FCC to make ruling on Verizon net neutrality complaint

Greg S

Posts: 1,607   +442

Santa Clara, California resident Alex Nguyen has spent countless hours collecting and documenting every practice he believes to be against a free and open internet on Verizon's network. Dating back to 2012, Nguyen has logged 112 pages worth of alleged net neutrality violations with over 300 citations of evidence.

As it turns out, the FCC has not actually made a decision on any formal complaints regarding net neutrality. Although there were thousands of messages sent to the FCC voicing concerns over rolling back policies to protect online freedom, Nguyen was the only person to file a formal complaint on the issue.

The main difference between a formal and informal complaint is that formal complaints must go through a hearing process and end with an official response from the FCC. Informal complaints do not require any substantive response and may be largely dismissed by board members. Filing a formal complaint with the FCC is very similar to filing a court case and will set you back $225 in fees.

Ngyuen's complaint includes a variety of issues from Verizon blocking the use of certain phones and apps, bullying manufacturers to disable features such as FM radio, and outright lying about its own network. His chief complaint is not that Verizon is disabling features in the pursuit of profit, it's that there is "always this pattern of deception with Verizon,” about why actions are being taken. Nguyen mentions Verizon has resorted to issuing statements about fraud prevention and not passing certain tests without disclosing any information to backup such claims.

In the final ruling that is expected any time now, Verizon could be fined, forced to take corrective actions, or could walk away from the issue without incident.

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The even stranger issue was years ago (or was it decades ago) "comments" were given the same weight as complaints and were regularly investigated when they got several on the same subject. Guess it just goes to show how hard they are working to eliminate the everyday citizens voice .......
 
"His chief complaint is not that Verizon is disabling features in the pursuit of profit..."

I completely agree with this. I still have my LG G4 and by default it is suppose to have a call block feature. However, since I bought it at the Verizon store, Verizon has that disabled so you have to pay for Verizon's version of call blocking.
Reread that sentence and this time pay more attention to the "not".
 
Doh! thanks for catching that
We all knew what you meant. (y) Turing off free options so that they can charge you for the same thing is just greedy even if they guy was not complaining about that. Why should anyone be forced to pay for something that is included by default on their device for free? Does Verizon's version add something so special that it deserves a fee for it? That, I highly doubt!
 
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