Unlike Europe, where Net Neutrality is defined and enshrined, America is different. ArsTechnica have an article on their web-site that covers the mess that the FCC have gotten into with their net neutrality plans, and in particular AT&T’s response to spam comments sent in.
The FCC is looking to repeal the Title II, introduced in 2015, and are marking this a move to “restore” internet freedom. This is seen by some as a return to the “good-old-days” of the Internet, before the telecoms bubble of 2000.
Others, however see that the repeal of the Title II protection will lead to a number of changes in the Internet, and these are not good for customers. The main elements here are to offer free and fair access to consumers across a suppliers infrastructure; and to transmit lawful content across the network without impediment.
So people are rightly concerned, and have responded to the FCC’s request for comments. They helpfully provided an API to allow organisations to give large volumes of comments. By doing this, they opened themselves to the Boaty McBoatface scenario. The API allowed interested parties to collect and submit comments, it also allowed bots to send comments as well.
The FCC extended the deadline for providers to respond to the comments collected to August 30. As part of that AT&T provided a response to the FCC. This claims that a large part (36%) of the submissions are from fake email addresses, and their value is non-existent. Since they use disposable email addresses, the comment is not attributable to an individual.
A portion were multiple filings by the same email address (and therefore assumed individual). AT&T’s submission made no comment on the number of unique email addresses provided in these submissions. After all that if you are in favour of an outcome, you try many ways of ensuring its success.
Lastly some foreign email addresses filed comments. AT&T looks at submissions from Russia, with just under 450,000 submissions made, and only 4 of these would disagree with the removal of the Title II protection. AT&T also disputes that these have real value in determining US regulation.
ArsTechnica also quote from the report into the comments made by Emprata. This states that of the individually written comments made to the FCC, 73 to 1 are in favour of retaining Title II status.
Which way the FCC will move cannot yet be determined, but the regulation has a high cost burden. Reducing this burden will increase the FCC’s ability to support other activities, such as end-device regulation.
