A Side Note On Net Neutrality From NPR: Your Comments Were Ignored

Europe does not have “Net Neutrality” laws– but there is intense competition for the business of the consumer over that “last mile” of connectivity.  Most European internet subscribers have a choice of several– at least four or five — different Internet Service Providers, whereas Americans overwhelmingly have either one (78%) or two possibilities for different companies to provide fast service.  So American companies usually have monopolies or near-monopolies and must be regulated much more firmly to prevent them from abusing their customers and getting away with it.

A side note: a huge number of the comments submitted to the FCC turned out to be bogus, generated by dishonest means– several millions of the 22 million total comments submitted.  94% of comments were submitted multiple times, some of them hundreds of thousands of times.  New York Attorney General concluded that some 2 million comments were fake and half a million came from Russian addresses.  Democratic FCC Commission Josephine Rosenworcel said forging ahead without considering this situation shows the FCC’s “sheer contempt” for public input.

The NPR story on this can be found here.