The Federal Communications Commission this week issued a notice of inquiry seeking public comment on a proposed change to how it measures high-speed Internet and to ask if the agency should change the low end threshold. Currently the FCC defines broadband as 4 Mbps download speed and 1 Mbps upload speed. Under the new proposal it wants to up that number to 10 Mbps or higher for a service to qualify as broadband.

Last week FCC chairman Tom Wheeler sent a letter to Verizon CEO Daniel Mead asking him to explain why he thought his company could throttle unlimited customers in the name of network management. This week Verizon responded by saying that its policy of throttling unlimited data users on congested cell sites is perfectly legal and is a way to give heavy data users an "incentive" to stop using so much data.

The Federal Communications Commission is advancing an investigation (that it formally announced back in June) into how network interconnection problems affect the quality of Internet service. At that time the FCC said that it had obtained the paid peering deals Netflix signed with Comcast and Verizon.

In a recent filing with the FCC, Major League Baseball comes out strongly against allowing for Internet fast lanes. In its statement MLB (through its BAM division) says that fast lanes only serve on singular purpose: to give ISPs a "windfall."

"Fast lanes would serve only one purpose: for Broadband ISPs to receive an economic windfall. American consumers would be worse off as the costs of fast lanes are passed along to them in new fees or charges where there were none, or higher fees or charges where they existed," MLB said.

The Huffington Post has an interesting article attempting to unravel why some rights groups have sided with broadband Internet and mobile service providers in the fight over net neutrality. They specifically point the finger at the NAACP, who has decided that it would be bad to put restrictions on ISPs because it will stymie their efforts to build out broadband networks in urban areas.

I use Time Warner Cable for my broadband internet service.  Why?  Because I have no choice.  TWC is the only provider available in my area.  It's either TWC or no wired internet.

You may have noticed that when it comes to broadband internet service in America, you almost certainly have only one option for a service provider - if you have an option at all, that is.  There are plenty of rural areas that have no service, period.

Virgin Mobile's new build-your-own smartphone plans (see the announcement from Sprint here) seems like a convenient way for consumers to customize their bills based on the types of services they use and the media they consume, but as The Verge points out, it's a slippery slope and goes agai

The Federal Communications Commission has sent a letter to Verizon asking the company a series of pointed questions concerning its plan to throttle unlimited data plan customers on its 4G LTE networks. The company announced earlier this month that it planned to start prioritizing customers who were not unlimited data plan customers over those who are - all in the name of network management.

AARP said in a press release today targeting New York's elderly population that "Internet fast lanes" for a fee being considered by the Federal Communications Commission would leave "older New Yorkers in the dust online."

More than one million Americans left comments for the FCC on a proposal by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler that would allow service providers to charge content providers a reasonable fee for better access to its customers.

Verizon’s 4G networks soon will start feeling a little less unlimited for customers who don't pay for data by the gigabyte. According to GIGA OM, Verizon will start prioritizing traffic so that customers who pay for mobile data by the gigabyte get access over customers who use  Verizon’s unlimited plans. The new policies will only apply when the network gets crowded, according to Verizon.

In a recent filing with the FCC by The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (which represents Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and other broadband providers throughout the U.S.) the trade groups claims that ISPs are worried that Netflix will start charging them for access. Ironically Comcast and Verizon are currently in deals with Netflix to provider faster access to their customers.

He said, she said.

If you're a Verizon customer, you might have experienced less than optimal performance when trying to stream movies from Netflix.  If you're not a Verizon customer, well, word on the street is that Netflix doesn't perform so hot for Verizon customers.

Netflix says it's Verizon's fault.  Verizon says it's Netflix's fault?

Who do you think is to blame?  Netflix?  Verizon?  One of those intermediaries like Level 3 or Cogent?  Gremlins?  The Illuminati perhaps?

Colin Nederkoorn, co-founder and CEO of e-mail software maker Customer.io, has declared that Verizon has made an enemy of him. Why? Because Nederkoorn found after running a test that his Netflix ran a whole lot better on VPN than on his regular connection. Nederkoorn is a FiOS customer who pays for 75Mbps download speeds. He feels that Netflix is not the problem despite what Verizon has said about the video streaming service in the past.

While it will come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to proposed changes to the 2010 Open Internet Order (Net Neutrality rules) put forth by chairman Tom Wheeler, the FCC has confirmed that over one million people submitted comments during the public comment period so far.

The deadline to submit comments ends tonight at Midnight.

According to a tweet from Gigi Sohn, Special Counsel for External Affairs, Office of the Chairman, more than 1 million people have now submitted comments on net neutrality.

