Earlier this week, a member of the Texas state legislature introduced a bill that would make it a crime for a telecommunications company, like Verizon or AT&T, to throttle internet service in declared disaster areas, according to KUT News.
This Texas bill, HB 1426, doesn’t go any further to codify net neutrality rules, only prohibiting carriers from restricting internet access in disaster areas. It does not ban behaviors like throttling in any other scenarios.
Over 100 other bills regarding net neutrality have been introduced at the state level following the Federal Communications Commission’s move to roll back the protections in 2017. Republican commissioners, like Chairman Ajit Pai, have argued that even without Title II or “utility”...