Tag Archives: net-neutrality

The broadband industry’s four main lobbying groups are joining forces to stop California’s state net neutrality law from taking effect. On Wednesday, mobile-industry lobbyist the CTIA; USTelecom, which lobbies for the telecommunications industry; and the two lobbying organizations for the cable industry, NCTA and the American Cable Association, jointly filed a lawsuit in federal court …

On this podcast, we talk about: Facebook on Friday disclosed a new data breach affecting 50 million users. Tesla CEO Elon Musk agrees to step down as chairman and pay fines in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC sued Musk over a tweet he sent out in August that inaccurately claimed he had secured funding to …

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday signed into law the strictest set of net neutrality protections ever seen in the US — and the Trump administration immediately said it’d challenge the state’s authority in court. Up against a midnight deadline, Brown, a Democrat, signed a bill that uses Obama-era net neutrality protections as the basis for state law. Those earlier …

California’s efforts to establish its own net neutrality rules are “illegal,” says the head of America’s top communications regulator.  “California’s micromanagement poses a risk to the rest of the country,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said in a speech at the Maine Heritage Policy Center on Friday. “After all, broadband is an interstate service; Internet traffic doesn’t recognize state lines. It follows …

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, during his second day of Senate confirmation hearings Wednesday, defended his dissent in a federal court decision that upheld the controversial Obama-era net neutrality rules. When pressed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, to explain why he disagreed with the rest of his colleagues on the US Court of Appeals for the DC …

Do big tech companies need more government oversight? That’s the question Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai pondered in a blog post Tuesday, just as Congress prepares to grill executives from Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday. Specifically, Pai said companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter need to be more transparent about how they operate their social media platforms. “Currently, the FCC …

As if robocalls weren’t annoying enough, now they’re reportedly spreading misinformation in a fight against net neutrality. This includes falsely saying that an upcoming California net neutrality bill may raise their cell phone bill by $30 if passed. One of the robocalls, which are likely targeting senior citizens, was transcribed in a report by Motherboard, it states: “Your Assembly member …

Verizon is offering an olive branch after royally fumbling how it dealt with emergency responders in California.  The nation’s largest wireless carrier said it’s lifted all speed caps for first responders on the West Coast battling wildfires, as well as for emergency workers in Hawaii, who are dealing with Hurricane Lane. It added that if another disaster arises, it’ll lift …

The Santa Clara County Fire Department has been here before.  At a hearing before the California State Assembly on Friday, Fire Chief Tony Bowden said Verizon had throttled data for firefighters twice before a recent event in which the network operator slowed data speeds for first responders at the Mendocino Complex fire. “We’ve had three instances with this specific unit of …

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai was on the defensive Thursday when asked at a Senate oversight hearing why he didn’t correct the record sooner about an alleged cyberattack on the FCC at the height of last year’s net neutrality debate. Pai defended his decision not to talk earlier about the findings of a report released last week by the …