Life in the fast lane

Winners

President Obama

The president has repeatedly advocated for net neutrality. He hailed yesterday's decision, saying it would "protect innovation and create a level playing field for the next generation of entrepreneurs."

Activists

Internet users flooded the FCC with a record-breaking 4 million public comments, and a slowdown across many of the Web's most prominent sites last year showed the potential impact of Internet fast lanes and slow lanes.

Content creators

Services such as Netflix, whose shares closed up 1.7 percent yesterday, won't have to worry about paying more than the competition to ensure users get the best possible experience.

Losers

Republicans

The GOP opposed the regulations, and the two Republican appointees to the FCC voted against the rules. House Speaker John Boehner called it a "misguided scheme" that would "put the federal government in control of the Internet."

Internet service providers

Companies including Verizon and Comcast were staunchly against net neutrality, calling the regulation stifling and "heavy-handed."

Wireless providers

The regulations included wireless providers such as AT&T and Sprint, which were not covered by the original FCC rules in 2010.

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Finding 2-bedrooms for under $2G

The price of Boston apartments in the city's most desirable neighborhoods and in newly opened luxury complexes are out of reach for most renters.

"It's tough on everyone, including young professionals just out of college," said Jason Schuster, founder of Proper Realty in Allston. "For a $2,000 apartment, renters need to be making $80,000-$100,000, and many are earning only half that."

But while you won't find many apartments under $2,000 in Boston's tonier districts, except for some tiny studios, go farther afield in the city and there's a wide variety of more affordable offerings where two roommates or couples can pay a more reasonable $1,000 or so each, which often includes parking.

We went searching for two-bedrooms under $2,000 in several Boston neighborhoods.

Schuster says the cost of two-bedrooms in Allston/Brighton are creeping over $2,000, but Proper Realty has a $1,900 renovated two-bedroom listing on Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton that includes heat and hot water and in-building laundry.

Rachael Kulik, office manager of JP Rentals and Sales, said there are several options for renters looking to get in under $2,000 a month — owner-occupied two- and three- families, condos for rent by owners who've moved on but kept properties as investments, and units in older buildings where the rent includes heat and hot water.

"Individual landlords and others with an emotional stake in their properties often care more about the quality of the tenants than gouging renters," said Kulik.

Kulik said you can still find decent two-bedrooms in Jamaica Plain for around $1,650-$1,850 a month, and while you won't get the top-of-the-line amenities, multifamily units are usually well-maintained.

"The rule generally is that the further you get from the T, the less expensive apartments are," she said.

JP Rentals has a large two-bedroom on Goodway Road for $1,650 a month. It has a living room, dining room, large eat-in kitchen, laundry and a covered outdoor porch, and is about a mile from the Forest Hills Orange Line station.

In neighboring Roslindale, even farther from the T and where you most likely need a car, two-bedrooms run from $1,600 to $1,750, Kulik said. A large sunny two bedroom on Mendelssohn Street with a big eat-in kitchen, living, dining and laundry is renting for $1,650.

Another good area to find two-bedroom rentals under $2,000 is in Dorchester — neighborhoods such as Adams Village, Neponset and Lower Mills, said Kristine Ryan of The Galvin Group. She said that many renters priced out of South Boston have come looking in south Dorchester.

Galvin Group has a two-bedroom on Granite Avenue in an older brick building for $1,650 a month including heat and hot water. Ryan is also listing a 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom in an owner-occupied house on Hilltop Street near Neponset Circle for $1,600 that has hardwood floors, lots of storage space and a screened-in porch.

"You can still find reasonably priced apartments here and most have recently updated kitchens and free parking with no resident stickers," Ryan said. "These apartments often rent quickly, sometimes by word of mouth."

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Bentley professors vote to unionize

Adjunct professors at Bentley University in Waltham yesterday voted by a more than a 2-to-1 margin to unionize, marking the third such faculty victory in as many weeks at a local university.

The 108-to-42 vote brings to nearly 3,000 the total number of Boston area adjuncts and lecturers who have joined the Service Employees International Union in a growing national movement to improve the lot of the university employees, who often work for poverty-level wages.

"There's a groundswell of support on campuses here and across the country for unionization as one step toward addressing a crisis in higher education," said Jason Stephany, a spokesman for SEIU Local 509.

