, undoing virtually all of the Bush-era FCC’s policies? Yes. In September, he gave a major address about net neutrality without ever actually uttering the phrase. But he concluded with these strong words:

“We are here because 40 years ago, a bunch of researchers in a lab changed the way computers interact and, as a result, changed the world. We are here because those Internet pioneers had unique insights about the power of open networks to transform lives for the better, and they did something about it. Our work now is to preserve the brilliance of what they contributed to our country and the world. It’s to make sure that, in the 21st century, the garage, the basement, and the dorm room remain places where innovators can not only dream but bring their dreams to life. And no one should be neutral about that.”

The importance that Genachowski et al. place on net neutrality has never remotely been in doubt. In February 2009, months before he was confirmed as FCC chairman, at a private dinner in Manhattan, Genachowski spoke about the Internet’s role in the election of President Obama and in America’s future. He was circumspect about details, but Genachowski spoke unreservedly about the need for certain core protections if the country was to remain at the fore of the Internet revolution. It’s just that important.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC FCC Loses Comcast Case 4-6-10.flv[/flv]

CNBC reports the FCC’s loss in court could open the door to metered broadband service in the United States.  (2 minutes)

[Article Correction 4/15/2010: The original piece laid blame for the classification of broadband as an “information service” on former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.  In fact, the classification was made by former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who served during the first term of the Bush Administration.  We regret the error.]

Comcast blocks C-SPAN programming for those who are not Comcast customers

Public interest groups today began an offensive against the cable industry’s attempts to stave off potential online video competition with an industry dominated and controlled online video platform that guarantees consumers won’t cut cable’s cord.

Free Press, Media Access Project, Public Knowledge and Consumers Union are sending letters to the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission calling for a probe into the industry’s “TV Everywhere” project, designed to weed out non-cable subscribers from accessing online video programming.

The undertaking, which the industry claims will eventually rival Hulu in size and scope, seeks to provide their broadband customers with on-demand access to as much programming as possible, as long as they subscribe to a corresponding video programming and broadband service package.

Known in the industry as a “pay wall,” the system would assure pay television companies affiliated with the project that they will not lose subscribers from customers cutting the cord to watch programming online for free.  Consumer groups call that collusion, and accuse the industry of secretly meeting to outline the TV Everywhere concept and may be violating anti-trust laws in the process.

“The old media giants are working together to kill off innovative online competitors and carve up the market for themselves,” said Marvin Ammori, a law professor at the University of Nebraska and senior adviser to Free Press. Ammori’s report: TV Competition Nowhere: How the Cable Industry Is Colluding to Kill Online TV, is included in the mailing to the federal agencies.

Ammori says the industry has a long history of controlling behavior.

“Over the past decade, they have locked down and controlled TV set-top boxes to limit competing programming sources; they have considered imposing fees for high-capacity Internet use in ways that would discourage online TV viewing; and they have pressured programmers to keep their best content off the Internet,” Ammori writes.

In addition, these companies, which already dominate the Internet access market, have threatened to discriminate against certain online applications or have already been caught violating Network Neutrality. Indeed, the FCC issued an order in 2008 against Comcast for blocking technologies used to deliver online TV, noting the anti-competitive effect of this blocking. While it may be economically rational for cable, phone and satellite companies to squash online competitors, the use of anti-competitive tactics is bad for American consumers and the future of a competitive media industry.

The latest method of attack aimed at online TV, however, may be the most threatening — and is also likely illegal. Competition laws aim to ensure that incumbent companies fight to prevail by providing better services and changing with the times, not by using their existing dominant position and agreements to prevent new competitors from emerging.

TV Everywhere has a simple business plan, under which TV programmers like TNT, TBS and CBS will not make content available to a user via the Internet unless the user is also a pay TV subscriber through a cable, satellite or phone company. The obvious goal is to ensure that consumers do not cancel their cable TV subscriptions. But this plan also eliminates potential competition among existing distributors. Instead of being offered to all Americans, including those living in Cox, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable regions, Fancast Xfinity is only available in Comcast regions. The other distributors will follow Comcast’s lead, meaning that the incumbent distributors will not compete with one another outside of their “traditional” regions.

In addition, new online-only TV distributors are excluded from TV Everywhere. The “principles” of the plan, which were published by Comcast and Time Warner (a content company distinct from Time Warner Cable), clearly state that TV Everywhere is meant only for cable operators, satellite companies and phone companies. By design, this plan will exclude disruptive new entrants and result in fewer choices and higher prices for consumers.

This business plan, which transposes the existing cable TV model onto the online TV market, can only exist with collusion among competitors. As a result, TV Everywhere appears to violate several serious antitrust laws. Stripped of slick marketing, TV Everywhere consists of agreements among competitors to divide markets, raise prices, exclude new competitors, and tie products. According to published reports and the evident circumstances, TV Everywhere appears to be a textbook example of collusion. Only an immediate investigation by federal antitrust authorities and Congress can prevent incumbents from smothering nascent new competitors while giving consumers sham “benefits” that are a poor substitute for the fruits of real competition.

Ammori

The benefits of controlling the marketplace of video and online entertainment is a lucrative one, earning players billions in profits each year.  Losing control of the business model risks the industry repeating the mistakes of the music industry, which overpriced its product and alienated consumers with annoying digital rights management technology and lawsuits.  It also risks a repeat of the newspaper industry which many in the cable industry believe made the critical mistake of giving away all of their content for free.

