A disturbing report showing a trend among wireless carriers of throttling down on streaming speeds for their customers – just because they can – has stirred up talks about net neutrality again.
A few months ago we shared our thoughts online about the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules and what could happen because of it. Net neutrality can be very difficult to understand, that’s why we laid it all out in an article on our blog, along with our official position that can be accessed here:
“Our Position on Net Neutrality”In essence, net neutrality was made official when the FCC passed its Open Internet Order in December 2010, requiring internet service providers (ISPs) to give everyone equal access to everything they use the internet for. The rules also prevented ISPs from “pay to play” scenarios and giving faster speeds to those who could afford to pay it. In 2017, the FCC repealed those rules and gave the green light to telecommunication companies to resume policies that violate the principals of net neutrality.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg News posted an article sharing research results from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst showing that some of the largest U.S. telecommunication companies, including Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, were found slowing internet traffic from popular apps like YouTube and Netflix.
According to Bloomberg, these telecommunication companies say they’re throttling speeds to some of the most popular sites on the internet to help manage their network due to the number of customers on their so-called “unlimited” plans.
This is not breaking news to us, and we’ve shared our thoughts about these hidden dangers of other carriers’ “unlimited plans” in our blog article titled “Softcom Reveals the Truth About “Unlimited” Plans.” Without net neutrality rules, the big telecommunication companies can continue to manipulate access, unless customers pay more money.
Unfortunately, even though this report shines a spotlight on the practices of these carriers, it doesn’t mean they will change how they operate. Here in California, for example, these ISP’s are actively attempting to block the state’s new net neutrality law by encouraging their employees to contact Governor Jerry Brown and ask for his veto.
Here at Softcom, our unwavering mission is to deliver the fastest and highest quality truly unlimited internet service to our customers.
We have partnered with companies like Netflix, Google, and Amazon (to name a few) to establish direct connections with them to make sure that the content that our customers want is delivered to them as fast as possible.
We want our customers to be able to use the internet as much as they want without having to worry about crossing some arbitrary number and having their service slowed down for the rest of the month.
It’s just the right thing to do.