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The bill would repeal regulations adopted in October by the Federal Communications Commission under former President Barack Obama requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers' privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc's Google or Facebook Inc. The easing of restrictions has sparked growing anger on social media sites. "We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history. We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so," said Gerard Lewis, Comcast's chief privacy officer. He added Comcast is revising its privacy policy to make more clear that "we do not sell our customers’ individual web browsing information to third parties."
Verizon does not sell personal web browsing histories and has no plans to do so in the future, said spokesman Richard Young. Verizon privacy officer Karen Zacharia said in a blog post Friday the company has two programs that use customer browsing data. One allows marketers to access "de-identified information to determine which customers fit into groups that advertisers are trying to reach" while the other "provides aggregate insights that might be useful for advertisers and other businesses." Republicans in Congress Tuesday narrowly passed the repeal of the rules with no Democratic support and over the objections of privacy advocates. The vote was a win for internet providers such as AT&T Inc, Comcast and Verizon. Websites are governed by a less restrictive set of privacy rules.
The NBC and Comcast logo are displayed on top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, formerly known as the GE building, in midtown Manhattan in New York
The White House said Wednesday that President Donald Trump plans to sign the repeal of the rules, which had not taken effect. Under the rules, internet providers would have needed to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children's information and web browsing history for advertising and marketing. Websites do not need the same affirmative consent. Some in Congress suggested providers would begin selling personal data to the highest bidder, while others vowed to raise money to buy browsing histories of Republicans. AT&T says in its privacy statement it "will not sell your personal information to anyone, for any purpose. Period." In a blog post Friday, AT&T said it would not change those policies after Trump signs the repeal.
Websites and internet service providers do use and sell aggregated customer data to advertisers. Republicans say the rules unfairly would give websites the ability to harvest more data than internet providers. Trade group USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter said in an op-ed Friday for website Axios that individual "browser history is already being aggregated and sold to advertising networks - by virtually every site you visit on the internet." This week, 46 Senate Democrats urged Trump not to sign the bill, arguing most Americans "believe that their private information should be just that."
Major internet providers say will not sell customer browsing histories
And yet five months after former-Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler challenged those claims by asking opponents “Where’s the fire?”, the broadband business has yet to implode. In fact, it may have actually improved for customers. Data from internet providers themselves show that these firms have moved to offer people faster connections and better choices. Maybe you can’t credit the open-internet rules for that, but it’s certainly becoming harder to blame them for an industry-wide slowdown.
Net neutrality doesn’t seem to hurt ISPs
Until recently, much of the debate over open-internet, or net-neutrality, rules that ban internet providers from blocking, slowing or selling priority delivery speeds to legal sites has focused on whether these regulations have led broadband providers to put less money into expanding their networks. In the January speech that marked his last public talk as FCC chair, Wheeler pointed to a slight rise in broadband investment over his term, from $75 billion in 2013 to $76 billion in 2015.
Protesters speak out against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plans to end open internet regulations.
But the trade group that compiled those numbers, US Telecom, spun them in its own press release as evidence of net neutrality impairing investment. That’s because that 2015 figure fell below 2014’s $77 billion in spending. The group has since predicted that broadband investment will further decline in 2016. Meanwhile, Wheeler and other net-neutrality advocates say lower network-upgrade costs brought on by increased efficiency mean that a 2016 dollar buys more broadband than a 2013 dollar, something an AT&T (T) executive bragged about to investors in 2016.
And pro net-neutrality groups like Free Press and the Internet Association have further argued that numbers showing lower investment involved cherry-picking the original data. Fortunately, we now have another metric to check: internet providers’ own reports to the FCC about their networks. Posted in April, those reports show impressive growth. From the end of 2015 to the middle of 2016, the share of census tracts (subsets of cities and counties with, at most, several thousand people each) with at least two broadband services offering downloads of 25 megabits per second rose from 24% to 42%.
A more recent study estimated that those numbers translate to 61.4 million households with high-speed competition — almost 53% of America’s 117 million households. And in this debate at least, connecting more people with faster service should matter more than the budgets involved. Net-neutrality advocates should acknowledge this progress too. But during June 26th a town hall in Arlington, Va., Wheeler dragged out the now-obsolete line that three quarters of broadband users have no choice.
The lack of it can hurt startups
