Companies like AT&T have already begun rolling out their backdoor versions of internet fast lanes, now that net neutrality rules have been taken away by Verizon’s FCC pick, Ajit Pai. Since then, states have been looking into ways to reverse the impending destruction of the open internet, with 21 state attorney generals setting up lawsuits against the FCC, and other states like Montana have voted on their own set of net neutrality rules—knowing that there is going to be a fight coming from the big telecoms. California has been working to create the strongest set of net neutrality laws, a version that would supersede the rules taken away by Ajit Pai. As Arstechnica writes, that bill made its way out of a Senate committee.
AT&T and a cable lobby group spoke out against the California bill at a hearing of the state Senate Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee yesterday. But lawmakers were unswayed by the industry lobbyists and voted 8-3 to move the bill forward. The eight ayes came from Democrats and the three noes came from Republicans.
Yesterday's vote was "a great first step in our effort to protect net neutrality in California so that everyone has equal access on the Internet," bill author Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said after the hearing. "Under President Obama, our country was moving in the right direction on guaranteeing an open Internet, but the Trump-led FCC pulled the rug out from under the American people by repealing net neutrality protections. In California, we can lead the effort to clean up this mess and implement comprehensive, thorough Internet protections that put California Internet users and consumers first."
AT&T has been fighting tooth and nail against this attempt by California legislators to protect the consumers in their state. Their argument is the same ones Ajit Pai has parroted—these laws aren’t needed because big telecoms haven’t done any of these terrible things you are saying we will do without these laws. But AT&T’s attempts at blocking Apple’s video messaging app FaceTime back in 2012 belies their bullshit. The argument of course can be reversed as well to read: why are you fighting so hard against rules that you say you don’t have any intention of breaking in the first place?
The other arguments being launched by big cable is that net neutrality laws make the contractual negotiations on “interconnection costs” between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast or Verizon with heavy bandwidth services like Netflix or Cogent communications which offer up large bandwidth networks to businesses. This is an attempt by big telecoms to pretend that “the free market” is under attack, and they are the victims. However, what the Californian net neutrality bill does do is give those companies a better chance to negotiate competitive rates. There’s a way to go, and some of the good parts of the bill get chipped away in the process.
The bill was almost watered down before making it through the committee vote. The committee analysis of the bill suggested cutting the provisions on zero-rating and paid interconnection in order to more closely align with the FCC's 2015 rules. The committee analysis "might as well have been written by AT&T," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said.
Despite that, Wiener said he negotiated amendments with the committee that kept "all key provisions of the bill intact."
But it’s through one hurdle, and bills like these stress out big telecoms in big ways. The newest push by big telecoms is to have federal regulation of some sort. Ideally, they want there to be laws that say states have no rights; but what it can be turned into, with the right elected officials, would be federal net neutrality laws that we could all agree with.