Net neutrality supporters will get their day in court this week as they challenge the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) repeal of the popular Obama-era internet rules. A panel of federal appeals court judges will hear oral arguments Friday in a lawsuit challenging the FCC’s deregulation of the broadband industry. The court date comes more than a year after the agency voted to roll back the rules requiring internet service providers to treat all web traffic equally.

Last year, four of the largest U.S. cell carriers were caught selling and sending real-time location data of their customers to shady companies that sold it on to big spenders, who would use the data to track anyone “within seconds” for whatever reason they wanted. At first, a little-known company LocationSmart was obtaining (and leaking) real-time location data from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint and selling access through another company, 3Cinteractive, to Securus, a prison technology company, which tracked phone owners without asking for their permission.

In the waning hours of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order, ending net neutrality protections for the millions of Americans who support them. The fallout of that decision continued all throughout 2018, with attempts to reverse the FCC in Congress, new state laws and governor executive orders written to secure state-level protections, court cases, and ever-increasing evidence that a world without the Open Internet Order is simply a worse one.

Finally some good news: The internet is getting faster, especially fixed broadband internet. Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8 percent and upload speeds are up 22 percent from last year, according to internet speed-test company Ookla in its latest U.S. broadband report. The growth in speed is important as the internet undergirds more of our daily lives and the wider economy. As internet service providers continue building out fiber networks around the country, expect speeds to increase, though speeds vary widely by region depending on infrastructure and whether or not an area has fiber.

The fight to keep the FCC from killing net neutrality isn't over yet. Last December, in a party-line vote, the FCC reversed the 2015 policy that keeps Internet service providers from picking and choosing who gets faster access, more traffic, and for how much money. California is currently working to impose its own state-wide net neutrality laws, but a major push in Congress is currently under way also.

A small Massachusetts town has rejected an offer from Comcast and instead plans to build a municipal fiber broadband network. Comcast offered to bring cable Internet to up to 96 percent of households in Charlemont in exchange for the town paying $462,123 plus interest toward infrastructure costs over 15 years. But Charlemont residents rejected the Comcast offer in a vote at a special town meeting Thursday.

Household bandwidth consumption is soaring thanks to video streaming, new data suggests, and American consumers are about to run face-first into broadband usage limits and overage fees that critics say are unnecessary and anti-competitive. Cisco’s 2018 Visual Networking Index (VNI)—an annual study that tracks overall internet bandwidth consumption to identify future trends—predicts that global IP traffic is expected to reach 396 exabytes per month by 2022. Cisco’s report claims that’s more traffic than has crossed global networks throughout the entire history of the internet thus far.

The Democratic members of Congress staying mum on net neutrality have all taken campaign contributions from major telecom companies, according to Federal Election Commission filings. In May, the Senate passed a joint resolution under the Congressional Review Act that would overturn the Federal Communication Commission’s decision to scrap free internet rules last year.

Fight for the Future announced Wednesday that on Nov. 29, supporters of restoring nationwide net neutrality rules—which the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rolled back last year—are planning "an epic, final protest to pressure lawmakers before a crucial deadline to save the internet."

The Federal Communications Commission plans to publish a report on Wednesday that will purportedly reveal whether internet service The Federal Communications Commission plans to publish a report on Wednesday that will purportedly reveal whether internet service providers are providing the broadband speeds they claim they are. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai published a cheesy Thanksgiving blog post on Tuesday. Mixed in with some quaint dad jokes and various other announcements, Pai mentions that the FCC is releasing a “Communications Marketplace Report” that includes information on broadband speed.

A US appeals court ruling today said that cable companies do not have a First Amendment right to discriminate against minority-run TV channels. Charter, the second-largest US cable company after Comcast, was sued in January 2016 by Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios Networks (ESN), which alleged that Charter violated the Civil Rights Act of 1866 by refusing to carry TV channels run by the African-American-owned ESN. Allen, a comedian and producer, founded ESN in 1993 and is its CEO...

Democrats and Republicans can agree on at least one thing: The spam robocall situation has gotten entirely out of hand.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, renewed his push for "net neutrality" protections Thursday, following reports that many major U.S. mobile carriers may be "throttling," or slowing down, certain services on their networks. Markey, who led the U.S. Senate push to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's rollback of net neutrality rules, said the findings from researchers behind the app "Wehe" underscore the need for the Obama-era internet rules.

The next generation of wireless technology, fittingly known as 5G, is just around the corner. If you ask Verizon, it's already here. One thing the entire industry can agree on is it's going to change our lives. The industry, of course, really wants 5G to be a thing.

California has agreed to delay the enforcement of its “gold standard” net neutrality bill, according to a statement from the law’s sponsor Sen. Scott Wiener. The net neutrality rules were set to go into effect next year, but California officials have agreed to wait until the courts have resolved any pending litigation over the Federal Communications Commission’s roll back of the federal rules late last year.

The US Federal Communications Commission asked American to comment on net neutrality last year. Twenty-two million people responded. What people actually said hasn’t been entirely clear. Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS) decided to parse the millions of comments (pdf) submitted to the FCC, a public comment process allegedly plagued by fraud.

The FCC's rollback of net neutrality rules has sparked an ongoing battle over the future of the internet. The federal government is fighting with states, internet service providers (ISPs) and tech companies are joining the fray, and consumers are simply doing anything in their power to maintain some control and security over their digital lives.

For many students, net neutrality is an afterthought. But its effects, or lack thereof, impact us all more substantially than we think. “Net neutrality is essentially the rules of the road for the internet, and it gives equal treatment to all internet traffic,” said Kyle Wrather, a PhD candidate at UT who specializes in net neutrality. Internet Service Providers are unable to give priority to content by sources, giving users equal access to information. Unfortunately, these things are no longer the case.”

The Federal Communications Commission chairman slammed wireless carriers on Tuesday for failing to quickly restore phone service in Florida after Hurricane Michael, calling the delay "completely unacceptable." But FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's statement ignored his agency's deregulatory blitz that left consumers without protections designed to ensure restoration of service after disasters, according to longtime telecom attorney and consumer advocate Harold Feld.

When T-Mobile and Sprint first announced their plans to merge in April, the companies didn’t mention any plans to offer in-home broadband internet services. But that changed in June, when the companies promised to grow into the nation’s fourth largest ISP, behind the likes of Comcast and Charter.