FCC Prepares Repeal On Net Neutrality: Autonomous Car Victory or Orwellian Nightmare?

You’ve no doubt heard about net neutrality over the last few years. But, in case you haven’t, net neutrality is the principle that forces Internet service providers to treat all data on the Internet equally. It forbids them from discriminating on subject matter or charging different fees based upon the user, site content, website, platform, application, or method of delivery. Essentially, it makes the internet into a tap where you pay one flat fee for access to all content.

That could soon change. On Tuesday, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission announced plans to repeal the landmark neutrality order from 2015. FCC head Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump in January, said last year that he believed net neutrality’s “days were numbered.”

Pai has been criticized for being overly supportive of telecom companies. But a few automakers support his cause, as some of the FCC’s regulations have been at odds with autonomous car development.

The planned action represents a major victory for internet service providers, including Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. According to Reuters and Automotive News, General Motors is also a proponent of the neutrality ban. The reasoning?

“From our point of view,” GM said in a letter to the FCC, “mobile broadband being delivered to a car moving at 75 mph down a highway — or for that matter, stuck in a massive spontaneous traffic jam — is a fundamentally different phenomenon from a wired broadband connection to a consumer’s home, and merits continued consideration under distinct rules that take this into account.”

To translate, GM wants ISPs to prioritize flow to autonomous cars that may need internet access at a higher rate of speed and at a greater density. That’s a legitimate concern. As anyone who has been to a concert can attest, wireless service can slow to a crawl when everyone starts uploading videos to their phones in a small area and the possible ramifications of a connected car losing service are immense.

However, General Motors is also looking to get into the data business. And with so much money on the table, it might be handy for the company to spend more to have ISPs prioritize its content over that of its competitors. And that’s one thing that has advocates of net neutrality and a handful of companies very concerned. In July, a group representing technology firms, including Google-parent Alphabet (which includes Waymo) and Facebook Inc., urged Pai to drop his plans to rescind the rules.

The concern is that the internet will no longer be “open” without net neutrality. The scenarios posited include multi-tiered payment strategies that would force buyers into cable-like packages that end up costing more in the long run, with limited access to specific content. If a certain website is unwilling to pay more to an ISP, that provider could slow down access to the site or block it entirely. But if one paid more, ISPs could also ensure a quick and crisp connection. The point is, you don’t get to choose where you want to go online anymore or how you get there — at least not like you could before.

“The FCC will no longer be in the business of micromanaging business models and preemptively prohibiting services and applications and products that could be pro-competitive,” Pai said in an earlier interview, “We should simply set rules of the road that let companies of all kinds in every sector compete and let consumers decide who wins and loses.”

While the debate on reliable web service to autonomous cars is an important one, it’s a little worrying that those vehicles might also be so dependent upon it. It’s also unfortunate that it’s connected to business aspects that have absolutely nothing to do with automotive safety. It would be great to have reliable internet access for futuristic automobiles that need it to navigate (an issue the FCC already dealt with), but it’s a little less wonderful when the end result could be a business model that gouges you on service fees and limits the availability of specific websites.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wrote on Twitter, “The internet is the public square of the 21st century. Unless we all speak out against the @FCC’s efforts to gut the free and open internet we know today could be gone for good.” He has also claimed that his office found around 100,000 phony public comments submitted to the FCC intended to mask public opposition to Pai’s goals.

My office analyzed the public comments submitted to the @FCC about —and found that 100,000s of Americans were likely impersonated to drown out the views of real people and businesses. This was akin to identity theft on a massive scale: https://t.co/xxFjSgoqVP

— Eric Schneiderman (@AGSchneiderman) November 21, 2017

[Image: NHTSA]