Beyond no-blocking rules, Title II plays big role in overall consumer protection.

A study by Maplight indicates that for every one comment submitted to the FCC on net neutrality (and there have been roughly 5 million so far), the telecom industry has spent $100 in lobbying to crush the open internet. The group found that Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) have spent $572 million on attempts to influence the FCC and other government agencies since 2008.

If you weren’t paying close attention yesterday, it may have looked like AT&T got onboard the net neutrality “day of action” protest. The company’s website displayed a banner saying that “AT&T supports an open internet,” and it sent a message to DirecTV customers mentioning the same thing. “Tell Congress to adopt permanent protections,” both messages added, before directing people to an “Open Internet” page on AT&T’s site.

Two million new pro-net neutrality comments claimed by "Day of Action" organizers.

What if you were charged $30 dollars to access only 100 websites? Could you still stream videos online if you had to purchase a $10 “expansion bundle” every month to access video streaming services? Or would you still search the news if you had to spend an additional $20 dollars for an “extension package” every month to access Fox News, CNN, CNBC or MSNBC’s websites?

Net neutrality—the rule that protects the Internet from government and corporate censorship—is incredibly popular. In poll after poll, overwhelmingly majorities of Independents, Republicans, and Democrats say they support net neutrality and oppose efforts to overturn it. So why is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) trying to kill net neutrality? As usual, follow the money.

As most of you probably noticed, last week saw a massive, online protest against FCC boss Ajit Pai's plan to completely ignore consumer welfare and gut popular net neutrality protections. Giant ISPs like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon responded to the protest in the way they've always done: by comically insisting that the press somehow got it wrong, and these companies actually really love net neutrality -- despite a decade of documented anti-competitive behavior, and the fact they've spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to kill any meaningful neutrality protections.

The White House threw its formal support behind FCC boss Ajit Pai's plan to kill popular net neutrality protections. Speaking to reporters Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the President fully supports the FCC's plan to dismantle the rules, which were created in 2015 to prevent giant ISPs like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from abusing the lack of competition in the broadband market.

Records request denied because FCC made no "written documentation" of attack.

Senator Edward Markey this week questioned FCC boss Ajit Pai's justifications for killing popular net neutrality rules in a hearing in Washington this week. We've noted repeatedly that while large ISPs claim net neutrality killed broadband investment, objective analysis repeatedly finds that to be a lie. That's not just based on publicly-available SEC filings and earnings reports, but the industry's own repeated comments to investors and analysts.

The public is fired up about net neutrality. More than 10 million comments have been filed at the Federal Communications Commission on a proposal to roll back net neutrality regulations. That's more than twice as many comments as were filed two years ago when the FCC was considering the current rules. The Republican-led FCC introduced a proposal in May to roll back the 2015 rules, and the first public comment period on the proposal ended Monday. A rebuttal period is now underway to allow for additional comments until August 16.

The US Federal Communications Commission says it has no written analysis of DDoS attacks that hit the commission's net neutrality comment system in May. In its response to a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request filed by Gizmodo, the FCC said its analysis of DDoS attacks "stemmed from real time observation and feedback by Commission IT staff and did not result in written documentation."

American leadership in technology innovation and economic competitiveness is at risk if U.S. policymakers don’t take crucial steps to protect the country’s digital future. The country that gave the world the internet and the very concept of the disruptive startup could find its role in the global innovation economy slipping from reigning incumbent to a disrupted has-been.

Yesterday, we reported that Verizon Wireless appeared to be throttling Netflix traffic, — and today, the company seems to have come clean. In a statement provided to Ars Technica and The Verge, Verizon implicitly admitted to capping the traffic, blaming the issue on a temporary video optimization test. “We've been doing network testing over the past few days to optimize the performance of video applications on our network," a Verizon Wireless spokesperson said. “The testing should be completed shortly. The customer video experience was not affected.”

The Federal Communications Commission is pushing back on a report claiming the agency didn’t document a May cyberattack it credited with knocking its website offline while users tried to file comments on a plan to repeal net neutrality rules. Gizmodo published a story Thursday that claims the FCC “holds no records” or “analysis” of multiple distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks the agency says crashed its electronic comment filing system in May. The attacks followed a “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” segment...

A second lawsuit has been filed against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week over the secrecy shrouding its plans to kill off net neutrality. An investigative journalist filed paperwork suing the FCC in New York Wednesday afternoon, accusing the agency of improperly withholding records about a May cyberattack that it claims temporarily took down a website used by the public to participate in the net neutrality debate. Specifically, the FCC has been accused of violating the...

At this point, more than sixteen million comments have been filed in response to the FCC's myopic plan to kill net neutrality protections, the majority of them in fierce opposition to the idea. We've also noted how more than 900 startups, countless engineers, and a wave of large companies and websites have similarly urged Ajit Pai to stop, pause, and actually listen to what the majority of the country is saying. And what they're saying is that they want Title II and net neutrality protections to remain in place to protect them from giant telecom duopolies with long histories of fiercely-anti-competitive behavior.

Imagine if you took every single gripe you've had with Verizon over the past five years — the time it blocked Nexus 7 tablets for five months; the time it forced you to pay $20 per month for tethering; the time it tried to make you use a mobile wallet app called "ISIS" — and finally put your foot down. For a year, you spend free moments holed up in library stacks, speaking with experts, and researching and writing a sprawling legal complaint about the company's many, many misdeeds.

When the Federal Communications Commission went looking this year for experts to sit on an advisory committee regarding deployment of high-speed internet, Gary Carter thought he would be a logical choice. Carter works for the city of Santa Monica, California, where he oversees City Net, one of the oldest municipal-run networks in the nation. The network sells high-speed internet to local businesses, and uses the revenue in part to connect low-income neighborhoods.