AT&T wins again. As we've been noting, California had been making great progress in passing one of the toughest net neutrality state laws in the nation. Scott Weiner's SB822 was called the "gold standard" for state-level net neutrality laws, going even a bit further than the FCC's discarded 2015 rules in terms of policing anti-competitive behavior. It not only banned ISPs from blocking or throttling competitors' websites, but it also prohibited ISPs like AT&T from using usage-caps anti-competitively, most commonly by exempting an ISP's own content while still penalizing competitors like Netflix (aka zero rating). AT&T, fresh off of its $86 billion merger with Time Warner, has dreams of using its combined new media and broadband market power to dominate competitors in the streaming video and online ad wars to come.

 

AT&T saw California's restrictions as a serious threat to those ambitions. As a result, it did what the company always did: it used cash-compromised lawmakers to kill the legislation before it could truly come to pass.