Big Telecom Resorts To Lying To Senior Citizens To Scuttle Net Neutrality In California
from the disinformation-nation dept
With the bipartisan majority of Americans supporting net neutrality, the broadband industry often has to resort to outright falsehoods to try and make its case that we don't need net neutrality rules (or any meaningful oversight of natural telecom monopolies). From paying civil rights groups to parrot industry positions to hiring fake journalists to deny the obvious, the broadband industry has a long, proud, multi-decade history of using outright bullshit to scare the public, press and regulators away from the idea of net neutrality.
The latest case in point: after AT&T lobbyists successfully sabotaged initial efforts to pass new net neutrality rules in California, the state this week revisited the effort with a new vote on the state assembly floor. In a bid to try and scuttle the effort, an AT&T-linked group by the name of Civil Justice Association of California (CJAC) has been robocalling senior citizens in the state, informing them that their cell phone bill will jump $30 if the new rules pass. California State Senator Scott Wiener, the author of California's bill, wasn't particularly impressed:
We’re now dealing with a straight-up misinformation campaign on our #NetNeutrality bill, #SB822: industry robo-calls to seniors falsely telling them that protecting net neutrality will increase their phone bills by $30. Scaring seniors w lies about their financial security? Gross pic.twitter.com/1Lgop6KwSl
— Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) August 25, 2018
The group is informing seniors that should California pass net neutrality rules, they'll not only see a $30 hike in their cellular phone bills, but their data will be "slowed down":
"Your Assembly member will be voting on a proposal by San Francisco politicians that could increase your cellphone bill by $30 a month and slow down your data. We can't afford higher cell phone bills. We can't afford slower data. We can't afford Senate Bill 822."
Of course the bill in question, SB822, does nothing of the sort. Like most net neutrality bills, it prohibits AT&T from throttling or slowing down your cellular data connections anti-competitively, and if anything will likely save California consumers money by preventing AT&T from nickel and diming them (via zero rating, interconnection shenanigans, charging you more just to watch HD video as intended, or countless other creative abuses of the largely-uncompetitive broadband market). The information conveyed by the robocall is patently false.
Knowing the bill is likely to pass in some form, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast lobbyists have spent the last few months trying to strip away most of the integral parts of the bill. With those efforts struggling in activist-heavy California, apparently the broadband industry thought the next best move would be to lie to senior citizens, which speaks volumes of the quality and integrity of its arguments.
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Filed Under: california, lobbying, net neutrality, scott weiner
Companies: at&t, civil justice association
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Prescient forecasting
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"We were going to do X. Now we're going to do X, praise us!"
Reminds of of the articles where it's pointed out that as part of a deal of whatever kind, merger or whatnot, they'll promise to connect to X number of areas/houses.
Thing is, they were going to do that anyway, or already had, so all they were doing was trying to be rewarded for something they were already going to do, or already had, as though it had anything to do with the deal.
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Re: Prescient forecasting
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Honesty is the best policy
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Re:
On the other hand, whether the bill passes or not, the rates will go up due to lack of competition. Let the mergers proceed, so the rates can go up faster.
A better bill would be requiring competition, though I guess that would be hard to do at the state level.
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Yeah, I was interpreting this as a threat too, rather than a lie. To declare it a lie we'd have to know that AT&T isn't going to raise the bill by $30/mo and slow down their service as a fuck-you and a warning to other states not to try the same. I can't say that with any confidence.
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big telco is ripping you off anyway
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Re: big telco is ripping you off anyway
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True colors
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Lying? Not at all!
They're just eliding the fact that they'll probably be $50 higher if they vote against.
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I am having fun
Such a shame and regulation is failing all over the place... no wait... it's not failing at all. It is doing just exactly what it intended to do.
Give businesses like ATT "natural monopolies" so they can fuck you over so that you would have to run to "dirty politicians", that takes ATT's money that ATT took from you, and beg for NN like the ignorant worms you are.
You deserve ATT because you approve of them having monopolies. I though you fucking knobs knew how this shit works? But apparently you think you know far fucking more than you actually do!
Get rid of NN and go for the kill... end the monopolies! Your problems will never be gone, but killing those monopolies will do far more for you than those bullshit NN rules ever will! As usually the best you simpletons have is to give those corrupt bastards more power. The current power is not working, what is more power going to do exactly?
