Net neutrality bill with financial consequences passes Colorado legislature

10 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Colorado is about to have a network neutrality law that has teeth and a chance of surviving federal court challenges. Senate bill 78, which was just passed by the Colorado legislature, says that Internet service providers that don’t abide by net neutrality principles can’t get state broadband deployment subsidies, and might even have to return money previously awarded if they’re caught violating those rules in the future.

It’s a partisan issue. All republicans in both the Colorado house and senate voted against it; all democrats voted for it. The bill is on its way to Colorado governor Jared Polis for his signature. He’s a democrat too, so no points for guessing what he’s probably going to do with it.

Colorado ISPs will have to disclose their network management policies, and can’t block or throttle subscriber’s Internet traffic, or engage in paid prioritisation. Unlike Comcast and some other ISPs that say they’re against paid prioritisation, but spin it so narrowly that their pledges become meaningless, Colorado’s SB 78 has a reasonably robust definition of it…

“Paid prioritization” means the management of an Internet service provider’s network to directly or indirectly favor some traffic over other traffic, including through the use of techniques such as traffic shaping, prioritization, resource reservation, or other forms of preferential traffic management, either: (i) in exchange for consideration, monetary or otherwise, from a third party; (ii) to benefit an affiliated entity; or (iii) to disadvantage a competing entity or its affiliates.

Last year, the Colorado legislature set up a broadband deployment subsidy program that’s heavily biased in favor of incumbents, although it also allows for the possibility of municipal project funding in smaller communities. It tracks with old school universal telephone service programs, so the biggest impact of the bill will be on incumbent telcos. CenturyLink is the big one, and there are some smaller rural telcos too.

So far, California has taken a different path. Although lawmakers passed SB 822, a net neutrality bill last year that more or less reinstated rules scrapped by the current republican majority on the Federal Communications Commission, that law is tied up in federal court and is likely to stay there for years. A companion measure, SB 460 that would have barred state and local agencies from spending taxpayer money on non-net neutral broadband service died at the end of last year’s legislative session.

At the state level, it’s bills like Colorado’s SB 78 and California’s SB 460 that have genuine potential to make a difference. Although SB 822 was well meaning, enforcement requires the cooperation of federal judges and diligent effort by California attorney general Xavier Becerra, neither of which are evident so far. Key California lawmakers get big bundles of cash from big telecoms companies, and have so far not disappointed them in any meaningful way. It seems to be a different game in Colorado.