FCC has already gotten 2,000 “net neutrality” complaints

AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon frequent subjects of early complaints to FCC.

Jon Brodkin – Jul 30, 2015 1:25 pm | 111

The Federal Communications Commission received about 2,000 net neutrality complaints from consumers over a one-month period, according to a National Journal article today. The overarching theme of the complaints is that customers are fed up with their Internet service providers, often due to slow speeds, high prices, and data caps. In a sampling of 60 complaints, the most frequent targets were AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon.

There doesn’t seem to be any smoking-gun proof of violations of the core net neutrality rules that prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic or prioritizing services in exchange for payment. But the FCC’s reclassification of broadband providers as common carriers allows customers to complain that general business practices are “unjust” or “unreasonable,” making it a judgment call as to whether many of the early complaints are really violations.

National Journal filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FCC, which provided an estimate of the number of complaints received in the first month after the rules took effect June 12. The FCC also provided copies of 60 complaints, which are available here.

“People are angry and frustrated, and they are therefore taking this opportunity to complain,” Public Knowledge Senior VP Harold Feld told National Journal. “I would hope this would be a wakeup call, particularly for those people who continue to labor under the delusion that everybody must be happy with their broadband.”

Complaints can be filed on the FCC’s website. The FCC forwards the complaints to ISPs, and they are required to respond to the commission and the customer within 30 days.

Even if the customer can’t prove a net neutrality violation, the complaint process itself can help customers pressure their Internet providers. Customers we interviewed for a previous story complained about allegedly unfair billing practices and got price breaks from Comcast and Time Warner Cable as a result. While the FCC already accepted complaints about other topics, the addition of net neutrality complaints seems to have inspired many of the new filings.

The 60 complaints published by National Journal include 19 filed against AT&T, 16 against Comcast, six against Verizon, three against CenturyLink, and the rest against assorted providers.

One AT&T customer in Tennessee that pays $99.70 a month for 3Mbps Internet and phone service wrote that “In addition to this outrageous monthly price, our services are CONSTANTLY going out. I’ve filed [two] repair tickets this month alone only to have someone at AT&T cancel the repair leaving us with no phone service for weeks!”

AT&T’s throttling of unlimited wireless data plans figured in 10 of the 19 complaints against the company. AT&T is currently fighting the FCC’s decision to fine the company $100 million for allegedly misleading customers about the throttling. That fine was issued under a transparency rule that has been in place since 2010. The throttling itself could be considered reasonable network management, and thus not a violation of the new rules, especially since a recent change that limits throttling only to times and places of congestion.

Numerous Comcast customers complained about data caps. “Please, please make data caps illegal!!” one Comcast customer wrote. “Comcast, having no real competitor in the Memphis, TN market, has imposed an arbitrary data cap of 300GB to non-business consumers. This data cap is neither fair nor just. Please investigate,” another customer wrote.

While the FCC says it can punish ISPs for using data caps to harm competitors and customers, the commission did not strictly outlaw data caps.

One Comcast customer in Louisiana claimed that Comcast promised $29.99 Internet service for 24 months but ended up charging $79.99 per month. This same customer complained about slower-than-advertised speeds, as did another Comcast customer in Colorado who wrote, “My family pays for 150 megabits/second for Internet and I ran a few speed tests and I’ve gotten speeds from anywhere to 9 to 30 megabits.”

Another Comcast customer in Massachusetts claimed that Comcast “throttles and chokes our entire apartment (and house’s) internet speed” but did not offer proof.

Verizon got a complaint from one customer who claims Netflix and other services were being throttled. The customer wrote that a Verizon representative said “that if I wished to stream Netflix or any other service to my Roku, I was going to have to pay a higher price. ‘Throttling’ was flatly denied, as were my claims of extortion by Verizon… In call made on July 2, I was given the option of upgrading to FiOS from the present DSL service I now have—which is not available in this part of Brooklyn, due to the fact that Verizon refuses to upgrade its copper-wire infrastructure here.”