With online video services like Hulu generating enormous online traffic from its free video programming, the cable industry fears they might already be headed down the road newspapers paved.  TV Everywhere is part of a multi-pronged defense plan according to Ammori.

Indeed, what the industry cannot control themselves, Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and “consumption billing” can handily manage.

Ammoni notes:

Cable and phone companies have proposed cap-and-metered pricing for Internet service that appears to target online TV. Unlike the current all-you-can-eat monthly fee-plans, cap-and-metered pricing would charge users based on the capacity used. As a result, downloading or streaming large files will be more expensive than smaller files. In March 2009, Time Warner Cable announced metered pricing trials in four cities that would have made watching online TV cost prohibitive.

AT&T is testing a metering plan on its wireline U-verse service with hopes for national expansion. Even under generous allowances for bandwidth, users could not watch high-definition programming for many hours a day.

In response to trials by Time Warner Cable, a House bill was introduced in Congress, and Time Warner Cable dropped its immediate plans under consumer pressure. The company stated the plans would be reintroduced following a “customer education process.”

“Online TV is this nation’s best shot at breaking up the cable TV industry oligopolies and cartels. Permitting online distributors to compete vigorously on the merits for computer screens and TV screens will result in increased user choice, more rapid innovation, lower prices and a more robust digital democracy,” Ammoni concludes.

Phillip Dampier

The Wall Street Journal today published an article reviewing the landscape of flat rate broadband service and how some Internet providers want to change it.

The article quotes me on the issue of Internet Overcharging becoming a political football in the Net Neutrality debate.

“This could come down to carriers saying, ‘If you don’t allow us to manage our networks the way we see fit, then we will just have to cap everything,’ ” says Phillip Dampier, a consumer advocate focusing on technology issues in Rochester, N.Y. “They’ll make it an either/or thing: give them more control over their network or expect metered broadband.”

Mr. Dampier was among those who forced Time Warner Cable to shelve a metered Internet pilot program in several cities last year. The company, which had argued the plan would be a fairer way to charge for access, acknowledged it was a “debacle.” It won’t say if it plans to revive the trials.

Unfortunately, the article never bothers to mention Stop the Cap!, the website dedicated to fighting these overcharging schemes.

AT&T weighs in on their experiment to overcharge consumers in Beaumont, Texas and Reno, Nevada, and analysts think Net Neutrality arguments may give providers an excuse to expand those experiments, launch price increases and blame it on Net Neutrality policies:

“Some type of usage-based model, for those customers who have abnormally high usage patterns, seems inevitable,” an AT&T spokesman says. AT&T declined to provide more details on its trials.

“Unquestionably, the carriers erred in their initial selling of broadband with a flat rate,” says Elroy Jopling, research director of Gartner Inc. “They assumed no one would use it as much as they do now, but then along came high-definition movies. They’re now trying to get around that mistake.”

Network neutrality deals primarily with ensuring that Internet providers don’t favor any online traffic over any other. Still, Mr. Jopling and other analysts argue, the net neutrality debate might provide the carriers with an opening to argue for changing that pricing.

“With network neutrality enforced, the only other option for carriers is to charge by the byte or to raise the flat-rate pricing,” says Johna Till Johnson, president of Nemertes Research. “Right now they’re just deciding which one to do. Just be prepared to pay more.”

It's "Rep. Eric Massa," Not 'Joe Messa'

The article has several flaws.

• It mis-identifies Rep. Eric Massa (D-New York) as “Rep. Joe Messa.”  Rep. Massa introduced legislation to ban Internet Overcharging when companies cannot produce actual evidence to justify it, particularly in the limited competitive marketplace for broadband in the United States.
• The article fails to mention the usage limits proposed by smaller broadband providers, including Frontier’s infamous 5GB usage definition in their Acceptable Use Policy.  This is a very important fact to consider when the article quotes Professor Andrew Odlyzko, an independent authority on broadband usage, as stating the average broadband consumer uses triple that amount (15 gigabytes per month).
• The quotation about the number of e-mails or web page views available under plan allowances that routinely appear in such articles ignores the increasing use of higher bandwidth applications like online video.  Telling a consumer they can send 75 million e-mails is irrelevant information because no consumer would ever need to worry about usage limits if they only used their account for web page browsing and e-mail usage.  They very much do have to be concerned if they use their service to watch online video from Hulu or Netflix, or use one of the online backup services.
• The article makes no mention of publicly available financial reports from broadband providers like Time Warner Cable that prove that at the same time their profits on broadband service are increasing, the company’s costs to provide the service continue to decline, along with the dollar amounts they spend to maintain and expand that network to meet demand.  Providing readers with insight into the true financial picture of a broadband provider, instead of simply quoting the public relations line of the day would seem particularly appropriate for The Wall Street Journal.
• The article doesn’t make mention that the same providers arguing increased Internet traffic is creating a problem for them are also working to launch an online video distribution platform that will rival Hulu in size and scope.  TV Everywhere will consume an enormous amount of the broadband network they claim can’t handle today’s traffic without Internet Overcharging schemes being thrown on customers.  Of course, such usage limits are very convenient for companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable and AT&T, which are now in the business of selling pay television programming to consumers.  Should a consumer choose to watch all of their television online instead of paying for a cable package, a usage allowance will help put a stop to that very quickly, as will planned restrictions that only provide online video to “authenticated” existing pay television subscribers.

One thing remains certain – providers are still itching to overcharge you for your broadband service.  Consumers and the public interest groups that want to represent them must stand unified in opposition to Internet Overcharging schemes and for Net Neutrality protection, and never accept sacrificing one for the other.