FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler issued a statement today laying out the agency’s strategy for preserving and restoring open Internet policies, but also confirmed that the FCC had no plans on appealing an earlier court decision in the case against Verizon. The Appeals Court ruled that the agency did not have the authority to enforce its net neutrality rules over broadband networks under section 706 of the Telecommunications Act.

The Obama Administration has responded to a petition on "We The People" calling on the president to compel the FCC to fix net neutrality rules and lobby congress to do the same. In its response the administration reaffirmed its commitment to net neutrality rules, while at the same time highlighting the fact that the Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency.

The day after Comcast announced its intentions to buy out Time Warner Cable, it mobilized its army of lobbyists and consultants to gauge the atmosphere in Washington D.C concerning the deal. The company has no problem lobbying lawmakers and padding their campaigns with cash to get the job done either.

Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) has come out strongly against a proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, Sen. Franken said that there is already not enough competition in this [we assume he means broadband and cable television] space and this deal goes in the wrong direction. He also said that he is thinks this deal will increase cable prices and decreased the quality of service for Time Warner Cable customers.

Comcast is expected to announce a deal worth $44 billion to buy out rival cable operator Time Warner Cable today, according to a Bloomberg report. The company will reportedly announce today that it plans to pay $159 a share to Time Warner Stock holders.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued an action alert urging members and the internet-community-at-large to contact their elected officials in Washington D.C. and urge them to support two stop-gap measures that would restore net neutrality rules until a more permanent solution can be worked out by lawmakers. You can check out the appeal from the ECA below:

A fascinating account of one man's encounter with a Verizon customer support representative details how the company admitted that it was selectively limiting bandwidth to AWS services and adversely affecting the quality of Netflix.

California US Reps. Henry Waxman and Anna Eshoo (both Democrats) submitted legislation this week that would reinstate the net neutrality rules recently struck down by a D.C Federal Appeals Court decision. Rules that were part of the Open Internet Order preventing Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against content were vacated last month after a Federal Judge said that the Federal Communications Commission failed to properly justify its authority to implement them.

This week rights group Free Press led a coalition of organizations (including the ACLU, Avaaz, Common Cause, ColorOfChange, CREDO, DailyKos, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, the Harry Potter Alliance, MoveOn, RootsAction and the Sierra Club's SierraRise community) that delivered a petition signed by one million people to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency do whatever it has to do to restore Net Neutrality.

A new patent filed by AT&T Mobility in September 2013 and published this month hopes to keep customers from "abusing a telecommunications system" by consuming too much bandwidth, according to a report on TorrentFreak. The ultimate goal of such a patent is to apparently keep users from using certain services within the confines of packages they subscribe to.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued an action alert concerning the future of net neutrality, asking its members and the Internet community at large to contact their representatives in Congress, President Barack Obama, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and ask them to preserve and revise the Open Internet Order so that it can survive future legal challenges.

Public Knowledge on Thursday announced that former Justice Department antitrust official Gene Kimmelman has joined the watchdog group as its new president. Kimmelman has long been a leading proponent of net neutrality, and given the recent Appeals Court decision striking down part of the FCC's rules in its Open Internet Order, Public Knowledge and other organizations that support Net Neutrality need all the help they can get.

The U.S. Court of Appeals struck down part of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) rules on Net Neutrality today, in a clear victory for Verizon and other service providers who say the agency doesn't have jurisdiction over mobile and broadband.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has put the brakes on a plan by AT&T to raise prices for "special access" customers, which could have led to a rate hike to businesses and cell phone users. AT&T had planned to make that hike happen today, but the FCC stepped in and suspended the action for five months while it conducts an investigation on the matter.

Newly anointed FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said this week that it would be okay for Internet service providers to charge Netflix and other companies for a faster lane to consumers. While some think that Wheeler's stance is surprising given that the FCC implemented the Open Internet Order in 2010 to stop ISPs from discriminating against certain types of traffic, anyone who knows Wheeler's past is not in the least bit surprised. Wheeler is a former lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is rolling out a broadband speed test app for Android phones beginning this week, with plans for an iOS version sometime later down the road. The app was announced at the Nov. 14 meeting, which was the first under the agency's new chairman Tom Wheeler.

"If we are going to be making fact-based decisions, we need facts," said Wheeler, "and you are enlisting the American people for those facts."

Michael Powell, a former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman (under President George W Bush) and now President and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), recently said that ISPs should be moving with urgency to implement data caps on their customers.

His remarks, chronicled by Multichannel News at the recent Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta, were in response to a question about data caps.

According to The Hill, one of the demands that Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives have put forth calls for a repeal of the FCC's rules on net neutrality.

According to the publication, a memo was circulated late last week amongst Republican lawmakers detailing some of the demands that they have put forth as a condition of passing a budget and raising the debt ceiling.

In the early hours of a three-judge panel hearing this morning at the Federal Appeals Court, the FCC's net neutrality rules took some strong criticism from the bench. The Federal Appeals court expressed "deep concerns" that the agency's "net neutrality" rules approved in late 2010 are completely legal. Verizon argued before the panel this morning for two hours, saying that the rules were not legal because they were not implemented by lawmakers and that the FCC does not have the authority to enforce them.