In December, 2010, Verizon Wireless began operating its network via C-Block spectrum with licenses it acquired in the 2008 auction. In keeping with net neutrality rules unique to C-Block usage, Verizon agreed long ago that it would not block or limit consumers' ability to tether on their 4G LTE network.

Tethering allows a consumer to use a device, such as a smartphone, as a modem to funnel Internet access to an additional device. On July 31, the FCC agreed to end an investigation into whether or not Verizon Wireless had violated this rule. In exchange, Verizon Wireless would make a $1.25 million "voluntary contribution."  Verizon Wireless did not admit it broke the rules. The FCC's consent decree requires the practice cease and that Verizon Wireless implement policies to curtail the behavior.

The story began in 2011. Verizon Wireless began charging its customers an addition $20 per month to allow them to tether additional devices to their smartphones and called the feature "Mobile Broadband Connect."

The Free Press filed a complaint. The FCC began their investigation in October, 2011. From the Free Press website:

Free Press argued that by preventing customers from downloading these applications that allow customers to use their phones as mobile hotspots, Verizon violated conditions of its 700 MHz C Block licenses, the spectrum in which Verizon operates its LTE service. When Verizon purchased the licenses, it agreed to abide by conditions that it not “deny, limit or restrict” its customers’ ability to use the applications or devices of their choosing.

The company also asked the Google Play Store store to block Verizon Wireless customers from accessing software that would enable tethering. Google complied with the request, even though it has often advocated for net neutrality, but were not investigated because they are not an ISP.

Preamble: We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. To keep the Internet free and open, we call on communities, industries and countries to recognize these principles. We believe that they will help to bring about more creativity, more innovation and more open societies. We are joining an international movement to defend our freedoms because we believe that they are worth fighting for. Let’s discuss these principles — agree or disagree with them, debate them, translate them, make them your own and broaden the discussion with your community — as only the Internet can make possible. Join us in keeping the Internet free and open.

Politicians aren’t always especially thoughtful about, or even familiar with, information technology. George W. Bush used the term “Internets” during not one but two presidential debates. The late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens famously referred to the World Wide Web as a “series of tubes.” And John McCain drew ridicule in 2008 when he conceded that he was still “learning to get online myself.” Much worse than these gaffes, however, are some of the policies that have been promoted by lawmakers and candidates who seem to fundamentally misunderstand the importance of a free and open Internet. In recent years, we have seen politicians accede to the interests of giant telecom companies rather than support net neutrality; propose anti-piracy bills that threaten Internet freedom; and, as Siddhartha Mahanta recently documented at TNR Online, block poor communities from receiving broadband access.

There are, of course, ways in which the administration has disappointed. Even when the White House has done the right thing on Internet issues, it has not always acted as speedily or as forcefully as it might have. Moreover, it has not always done the right thing. Particularly striking was the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision, in late 2010, to exempt mobile carriers from new rules protecting net neutrality.

We’re at a crossroads in the history of the Internet. War for the Web explores this digital frontier, seeking answers to the future by delving into its past. We will investigate the beginnings of the Internet, its exponential growth in the past decade, and how this phenomenal culture of innovation—which spawned advances such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon—may be in jeopardy.

The SEC has moved network neutrality from the murky back rooms of day-to-day operations into the bright light of of shareholder resolutions. 

This is a significant turn for the SEC and it opens up a new avenue in the campaign for net neutrality. As the SEC helpfully reminds us, “One of the key rights of shareholders is the right to vote their shares on important matters that affect the companies they own.” The SEC gives companies a fair amount of discretion on resolutions. In previous years, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance ruled that similar net neutrality proposals pertained to “ordinary business” and could be excluded from shareholder ballots. 

The telcos have reason to be afraid. Proxy fights have derailed business plans and taken down CEOs. Most successful campaigns have been carried out by activist fund managers with substantial stakes in relatively small companies (by stock exchange standards). 

The Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and Trillium Asset Management have led the effort to put this on shareholder ballots. They will need help to move it forward. Proposals must claim a minimum percentage of support in order to be allowed on the ballot next year.

This time of year about 20 percent of U.S. households receive proxy voting forms, and most are promptly discarded. If you ask your parents and grandparents, chances are good someone owned some shares of Ma Bell at one time and now has voting rights in a telco.

If your only investments are in mutual funds, you can still make your voice heard. Contact the fund management company, tell them you support net neutrality, and ask them how they are planning to vote on the issue.

We are running a guest commentary today. Eric Null is a third-year law student at Cardozo Law School in New York City. He is passionate about corporate and intellectual property law, as well as technology and telecommunications policy. Follow him @ericnull or check out his papers. While researching a paper about municipal broadband networks, I was struck by the tremendous benefits that municipal networks can provide. It can be the first high-speed Internet link for an area without broadband, or it can provide some much-needed competition in areas that currently have access to broadband, but for some reason that existing access is unsatisfactory (e.g. price, service). Municipalities, in theory, can run the network for the benefit of the public rather than with a vicious profit maximization motive. Indeed, municipal networks bring many benefits. But first, a little history. In the United States, cable providers have set up regional monopolies for themselves, and “competitors” such as DSL and satellite are characterized by slower connection speeds and it is arguable that they are actual substitutes to cable access. Certainly within the cable industry, any “competitive” cable company attempting to compete with incumbents is met with high costs of building new infrastructure and lack of customer base. Municipalities can pick up where smaller, private entities cannot succeed. Municipalities have had a long history of investing in critical infrastructure, and they have the mentality for long-term planning that private companies simply cannot enjoy. A large company like Verizon likely has to justify any expansion of its network to its investors and ensure them that the venture will return a profit relatively quickly. Not so with municipalities; a city network allows its citizens to benefit indirectly (and directly) over the long-term. Thus, city governments can be a formidable competitor in the telecom and cable industries. Some states, regrettably, have banned or restricted the practice. In Nixon v.

While I was talking with him on the phone Thursday night, he checked his Web site and about 175,000 people had bought his special through PayPal. He expected 200,000 total downloads by the weekend, which meant he would have grossed $1 million. After covering costs of about $250,000 for the live production and the Web site, that’s a $750,000 profit. And he owns the rights, and the long tail of buyers, in perpetuity. The transparency of the enterprise, including its cost in relation to how many people bought in, was the subject of media coverage all last week. ... “O.K., so NBC is this huge company and they have all these studios and these satellites to beam stuff out,” he said, “but on the Web, both NBC.com and LouisCK.com have the same amount of bandwidth. We are equals and there are things you can do with that. This has been a fun little experiment.”

To understand their logic, consider this thought experiment: Imagine that you own a freeway -- say, Highway 101 through Silicon Valley -- and you had the power to pluck a car from a traffic jam with a helicopter and deposit it on a clear stretch of the road. Naturally, drivers who could afford the service would be happy to sign up. "That highway is like the Internet, and the individual cars are the packets of data. The ISP is essentially the gatekeeper that controls the flow of cars on the highway. If the ISP is allowed to snatch any car from the back of a very long line and put it in front of everybody else when the driver of the car pays a priority delivery fee, would the ISP have an incentive to keep the road congested or to expand the road capacity?" they wrote. The answer is pretty obvious: If you can make more money by keeping your network congested, why would you invest money to make it less crowded?

The truth is that if we want to make sure small businesses can grow with the assistance of broadband, the Internet must remain open.