This month alone, Bentley and Boston University adjuncts and full-time Tufts University lecturers all voted to unionize in the wake of similar votes over the past 17 months among part-time lecturers at Tufts and adjuncts at Lesley and Northeastern universities.

Although he has a Ph.D. in history, Doug Kierdorf, 67, was living on food stamps and the $5,000 he was earning per semester, teaching the only course available to him at Bentley University until the class was canceled last month.

And he's not alone in his predicament. Adjuncts make up 76.4 percent of faculty at U.S. colleges and universities, according to a 2014 report by the American Association of University Professors. And a U.S. House of Representatives study the same year showed many had wages below the federal poverty line.

In a statement yesterday, Bentley University said: "While Bentley has consistently stated its belief that having a union is not in the best interest of the faculty or the university, the university will, of course, bargain in good faith."

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News Guide: FCC 'net neutrality' vote and what it means

WASHINGTON — Internet activists scored a major victory after the Federal Communications Commission agreed to rules that would ban service providers from creating Internet fast lanes.

What "net neutrality" means and what is likely to happen next:

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THE ISSUE

Net neutrality is the idea that Internet service providers won't block or slow Web traffic, instead allowing all data to have equal access to its networks. That means you won't be more inclined to watch a particular show on Amazon Prime instead of on Netflix because Amazon has struck a deal with your service provider to load its data faster.

For years, providers mostly agreed not to pick winners and losers among Web traffic because they didn't want to encourage regulators to step in and because they said consumers demanded it. But that started to change around 2005, when YouTube came online and Netflix became increasingly popular. On-demand video began hogging bandwidth, and evidence surfaced that some providers were manipulating traffic without telling consumers.

By 2010, the FCC enacted open Internet rules, but the agency's legal approach was eventually struck down in the courts. Thursday's vote by the FCC was intended to erase any legal ambiguity by setting clear rules on what broadband providers can do.

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THE PLAN

The FCC put the Internet in the same regulatory camp as the telephone, regulating it like a public utility. That means whatever company provides your Internet connection, even if it's to your phone, will now have to act in the public interest and not do anything that might be considered "unjust or unreasonable." If it doesn't, you can complain and the FCC can step in to investigate.

Regulators say reclassifying the Internet as a telecommunications service under the 1934 Communications Act will empower the FCC to go after Internet service providers if they start blocking or slowing Web traffic.

The FCC says it won't apply some sections of the law, including price controls. That means rates charged to customers for Internet access won't be subject to preapproval. But the law allows the government to investigate if consumers complain that costs are unfair.

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NEXT STOP

Some of the big Internet providers, or possibly a group of them, are expected to file lawsuits. It's likely they will ask the courts to block implementation of the new rules. That legal wrangling could go on for years, probably well into the first term of the next president.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans that oppose the regulation say they are committed to pushing for a legislative fix. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, is expected to lead this fight, starting with a March 18 hearing.

But how far the GOP and industry will get in Congress is unclear. The FCC regulations give most Democrats exactly what they wanted in the first place. And Obama likely would veto anything else. Democrats are unlikely to negotiate any deal until the courts weigh in.

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HOW THIS AFFECTS YOU

Consumers are unlikely to notice anything different about their Internet service. Industry says it's already operating under basic open Internet principals, and most providers say they have no desire to start throttling data for most of its customers.

What the FCC regulations do, however, is usher in a new era of government oversight where Internet service is deemed a public right. Consumers can complain if they don't believe they are being treated fairly. Regulators will have broad powers to go after companies they believe aren't acting in the public interest, including price gouging.

One open question is whether state taxes or fees on Internet service will eventually creep on to your bill. Right now, the Internet Tax Freedom Act prohibits that. But that law expires in October. While Congress is expected to renew the tax break, some states could start pushing back now that the Internet has been declared a public utility.

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Follow Anne Flaherty on Twitter at https://twitter.com/annekflaherty.

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FCC allows city-owned Internet providers to expand

RALEIGH, N.C. — People in small communities may get better, cheaper access to the Internet after the Federal Communications Commission ruled Thursday that city-owned broadband services can expand into areas overlooked by commercial providers.

The decision quietly played out minutes before the FCC took up the higher-profile issue of Internet neutrality, which imposed the toughest rules yet on broadband providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T.

In the less prominent case, the cities of Wilson, North Carolina, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, asked the FCC to override state laws that have prevented them from expanding their super-fast Internet networks. They were built when companies didn't move into their city.

