FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

"If you are a streaming service provider click here[1], send us an email and we'll get back to you to begin the process. T-Mobile will review all submissions to ensure identification of video stream and technical requirements, including optimization for mobile viewing."

They do have a requirement that "Only lawful and licensed video content is eligible for the offering" And that you be capable of making the stream identifiable as video content and do adaptive bitrate streaming (target of 1.5 Mbps)

The only public documentation for service providers I found was in the consumer faq [2] under "I’m a streaming service provider – how do I learn more?"

It's quite probable that they won't engage with a home media server, because you're operating under fair use rather than an explicit license, or because there's too many individual home media servers and some home media servers serve media that's unlicensed and also not within the scope of fair user. But it doesn't hurt to ask and see what you get back.

Alternately, a paper from 2016 [3], suggests you could make your content available in a form that appears to be one of the supported services, and likely get mischaracterized as that service and have your data zero-rated as a result. Not sure if anyone is still running video over http in 2016, but it's worth a try. It should be apparent if it works, as when it does, T-Mobile will limit streaming bandwidth to 1.5 Mbps.

[1] bingeon@t-mobile.com

[2] https://www.t-mobile.com/tv-streaming/binge-on

[3] http://david.choffnes.com/pubs/bingeon_sigcomm16.pdf

Probably nothing because you would still get faster speeds at cheaper prices just like you had for the decades prior even though the regulatory environment was more strict. Without supporting evidence you might as well be claiming that the rooster crowing causes the sun to rise.

One that I remember in detail is interconnect fees. Some companies like Netflix operate at such a scale that they're constrained by physical reality as much as network policies. So to provide good service, it's often necessary to deploy additional physical connections between the ISP and the Netflix CDN.

Separately, such connections are widespread foundations of the Internet itself. In that context they're typically settlement-free, with providers on both sides working cooperatively to get the bits where users want them. For Netflix, providers typically require a fee to interconnect, because they wouldn't otherwise want to accept the maintenance costs of this link which serves no purpose other than providing Netflix.

So Netflix pays a fee that other organizations with an interconnect don't have to pay. Is that a net neutrality violation? Netflix argues yes - they say it's just a backdoor to discriminate against Netflix traffic. But you can see why ISPs would be concerned about a rule that they can't charge random CDNs for plugging in stuff to their servers.

There ought to be a name for this fallacy, like "alternating dictatorship single color lump-government."

Pretty much from day-one the Biden administration was trying to get a new FCC member to the understaffed commission, however with the slimmest possible 51-49 Senate majority it only takes one "blue dog" Democrat (or one heavily reliant on industry donations) to block it all. [0] That state of affairs continued until the latest attempt finally passed this month. [1]

[0] https://prospect.org/politics/democratic-majority-at-the-fcc...

[1] https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2023/9/cantwell-applauds-sen...