Except for the part where ISPs were regulated under Title II up until the late 90s.
>The free internet we know today will be utterly dependent on their good graces.
That may be the single most uneducated statement about Title II I've seen to date. What SPECIFICALLY in Title II allows the FCC to restrict what content the ISPs provide to the public? Hint: there isn't any language whatsoever giving them that ability.
We were? 90s ISPs regulated by Title II? What? No we weren't.
I started managing ISPs during the dialup era and played shepherd to a field of Livingston Portmasters. I migrated us to racks upon racks of Ascend boxes during the 56k modem wars. I set up ISDN PRIs and DS1 terminations. I turned up our DS3s and set up our first default-free peering. I left just before the DSLAMs went in.
At no point were we ever subject to Title II regulations. We priced however we wanted to price, we shaped traffic however we needed to (we virtually never did that).
DSL was covered under Title II until wireline ISPs in general were ruled as an "information service" rather than a "telecommunication service" by the FCC in 2005 in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in NCTA v. Brand X upholding the FCC's earlier (2002) declaratory ruling finding that Cable modem internet access was an "information service".
I'm lost. EnterAct/21stCenturyCable/RCN, the ISP I worked for --- starting as employee #2 --- wasn't subject to Title II, despite offering DSL service. Is it possible that this DSL ruling was a wrinkle that affected only ILECs? The ILECs were, of course, heavily regulated... hence the emergence of the CLEC market. The upthread comment did not say ILECs; they said "ISPs".
Sure, but we as the ISP were free to shape traffic, establish arbitrary fee structures, and charge for specific uses of the Internet despite the fact that we made use of Title II regulated phone company PRIs.
I'm not saying that Title II didn't exist in the 1990s. It just didn't govern ISPs.
>The free internet we know today will be utterly dependent on their good graces.
That may be the single most uneducated statement about Title II I've seen to date. What SPECIFICALLY in Title II allows the FCC to restrict what content the ISPs provide to the public? Hint: there isn't any language whatsoever giving them that ability.