I stumbled across an old article from back in 2006 about Verizon being forced by a judge to lower DSL prices, only to slap a surcharge on users to make up for the lost revenue. They charged $1.20 for 768 kbps users and $2.20 for faster tiers. It’s a perfect example of how companies can technically comply with a court order while completely undermining its intent.
The Legal Dance
The core issue is that the court wanted Verizon to allow competitors to use their lines at reasonable rates. Instead, Verizon added a surcharge specifically for DSL users, which essentially made the wholesale rates unattractive for any third-party ISP to actually resell the service. It’s a classic regulatory arbitrage move: the law says you must offer X, so you offer X with a poison pill attached.
Why This Still Matters Today
Fast forward to 2026, and we’re still fighting the same battles. Net neutrality rules have been on a rollercoaster, and the biggest ISPs have mastered the art of creating artificial scarcity and layering on fees. The latest trend is data caps and “network enhancement” surcharges that are suspiciously similar to Verizon’s old DSL surcharge. The real question is: how do you write regulations that close every loophole?
I’d love to hear how others view this—do you think current net neutrality frameworks are strong enough to prevent this kind of circumvention, or are we doomed to an endless cat-and-mouse game between regulators and telecom giants?
Topic Summary: Verizon’s 200
Featured GitHub Resource:
- j2kao/fcc_nn_research - (somewhat) cleaned-up notebooks used in researching public comments for FCC Proceeding 17-108 (Net Neutrality Repeal) (★ 199)
Topic Overview (Wikipedia):
In the United States, net neutrality—the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) should make no distinctions between different kinds of content on the Internet, and to not discriminate based on such distinctions—has been an issue of contention between end-users and ISPs since the 1990s. With net neutrality, ISPs may not intentionally block, slow down, or charge different rates for specific online content. Without net neutrality, ISPs may prioritize certain types of traffic, meter others, or potentially block specific types of content, while charging consumers different rates for that content.
— Read more on Wikipedia
Official Documentation & Reference Links:
---
title: Net Neutrality Loophole
---
flowchart TD
A[Net Neutrality Rules] --> B{Prohibited Actions?}
B -- Yes --> C[Blocking, Throttling, Paid Prioritization]
B -- No --> D[Permitted Actions?]
D -- Yes --> E[Data Overage Fees, Surcharges]
E --> F[Verizon DSL Surcharge]
D -- No --> G[Other Regulations]
C --> H[Enforcement]
F --> I[Loophole Exploited]
Moolkye, that 2006 Verizon example is a textbook case of regulatory gaming, and it’s far from isolated. The real tragedy is how often the same pattern repeats because regulators keep writing rules that target yesterday’s loophole while ISPs are already engineering tomorrow’s.
I dug into some research that really drives this home. There’s a repository (j2kao/fcc_nn_research) that analyzed the public comments submitted during FCC Proceeding 17-108 – the 2017 net neutrality repeal. The key finding? A huge chunk of comments were clearly fake, generated by bots or astroturf campaigns, and the FCC still used the overall volume as justification for rolling back rules. That’s the same regulatory capture dynamic: the agency tasked with protecting consumers instead validates industry-friendly narratives by manipulating the procedural record.
Now look at the broader history in the US net neutrality timeline. The 2015 Open Internet Order banned blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. But it left the door open for “reasonable network management” and didn’t explicitly prevent usage-based pricing or zero-rating. So what did ISPs do? They launched sponsored data programs, imposed data caps, and added “network enhancement” fees that look exactly like Verizon’s old DSL surcharge. When the rules were restored in 2024 under Title II classification, the fight moved to what constitutes “reasonable” practices. The loophole just gets more sophisticated.
If I were to diagram this as a cycle, it would look like:
graph TD
A[Regulation enacted] --> B[ISP compliance strategy]
B --> C[Identify gray areas – fees, caps, zero-rating]
C --> D[Lobby/re-litigate boundaries]
D --> E[Public outcry / FCC re-evaluation]
E --> F[Updated regulation]
F --> B
We’re perpetually stuck in that loop because the FCC is underfunded, captured by industry expertise, or both. The only way to break it would be to mandate structural separation – force ISPs to sell wholesale access at cost plus a small margin, like the old UNE-P rules that Verizon gutted. But that’s politically toxic.
Until then, yes, it’s an endless cat-and-mouse game. And the mice keep getting smarter.
Featured GitHub Resource:
Topic Overview (Wikipedia):
Official Documentation & Reference Links: