Net Neutrality in New York and Montana

Finding high-speed Internet service in your area

In light of Ajit Pai's repeal of net neutrality, (a very unpopular move) many states are taking the matter into their own hands. So far 22 state legislatures are taking at least some action to improve high speed Internet connections in their states.

The governors of Montana and New York have issued orders that ISPs must adhere to net neutrality rules to get contracts from the states. This means that in order to provide high speed Internet to their location, the ISP must provide Internet service that follows net neutrality guidelines.

The governor of New York even said "Whereas the FCC recently chose to do away with free and open Internet protections in order to satisfy corporate interests that are not aligned with those of New Yorkers." Ouch. I guess Governor Cuomo is serious about getting good high-speed Internet in his state.

We will see what the other states do to try to keep net neutrality in their state. You got to love it when the governor of New York says that local Internet Service Providers in New York "will not block, throttle, or prioritize Internet content or applications or require that end users pay different or higher rates to access specific types of content or applications."

Charter Spectrum Jumping on the Content Bandwagon

Currently Charter Spectrum provides high-speed Internet, Cable TV and phones but now it appears that Charter Communications wants to start producing their own programming. They have hired experienced TV producer Katherine Pope as senior VP and head of original content. Pope used to work for NBCUniversal and Chernin Group. Charter recently announced that they had worked out an arrangement with AMC and Viacom for some original programming.

Charter is the number two cable company and it is looking like they want to compete with number one Comcast in teh original content department. Of course Comcast provides Internet, phones and Cable TV but they already own NBCUniversal so they are miles ahead of Charter as far a production goes. NBCUniversal owns quite a bit of content including Dreamworks, the Weather Channel, USA Network, Bravo and of course NBC.

Another competitor, phone, Internet and video provider AT&T, is looking to buy Time Warner which includes Warner Brother Studios as well as HBO, CNN, Turner Broadcasting and Cartoon Network. AT&T already owns DirecTV.

Charter Spectrum's cable, Internet and phone services expanded greatly in 2015 with the purchase of Bright House Network and Time Warner Cable. Whether they really want to compete with AT&T and Comcast or even Disney is any one's guess at this point.