I think we have a lot of Chicken Littles reacting to this news.
All the articles that speak out against this agreement are mostly just laundry lists of no-network-neutrality doomsday scenarios, and are not even attempting an unbiased discussion of what this proposal is actually saying.
The proposal explicitly solidifies network neutrality for wired services, which is good. But it's true, this proposal does not cover wireless service: "Because of the unique technical and operational characteristics of wireless networks, and the competitive and still-developing nature of wireless broadband services, only the transparency principle would apply to wireless broadband at this time." Those last three words are important. This proposal is not advocating for wireless service network neutrality, but it also is not advocating against it. And perhaps most importantly, this proposal explicitly leaves the door open for discussing wireless service network neutrality in the future. So I think we should be able to accept this as a first step, then afterwards continue to advocate for similar practices to be implemented for wireless service as well.
It also suggests that ISPs be able to have content and services specific to their subscribers, as long as it does not "threaten the meaningful availability of broadband Internet access services or have been devised
or promoted in a manner designed to evade these consumer protections." I suppose people can be up-in-arms about that, but I think that's a reasonable target: ISPs can do what they want as long general internet access is not compromised.
All the articles that speak out against this agreement are mostly just laundry lists of no-network-neutrality doomsday scenarios, and are not even attempting an unbiased discussion of what this proposal is actually saying.
The proposal explicitly solidifies network neutrality for wired services, which is good. But it's true, this proposal does not cover wireless service: "Because of the unique technical and operational characteristics of wireless networks, and the competitive and still-developing nature of wireless broadband services, only the transparency principle would apply to wireless broadband at this time." Those last three words are important. This proposal is not advocating for wireless service network neutrality, but it also is not advocating against it. And perhaps most importantly, this proposal explicitly leaves the door open for discussing wireless service network neutrality in the future. So I think we should be able to accept this as a first step, then afterwards continue to advocate for similar practices to be implemented for wireless service as well.
It also suggests that ISPs be able to have content and services specific to their subscribers, as long as it does not "threaten the meaningful availability of broadband Internet access services or have been devised or promoted in a manner designed to evade these consumer protections." I suppose people can be up-in-arms about that, but I think that's a reasonable target: ISPs can do what they want as long general internet access is not compromised.