In its filing with the FCC about Chairman Wheeler's proposal to allow ISPs to charge content providers for faster direct access to customers, AT&T said it supports the ban of fast lanes... as long as there are some major loopholes. Naturally these loopholes would benefit AT&T's broadband and wireless businesses.

AT&T, like Comcast, is taking an amicable position because it wants the FCC and other government regulatory agencies to approve its merger with DirecTV (in Comcast's case it is seeking approval for a merger with Time Warner Cable).

In a new filing with the FCC, Verizon claims that if broadband providers are classified as common carrier under Title II of the Communications Act, they will be forced to charge web services and web sites. It is quite a claim, and one that has been debunked by experts, but that isn't stopping Verizon from pushing the issue.

US Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has always been opposed to the FCC regulating anything, but she has been particularly outspoken about the FCC's Open Internet Order since it was introduced in 2010. To that point, Rep. Blackburn recently said that she wants to make sure the FCC never interferes with "states' rights" to protect private Internet service providers from having to compete against municipal broadband networks.

In a lengthy public comment to the FCC on net neutrality, Comcast said that it "would not be opposed" to a new standard (proposed by chairman Tom Wheeler and tentatively approved by an FCC vote) in which paid prioritization arrangements are considered commercially unreasonable unless proven otherwise. Comcast wrote:

The Federal Communications Commission was forced to extend the deadline for comments today after the public, interest groups, and others flooded the agency websites with comments today and caused it to crash. Now the public will have until midnight on Friday to comment on the agency’s controversial fast-lane net neutrality proposal. Those who haven't already can file a comment by sending an email to openinternet@fcc.gov to weigh in on the proposal. Anyone who wants to respond to initial comments filed with the FCC has until September to file additional comments.

A group of more than two dozen companies doing business in the tech and Internet space have asked the Federal Communications Commission to create strong and enforceable net neutrality rules.

The companies, who are members of The Internet Association, include Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Netflix. The groups say that they want to prevent the segregation of the Internet into fast lanes and slow lanes because it would distort the market, discourage innovation and harm Internet users.

One would expect that - after signing a deal to get direct access to its customers - Netflix performance on various Verizon broadband Internet offerings would improve dramatically. That is not the case. According to Netflix's ISP speed rankings for the month of June, performance of its video streaming service on Verizon has seen a 17 percent decline in quality.

Anyone against the proposed mergers between Time Warner Cable and Comcast and AT&T and DirecTV should take some solace in the fact that some of the members of several review committees the Federal Communications Commission has put together will not be giving either merger a rubber stamp approval.

In an editorial published in The Huffington Post today, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) put pressure on the FCC to keep Internet service providers from blocking or slowing access to certain websites. In his editorial Leahy said that the Internet needs its own rules to protect liberties much like the Bill of Rights.

New guidelines from Ofcom (the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries) will make switching from one superfast broadband supplier to another less expensive. Prior to changes in the rules, when a consumer switched from BT's Openreach (the company that controls BT's phone and broadband infrastructure) the new ISP would be hit with a £50 connection fee. This fee was typically passed on to the consumer.

Oddworld Inhabitants founder Lorne Lanning says that the biggest problem facing the video games industry is Net Neutrality. Speaking to GII, Lanning said that all of the progress made in the industry over the last few years could be undone by its own apathy towards preserving a free and open internet.

The American Cable Association (ACA) is publicly opposing AT&T's purchase of DirecTV. The trade group, which represents 850 small cable companies and Internet service providers, says that this and other mergers will make the cost of purchasing programming skyrocket.

Lawmakers are not happy with the FCC's proposal to allow broadband providers to charge content providers extra money for faster access to their customers. This supposed fast lane approach has rubbed lawmakers the wrong way, according to The Wrap, prompting them to push legislation that bans "paid prioritization."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched dearfcc.org, a web site that gives the Internet community at large a simple way to give the FCC a piece of their mind concerning net neutrality (or the Open Internet Order). You may have heard that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has put forth a proposal that would allow broadband providers like Comcast and Time Warner Cable to charge content providers for faster access to their customers (commonly referred to as selling them on "faster lanes" for internet traffic).

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says that state laws seeking to stop community-run broadband initiatives have to be dealt with, but he has not said how the agency plans to take on the thorny issue. In at least 20 states there are already legal restriction in place to thwart municipal broadband networks. Many of these laws or regulations were put in place with the help of campaign cash from ISPs, telecom companies (both regional and national) and trade groups representing these industries.

On this week's show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about who the GamePolitics community thinks will make the biggest E3 gaffe this year, President Obama name-dropping The Witcher, the new GOG.com DRM-free and platform-agnostic multiplayer client (Galaxy) and Verizon threatening to sue Netflix for talking about its service performance (This show was recorded prior to all of this week's E3 press conferences and announcements).