Adriana Lee says, “Net neutrality—the principle that no Internet provider can pick and choose which traffic to carry—took a beating just over a year ago when Verizon successfully sued to overturn the FCC’s “Open Internet” rules. Now the FCC is ready to strike back with a vengeance. In a Wired op-ed, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler outlined his plan to enforce net neutrality by relying on some of the agency’s oldest and most robust authority—Title II of the Telecommunications Act— to categorize Internet service providers as “common carriers” akin to your... [...]

Jason Abbruzzese says, “Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, announced Wednesday that the agency will vote on rules to reclassify how broadband Internet is regulated. Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon had warned that such a shift could do serious damage to their businesses. Maybe not so much. Following the release of the plan, the stocks of several Internet service providers shot up. Others barely budged”. This chart shows why the new net neutrality proposal might just work Mashable  [...]

Kara Swisher says, “Despite a promise by CEO Marissa Mayer to let Tumblr stay Tumblr when it acquired it for $1.1 billion in early 2013, several sources inside the company said Yahoo is mulling a move to more fully integrate the sales force at the microblogging site into its larger global sales organization. What that would mean for Tumblr’s global head of brand partnerships Lee Brown or the rest of the small advertising team is unclear. But sources note that one sales force would be more efficient, especially since Mayer projected to Wall Street in Yahoo’s third-quarter earnings call... [...]

Amy Schatz says, “Connected home devices or cars, health trackers and other wearables can be useful tools for consumers, but the collection of personal data by the devices has some regulators worried. Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez on Tuesday raised concerns about potential abuse of private user information during a session at CES, saying companies need to do more to develop products that protect consumer privacy and data. “In the not too distant future, many, if not most, aspects of our everyday lives will be digitally observed and stored,” Ramirez said during an... [...]

Amy Schatz says, “The Federal Communications Commission will take up a controversial proposal for rules on Internet lines in February, an agency spokeswoman said Friday. Chairman Tom Wheeler is expected to unveil his latest net neutrality proposal to other FCC commissioners early next month with the goal of having a vote at the agency’s February 26 meeting. Wheeler’s first proposal — which would have allowed Internet providers to offer priority lane service — didn’t go over very well. This time, he is expected to proposal net neutrality rules which would rely on a part of the... [...]

Helena A. S. Popkin says, “The Internet exploded in empty rhetoric Monday over Barack Obama’s Congress-short, six years late endorsement of “net neutrality,” an issue that will likely continue to go nowhere fast despite the president’s full-throated tone. In a statement posted on the official White House website Monday, just two years before he leaves office, Obama said: I believe the [Federal Communications Commission] should create a new set of rules protecting net neutrality and ensuring that neither the cable company nor the phone company will be able to act as a... [...]

In a recent article. The Right Way to Fix the Internet, George Anders reports on innovative internet pricing approaches developed by Mung Chiang, a professor of electrical engineering at Princeton. Chaing suggested following the practice of some electric utilities of offering “off-peak” pricing. The result would be that people could choose when they downloaded large files, etc., and as a result could reduce their costs if they limited their work to times when the ISP didn’t have a heavy load. This has a lot of merits, both by avoiding expense for the ISP and providing cost savings... [...]

Helen A. S. Popkin says, “Good news, everybody who meant to share their feelings about the latest net neutrality proposal from the feds, but just never found the time! The 700,000-plus comments pouring in from your fellow lollygaggers and sundry netizens who perhaps had more stuff to say crashed the FCC’s quaint old-timey infrastructure, and now the deadline’s been extended. “Not surprisingly, we have seen an overwhelming surge in traffic in our website that is making it difficult for many people to file comments through our Electronic Filing System,” the FCC said in a statement“. FCC’s... [...]

Helen A. S. Popkin says, “In lieu of enforceable net neutrality rules—which don’t yet exist—the Internet Association posted on Monday a handy infographic on what such rules about managing Internet traffic might look like on paper. At least in the opinion of the Internet Association, anyway. It’s part of the Silicon Valley lobby group’s campaign to make the FCC issue rules that will keep cable companies and mobile providers from interfering with network traffic. Facebook, Google, Amazon, eBay, Netflix and the other three dozen Web companies which make up the Internet Association all... [...]

The latest post on ‘Mashable’ is titled “FCC Might Force Broadband Providers to Up Their Game”. Jason Abbruzzese says, “The argument over fast lanes, slow lanes, net neutrality and peering has caused concern that the future of the Internet could be in danger. But the Federal Communications Commission could have a trick or two up its sleeve. The FCC confirmed to Mashable an earlier Washington Post report that a notice of inquiry is being circulated among commissioners that calls into question the adequacy of current broadband speed requirements”. FCC Might Force Broadband... [...]