What does net neutrality mean to FC'ers?

[Tranquility]

FCC passed regulations (Over Republican AND ISP objections.) to define high-speed internet to be at least 25 mbps download and 5 mbps upload.

I was in the rich area for FIOS in CA and it was awesome. But, since it was in a rollout period, I don't know how it works or not now since I've moved out of the FIOS area.

I suspect that before too long, much internet access will be through cells. 4G LTE very well might meet the FCC high-speed definition--depending on conditions. 5G certainly will. While I don't know a lot about the regulation and why the change, it seems to reflect the reality of how people use the internet and how fast service can be provided to those people.

Edit:
As to FCC regulations, in an official document in the link provided by @Silver420Surfer they list as "current speed benchmark" 25 mbps download and 3 mbps upload. I don't know if the difference between that and what I posted is because of the dates involved or if a definition problem or something else. (ex. Definition of "high-speed internet" v. a "benchmark".)

 

[Tranquility]

There's some talk in the pre-media about net neutrality and the Covid. With everyone at home, there was a lot more internet usage during the day with video being the main contributor to web traffic. Netflix prospectively downgraded video signal in order to save the networks in parts of Europe. Not so much in the U.S. Both generally differed on the question of net neutrality.

U.S. #1 net neutrality was a dodge! (Read the whole article if you want, but it is a bit of a screed. I've posted the whole portion on the net neutrality issue.)
https://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2020/07/14/the-left’s-anti-reality-to-which-we-all-must-submit/

Coronavirus: Nation’s Internet Providers Have Made #SelfDistancing Telework a Piece of Cake

Governments forcing us to stay home – means hundreds of millions of additional people flooding online residentially. All day, every day. For now four months – and counting….

We predicted it would be no problem here in the US. Because our longtime light-touch-regulation of the Internet – led to now nearly $2 trillion of Internet Service Provider (ISP) investment in our networks.

Which led us to know our networks – would happily handle the strain.

Net-Neutrality-addled, heavy-regulation-inflicted Europe? Not so much.

But one week into the stupid shutdowns – one week after we predicted the US would do just fine:

YouTube, Netflix Reduce Stream Quality to Ease Strain on Internet in Europe:

“The moves comes after European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton, who oversees the EU internal market, implored streaming services to switch all streams to standard definition in a Wednesday tweet….

“‘We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by 25 percent…’ the company said.”

Please remember: Video is far-and-away the largest consumer of Internet bandwidth.

Netflix and YouTube Make Up Majority of US Internet Traffic

So Europe’s move – was a HUGE network traffic decrease. Made in advance – because they knew they couldn’t handle the strain to come.

And just now – four-plus months into the shutdown stupidity – we have learned:

U.S. Internet Speeds Increase 15.8% on Mobile and 19.6% on Fixed Broadband:

“The Q2 2020 Speedtest® United States Market Report by Ookla® is based on Speedtest Intelligence® data from over 1.6 million unique mobile user devices and 18.9 million fixed broadband devices performing more than 85.1 million consumer-initiated tests on Speedtest apps in the U.S. during the period.”

Get that?

We dramatically increased online traffic for the entirety of 2020s Second Quarter (Q2). And handled it like champs.

And whilst so doing – we increased online speeds by nearly 20%.

Meanwhile, Europe had to preemptively reduce traffic by 25%.

By ANY measure – that Reality is simply outstanding.
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The opposite position, net neutrality was best neutrality and deregulation was wrong:
Did Broadband Deregulation Save the Internet?