President Barack Obama pushed for the FCC's decision, saying the state laws stifled competition and economic development. U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, both Republicans, quickly introduced legislation to block the FCC move.

For Richard and Brenda Thornton, the FCC decision could mean a big savings. They live less than a mile from the service area for Chattanooga's Electric Power Board, which provides one gigabit-per-second Internet speeds. The Thorntons now pay $316 for landline phone service, Internet and television from wireless hot spots that two telephone companies offered. Their current connection is a fraction of the speed the Thorntons could get for $133 a month for the same bundle from Chattanooga.

The local cable company has refused to extend broadband service to their home, said Brenda Thornton, who likes to trade securities and commodities futures but can't do it because of the slow wireless speed.

"People don't realize how bad it is if you don't have a good Internet. Those people that have it, they don't even realize there's people like us that exist," she said.

Local governments that offer broadband contend they were at risk of being left behind economically. More than 450 communities nationwide have municipal broadband offerings, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which supports community Internet providers.

Those who want to limit municipal broadband say the laws protect taxpayers from government bureaucrats botching business decisions. Chattanooga's Electric Power Board borrowed $226 million from investors hoping the super-fast phone and Internet service would attract new business to the city of 173,000. City officials credit the network for helping attract tech startups, including a custom shoemaker using 3-D printing technology.

Wilson's 50,000 residents borrowed $28 million to lay the fiber-optic lines to start its Greenlight service.

Chattanooga charges $70 a month for gigabyte speed internet, while Wilson charges $100.

Critics of the state laws argued they were passed by lawmakers to protect entrenched corporate interests.

"The bottom line of these matters is that some states have created thickets of red tape designed to limit competition," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said.

The vote was 3-2, with both Republican commissioners voting against it, arguing it was outside the commission's authority, violated state's rights and undermines private enterprise.

"It is not the government's role to offer services instead of or in competition with private actors," said Commissioner Michael O'Rielly.

The decision affects only the two cities in North Carolina and Tennessee — but could set a precedent for others. Still, telecom analyst Paul Gallant of Guggenheim Securities said the city-owned providers aren't big enough to upset the market, and will need separate FCC action for each case.

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Emery Dalesio can be reached at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio.

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Dunkin’ Donuts to sell its K-Cup coffee packs in grocery stores

Dunkin' Brands — facing a double-digit decline in the sale of K-Cup coffee packs at its franchised Dunkin' Donuts locations — will expand distribution to U.S. and Canadian grocery, big-box and other retail outlets mid-year and online this spring, and split the net profit equally with franchisees.

The "unprecedented" agreement will allow the Canton company to grab a bigger piece of the $3.2 billion K-Cup business — 80 percent of which is sold where people buy groceries — build brand awareness and in turn drive traffic back to Dunkin' Donuts restaurants, according to CEO Nigel Travis.

Franchisees also will reap 50 percent of net profit from sales of Dunkin's other packaged coffee at non-Dunkin' outlets and online under the 20-year deal.

"This is great for franchise economics, it's great for us," Travis said. "It's going to enhance our sales because people will get used to the taste profile of Dunkin' Donuts (coffee) in whatever channel. We are confident that it's going to improve our traffic to our stores."

The agreement will increase Dunkin's K-Cup distribution from its 8,000 U.S. Dunkin' stores to 67,000 retail outlets in addition to the online sales on Dunkin's website and those of manufacturing/distribution partners Keurig Green Mountain and J.M. Smucker Co.

K-Cup sales currently account for about 2 percent to 3 percent of Dunkin's annual U.S. sales or roughly $175 million.

Dunkin' Brands launched K-Cups in its U.S. restaurants in 2011, when they were in their relative infancy, but the market has grown, particularly in grocery outlets, Travis said.

The K-Cup market is expected to grow by $5 billion next year, according to Barclays analyst Jeffrey Bernstein.

"Starbucks currently has about 15 percent share, and we believe it reasonable to assume Dunkin' will be able to achieve half that," Bernstein said.

The deal could translate into another $10 million to $15 million in Dunkin' income annually, according to William Blair analyst Sharon Zackfia said.

"We believe the opportunity in the grocery channel will prove to be much greater than in the stores, as evidenced by Starbucks, for which we estimate over 80 percent of K-Cup sales occur in commercial channels," she said. "Applying the same math to Dunkin' would imply the potential for at least $500 million in incremental K-Cup sales after accounting for some potential cannibalization of franchisee sales."

