Senator Leahy Wants Greater Neutrality Promises From Comcast → Neutrality?

How is it neutral to require only ONE of many providers to have special restrictions?

IF in fact any regulation is required, it MUST apply to all equally.

I'm guessing this becomes a lot less important in about 14 days (election day)

Agreed.

Regulators should not be allowed to impose a condition on a merger that cannot be applied in general under the law. The courts have said regulators cannot impose NN rules absent reclassification, so what gives the FCC the right to hold these two companies hostage to NN, just because they want their merger approved?

That selective enforcement strike me as not "neutral".

Don't worry. Leahy is working on the legislation if you read his letter.

I read the letter and I see no legislation, only that he asks Comcast to extend their commitment, and that the FCC move to re-enact meaningful rules (like the ones that were struck down??? )

Considering he suddenly took up this cause in july, that letter at this late date, seems rather weak, and again one sided.
Why attack the one company that has committed while doing nothing against the one(s) that fought the letter and the spirit of the "rules"?

I'm not really against those principals, if a way can be found to apply them with equal weight to all players, but do fear the chilling effect they may have on investment if unfairly applied or not thoroughly explored as to their exact effect.
Congress and the board of the FCC has a habit of jumping onto the call for action buzz, and then enacting imbalanced legislation that may never have the intended effect and is rarely fully corrected to provide the needed relief.

Rather than tie all this to the merger, it would be better to take a year or 2 to assure industry wide reform while keeping investment attractive.

Even the best of the net neutral ideas would be useless if it causes expansion to freeze at this point as far to many do not even have even a single broadband solution available.

First page, last paragraph: "That is why I have introduced legislation with congresswoman.. that would ban paid prioritization arrangements."

You might claim that where is the legislation. Well, here it is:
»www.multichannel.com/new ··· n/375205Yeah if they apply to all ISPs that would be great. We can finally have ISPs doing the job of providing internet access, not manipulating it as they see fit.

Investment will always remain attractive as the high costs of putting up infrastructure have the positive side-effect of keeping out competitors. Companies with big cash piles go for that. The customer demand for internet connection is only going up. So you have a combination of rising demand and lack of competition = profit.

If somehow the ISPs don't end up choking new businesses like Netflix, then it's a win for capitalism and win for customer. Who could argue against that? That's why net neutrality/ban on paid prioritization/whateveryouwanttocallit is important.

Ok I see that but the link is back to june, so I assumed it died before passage, I see nothing current or likely to arise before the expected approval of the merger.
again a single target is a bad idea, better to give the FCC power and Responsibity for broad public rule making.

It takes time and support to get a bill through congress. Even FCC which has direct authority to reclassify ISPs under Title II needs time for rule making.

Leahy Bill:
»www.opencongress.org/bil ··· 113/show

anything that didn't pass in early summer is dead for this congress, I guess we will see if he try's again next year.