The Current chairman of the FCC was previously a lawyer for Verizon. He gave a *closed* talk at Verizon just a week or so ago. The Review Process was marred by tens of thousands of comments in support of getting rid of the Net neutrality rules which were made under false names, some of the people commenting their "support" for removing it managed to do so from beyond the grave.
Here is an article on the portions of fake comments.
Now that it has been repealed, Comcast is looking to get new Net neutrality laws in place. Which, of course, it will be responsible for writing, by virtue of the "generous" donations that congressman have received from them.
Congressman in support of the change to remove it were, mysteriously, found to have accepted money from ISPs. I'm sure that is merely a coincidence. Additionally, the largest American ISPs, amid all this, have spent over 26 Million dollars on lobbying for the repeal of the net neutrality rules.
Companies- especially American ones - seldom spend such large sums unless they expect it to enable them to get more back.
I'm in Canada so none of this really affects me. I'm told by USians that Canada will copycat whatever the U.S does, or am given weird models where somehow U.S ISPs will somehow throttle data I receive- But regardless we are not a U.S State and the Internet doesn't work that way. Canada and the CRTC had Net neutrality rules in place before the U.S did, and Tom Wheeler on the FCC used ours (and those of a few other countries) as a model for the American version that have now been repealed. As the U.S administration and various government officials continue to prod Canada and tell us we are "doing it wrong" the CRTC has been steadfast in ignoring them and reaffirming their commitment to Canadian Citizens and not corporations.
The weird part for me is that their approach to "convince" the CRTC always seems to treat Canada as a company that needs to drive foreign investment in our Internet infrastructure. Roslyn Layton, one of the "technical experts" appointed by the FCC by the latest U.S administration, said "My biggest concern for Canada is that you continue to add regulation that deters the incentive to invest". Nothing about how these regulations work in favour of Canadian citizens, nothing about preventing ISPs and other Internet Companies from working against their customers interests in order to make more money. And when the CRTC moved against a Quebec wireless carrier which was offering a zero-rating service (A Video streaming service of their own that didn't count towards the data cap if you paid enough) Those same FCC appointees said that Canada was "in the same class as Backwards India". As if whatever India is doing is inherently bad. Meanwhile, the U.S's current rules are in line with such countries as... Slovakia and Estonia.