Dunkin' started discussions with franchisees about expanded K-Cup distribution 15 months ago.

"Franchisees, like us, were concerned about the cannibalization of doing that," Travis said. "Our studies basically said that it would be a good thing to go into retail, as it would allow us to compete against the competition in terms of taste profile (and) give new customers an opportunity to taste Dunkin' coffee, particularly in the west of the country where we do not have too many stores."

Franchisees hired an independent consultant to study the prospect and "came up with the same conclusions," according to Travis, who wouldn't disclose the opening proposed split of profits put on the bargaining table.

"We were very concerned about building the K-Cup business and not having any control over it," Dunkin' franchisee Clayton Turnbull, co-chairman of Dunkin's Brand Advisory Council, a franchisee group, told Bloomberg News. "In 2011, K-cups were nowhere near where they are today. If we kept the same position, it would be a mistake."

In addition to the four current K-Cup flavors, Dunkin' will sell its Bakery Series Chocolate Glazed Donut flavor, currently a packaged coffee flavor, as K-Cups.

Dunkin' shares were up 1.7 percent today, closing at $47.26.

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No one's neutral on new Internet rules

The tech industry and activists hailed yesterday's long-awaited Federal Communications Commission vote on net neutrality rules, saying startups and other innovative companies no longer have to fear that they might be required to ante up to compete with more established businesses on the Internet.

"If the FCC had not taken this step, then the Internet was headed down a path in which it becomes unrecognizable ... an Internet in which the people who provide access to the Internet make decisions based on their commercial interest," said David Weinberger, a senior researcher at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

"The strength of the Internet has always been that it's not designed for any particular service — users get to decide what matters to them, what they think the Internet is for. The access providers were turning the Internet into a type of cable TV."

The rules, approved by the FCC on a 3-2 vote, reclassify the Internet as a public utility, making it subject to tighter regulation. They prevent companies such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T from creating paid fast lanes and slowing or blocking Web traffic.

"Net neutrality is essential for the continued prosperity of the Web as we've known it," said Bob Davis, a venture capitalist with Highland Capital Partners. "A ruling on the other side of this would have been devastating."

Davis said the rules will ensure startups do not have a higher barrier to entry than entrenched companies.

Chad Dickerson, chief executive of Etsy.com, told the FCC equal traffic speeds are essential for his business.

"We know that delays of milliseconds have a direct and long-term impact on revenue," Dickerson said. "I'm here to thank you for taking action to protect the Internet as a platform for entrepreneurship and innovation."

Evan Greer of Fight for the Future, an Internet advocacy group, said net neutrality will preserve open access to information.

"This isn't about how quickly our cat videos load," Greer said. "This is actually about the future of freedom of speech ... and the freedom of our democracy."

Verizon saw it differently, releasing a statement made to appear as if it were written on a typewriter to draw attention to the FCC's reliance on 1934 legislation to regulate the Internet. The statement, that called the rules "misguided," also was released in Morse Code.

The broadband industry is expected to sue over the new rules.

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The Ticker

Dunkin' K-Cups to expand sales

Dunkin' Brands, facing a double-digit decline in the sale of K-Cup coffee packs at its franchised Dunkin' Donuts locations, will expand distribution to U.S. and Canadian grocery, big-box and other retail outlets mid-year and online this spring, and split the net profit equally with its franchisees.

The "unprecedented" agreement will allow the Canton company to grab a bigger piece of the 
$3.2 billion K-Cup business ­— 80 percent of which is sold where people buy groceries —further build brand awareness and in turn drive traffic back to Dunkin' restaurants, according to CEO Nigel Travis. Franchisees also will reap 50 percent of net profit from sales of Dunkin's other packaged coffee at non-Dunkin' outlets and online under the 20-year deal.

Consumer price index drops

American households paid much less to fill their fuel tanks in January, while most other costs rose, supporting the Federal Reserve's view that inflation will eventually approach its predicted level. Energy costs pulled the consumer price index down by 0.7 percent, the biggest decline since December 2008, a Labor Department report showed yesterday. Excluding food and fuel, costs rose 0.2 percent.

