Bad news for AT&T and Comcast: Calif. Senate panel OKs net neutrality bill

Did the (2015-17) net neutrality regulations even apply to mobile providers?

Whoa I didn't know about that functionality, thank you!

There's a famous Supreme Court case [1] in which a law that regulates how much wheat a farmer may keep for himself was determined to affect interstate commerce, and therefore be within the province of federal law.

Though this case was cited negatively by the Supreme Court many years later, it is still regularly cited in briefs — including by lawyers on both sides of the recent Obamacare cases.

So just because something seems local doesn't mean it couldn't fall within the Commerce Clause powers, as interpreted by the Supreme Court.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

> I buy transit from the ISP to my apartment.

I'm not sure that the proper definition of "interstate" is when the consumer crosses state lines to reach the retail location.

Is the cellular industry not interstate? An American can buy their phone at a local Verizon store and their phone connects to a local Verizon tower. Also, most Americans' ISPs are headquartered and have facilities, through which their traffic passes, in other states.

Until service providers decide to compete for customers by accepting that they won't get a fresh new rent to extract by ramming zero-rating or bundled internet packages down people's throats. Those providers can eliminate the costs you mention and keep profits steady without raising prices for their customers.

As it should be.

Republicans realized that internet giants are now in charge of determining what is true or false in the world but are run by a bunch of teenagers that are probably liberal hippies and cable companies are run by reliable Republican megadonors so lets give cable companies the ability to extort rents from those internet companies and hobble them to eliminate that threat.