Despicable: With net neutrality repeal looming, Comcast abandons open internet pledge

By Brad Jones Published June 7, 2018

Earlier this month, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai confirmed plans to pursue a repeal of net neutrality legislation. And when the commission made its intentions public earlier this year, Comcast removed a pledge to uphold net neutrality from its website.

Since 2014, the company’s website had featured the statement, “Comcast doesn’t prioritize Internet traffic or create paid fast lanes” on a page dedicated to net neutrality, according to a report from Ars Technica. It remained there until April 26; it wasn’t present as of April 27. The removal of the pledge may open the door for Comcast to create a tiered internet system, where some websites are faster and easier to access than others, potentially because they’ve paid the Internet service provider to promote their site or service.

Recommended Videos

Pai detailed his first version of the plan for a net neutrality repeal on April 26. Comcast’s open internet pledge still contains references to “full transparency” and “sustainable and legally enforceable net neutrality protections,” but it no longer makes any promises regarding traffic prioritization or fast lanes.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

There are many reasons why the repeal of net neutrality could potentially be a bad thing for consumers, but this is one troubling aspect of the plans being made. Without these regulations, companies like Comcast would be able to artificially slow connection speeds for customers trying to access particular types of content. (Confused by net neutrality? Read our full primer to understand the complexities of the issue.)

For example, if a particular internet service provider has a deal with a specific search engine — like Verizon, which owns Yahoo — we might see competing search engines load their results a little slower. In some cases, they might be blocked entirely unless the customer buys a package that secures access, but Comcast is still making the pledge that this will not be the case.

The company issued a statement denying that it has entered into any paid prioritization agreements, and confirmed that it has no plans to do so at this time, according to CNET. Of course, given the removal of the public pledge, it’s possible that these measures could be established in the future.

A net neutrality repeal has been looming for some time, but now it’s finally at hand — it’s set to go to a vote on December 14.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…

Computing

Microsoft 365 Copilot gets an AI Researcher that everyone will love

Researcher agent in action inside Microsoft 365 Copilot app.

Microsoft is late to the party, but it is finally bringing a deep research tool of its own to the Microsoft 365 Copilot platform across the web, mobile, and desktop. Unlike competitors such as Google Gemini, Perplexity, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, all of which use the Deep Research name, Microsoft is going with the Researcher agent branding.
The overarching idea, however, isn’t too different. You tell the Copilot AI to come up with thoroughly researched material on a certain topic or create an action plan, and it will oblige by producing a detailed document that would otherwise take hours of human research and compilation. It’s all about performing complex, multi-step research on your behalf as an autonomous AI agent.
Just to avoid any confusion early on, Microsoft 365 Copilot is essentially the rebranded version of the erstwhile Microsoft 365 (Office) app. It is different from the standalone Copilot app, which is more like a general purpose AI chatbot application.
Researcher: A reasoning agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot
How Researcher agent works?
Underneath the Researcher agent, however, is OpenAI’s Deep Research model. But this is not a simple rip-off. Instead, the feature’s implementation in Microsoft 365 Copilot runs far deeper than the competition. That’s primarily because it can look at your own material, or a business’ internal data, as well.
Instead of pulling information solely from the internet, the Researcher agent can also take a look at internal documents such as emails, chats, internal meeting logs, calendars, transcripts, and shared documents. It can also reference data from external sources such as Salesforce, as well as other custom agents that are in use at a company.
“Researcher’s intelligence to reason and connect the dots leads to magical moments,” claims Microsoft. Researcher agent can be configured by users to reference data from the web, local files, meeting recordings, emails, chats, and sales agent, on an individual basis — all of them, or just a select few.

Why it stands out?

Computing

OpenAI Academy offers free AI skills workshops for all knowledge levels

OpenAI ChatGPT image

OpenAI has established a free public resource called ‘OpenAI Academy,’ geared toward providing AI education to all knowledge levels.

Among the free offerings, the brand will provide users a mix of online and in-person events, including hands-on workshops and peer discussions, among other digital content, OpenAI said in a press release.

Computing

Samsung’s SSD throne wobbles on homeground as rivals close the gap

A hand holding the Samsung 990 Pro SSD.

Samsung is known to make some of the best NVMe solid state drives but its dominance in the M.2 SSD market appears to be waning. As per new data from Danawa Research there has been a steady decline in its market share, specifically in Korea.

In March 2024, Samsung held a strong 25.37% share of the market, but by February 2025, that number had fallen to just 14.08%. This 11.29% drop suggests that competitors are successfully capturing a larger portion of the market, as consumers explore alternative options offering better performance, pricing, or reliability.