TODAY

• Commerce Department releases fourth-quarter gross domestic product.
• National Association of Realtors releases pending home sales index for January.
• Hub-based American Program Bureau has hired Jennifer Sacca Courtney as talent recruiter/public relations specialist.

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Charlie Baker creates job skills subcabinet

Three key deputies in Gov. Charlie Baker's administration have a new task — making sure the state's workforce has the skills that employers are looking for.

"Even though our economy looks great on paper, and it does — we have job gains, we have falling unemployment and the most educated workforce in the nation and a terribly innovative economy that's doing many things right — too many people and too many communities are being left behind," Baker said. "We need to make sure we find a way to link our workforce to job opportunities that exist out there for our citizens."

The governor yesterday signed an executive order establishing a subcabinet consisting of the secretaries of Labor and Workforce Development, Housing and Economic Development, and Education. The subcabinet will work to identify skills and workforce gaps, and develop a plan to address them for current and potential employees.

"We need to connect business to the entire workforce development system ... to really analyze labor needs and expand talent pipelines," said Ronald Walker, secretary of Labor and Workforce Development and chairman of the subcabinet.

He said manufacturing is a sector that is particularly in need of workers who have the skills to fit companies' employment needs.

Baker told the Massachusetts High Tech Council on Tuesday that states across the country are trying to address the skills gap problem.

"Those (states) that do better are the ones that are going to succeed," Baker said.

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Did ISPs bring the FCC's net neutrality action upon themselves?

In the wake of the FCC's net neutrality vote on Thursday, cable and telecommunications companies are characterizing the new set of regulations as something akin to a government sledgehammer.

They are chafing under a future of greater oversight over how they deliver Internet traffic to the consumer -- in other words, there's now a big check on who controls the pipes.

The FCC probably would not have even gotten to the point where they reclassified the Internet like a utility had Verizon not challenged a previous set of net neutrality rules, adopted in 2010, that had a lighter regulatory touch.

Those rules were imposed without Title II reclassification and, unlike the new regulations, exempted wireless providers from some of the more stringent provisions.

Back then, most ISPs said that they weren't crazy about the rules, but they could still live with them. Not Verizon. It challenged net neutrality and won, as the D.C. Circuit said that the FCC imposed them without establishing the proper regulatory authority.

In the immediate aftermath of the court's decision in January 2014, there was plenty of commentary that net neutrality was dead.

In April, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler proposed an approach that would have stopped short of reclassification. Yet his idea drew immediate criticism as being too weak and triggered a backlash that generated online protest campaigns, pickets outside the FCC offices and even, at one point, demonstrators who blocked the driveway of his home.

Through the summer the FCC was flooded with more than 4 million comments -- a massive outpouring that drew comparisons to the protest that helped sideline major antipiracy legislation, known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, in 2012.

The turning point, however, was in November, when President Obama threw his support behind reclassification.

So how did ISPs find themselves on the losing end of one of the FCC's most momentous policy debates?

After all, even congressional Republicans who once questioned the need for any net neutrality rules at all last month proposed legislation that would ban blocking, throttling and paid prioritization. The legislation also would apply to wired and wireless services, although Democrats have balked that it also limits what the FCC can do when technology changes in the future.

Net neutrality advocates had the advantage of framing the debate first, and having as their foe cable and telecom companies, which aren't exactly the most beloved of American companies.

It also helped that Netflix threw its weight behind the FCC's action, setting itself up as a chief foe to major ISPs and giving some urgency to the issue by claiming that it was pretty much forced into paying Comcast (CEO Brian Roberts pictured at right) and Verizon new sums to deliver their video traffic.

While ISPs argued that Netflix was skewing the issue, who is a consumer more likely to trust? Cable and telecom companies offering Internet service are in the unpopular position of also being bill collectors, to whom many consumers write three-figure checks each month. And those prices keep rising.

The situation would probably be a lot different if the FCC was about to extend its oversight over Internet companies, the Twitters and Facebooks and the Googles of the world, rather than companies that own the pipes.

Now the debate over net neutrality is likely to move to the courts and to Congress, where Republicans are investigating how it all came to this. There is likely to be an even louder chorus of voices that this is an unprecedented government power grab.

There's already been plenty of hyperbolic rhetoric that it's big government that is taking control of the Internet. But in this latest chapter of this long slog toward open Internet protections, net neutrality advocates were quicker to define the real threat as Internet service with no control at all.

© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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