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Re: I am having fun
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Re: Re: I am having fun
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Re: Re: I am having fun
If I support regulations that work against monopolies and anti-trust I am obviously not against all regulations.
This is just a construct of your small and limited minds. That is your number one problem, any talk about destroying regulations for you guys means TOTAL 100% no room for even 1 regulation churning.
You guys have not fucking sense, not even a little bit. The problem is your "regulate all the things" mentality because there is NO CONTROL behind it.
I am okay with NARROW defined regulations that help guard against the negatives of a free-market, mainly "lazy fucking never my fault citizens" who think all salvation comes from the muttering of politicians getting paid by the people you seek relief from.
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Re: Re: Re: I am having fun
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You know some things just enough to make you self destructive. If you had the secret to eternal energy in your hands you would blow yourselves the fuck up!
The things you are doing right now will become the shackles you wear tomorrow. There is no such thing as a benevolent government. Another Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, or Pol Pott will get into power and fuck you sideways with the powers and tools you gave them to do it with!
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Re: Re: Re: I am having fun
Read and understand more. Speak and look like an idiot less.
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Time to put up or shut the fuck up!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I am having fun
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Anti-trust
Yeah. Take a look at how long it's been since we've actually seen those laws in use.
And then watch the action on Merger Monday.
Have you ever played the game Monopoly? It's a cautionary tale.
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Re: Re: Re: I am having fun
I am okay with NARROW defined regulations that help guard against the negatives of a free-market, mainly "lazy fucking never my fault citizens" who think all salvation comes from the muttering of politicians getting paid by the people you seek relief from.
As are we. In our case, we laid out a clear argument why net neutrality regulation was that NARROW defined regulation that help guard against the negatives of an anti-competitive market.
And because of that one thing -- where we seem to agree with you -- you continue to insist, day in and day out, that we support "regulate all the things."
Why? Why do you do this?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: I am having fun
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Because they are a liar and/or troll who enjoy beating up the phantom TD they've created in their head too much to be honest and have an honest discussion, instead choosing to bask in their fictional superiority as they best the imaginary and straw filled TD they present.
That or they just really want to help the site by stress-testing the flag as troll button.
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Re: I am having fun
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Re: Re: I am having fun
Mobile has NOTHING to do with this problem. In fact it is not the technical aspects that are the problems here. The problems are all "manufactured" by the SUCK ATT's DICK pro NN dimwits.
ATT does not need to have a government granted natural monopoly on shit.
We need to, here it comes FUCKERS, "regulate the infrastructure" like we used to do roads before toll roads became a fucking thing.
I am all for sensible, meaningful, and narrow regulation. I am just not for the "government owns, controls, and decides who gets what" regulations that these fucking set harming knobs want!
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Re: Re: Re: I am having fun
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Re: I am having fun
You have absolutely no data to support the idea that you are separate from this group any more than anyone else here is.
Well done.
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Re: I am having fun
There's a reason why the utility regulations were invented. They're a natural monopoly on a vital resource in many parts of the country.
Hence it's literally not possible in a true free market for the government to ensure competition in the ISP market even if they try breaking up the monopolies. In less population dense parts of the country it's simply not economically possible for 2 or more competitions to be in an area, especially in rural areas with lots of land and few people.
This is why the government to this day still subsidizes landlines in many rural parts of the country, and why there's a tax for it on your phone bill.
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Truth In Advertising
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Truth In Advertising
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Nice!
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Worst game of Telephone ever.
They spend so much effort getting their restrictions and oversight removed, then mock their detractors for pointing out how bad that is by saying "Oh but look nothing bad that you said was going to happen is happening!" knowing full well they are simply waiting till the news cycle moves away from them (and the lawsuits are done).
Now they sit there and falsely claim that NN rules will force them to raise rates and slow speeds, and if the rules pass they can fulfill their own prophecy and use that as "proof" that NN hurts consumers, even though they orchestrated the whole damn thing. And to top it off, they can get away with it because they just got done gutting meaningful oversight.
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What's "anti-competitively" about charging heaviest users more?
So what's NOT neutral about directly proportional to byte counts?
Now, I've asked several times for a definition of "net neutrality" and the minion gives a clearly impractical, self-contradictory outline right there!
What you kids mean by the phrase is you'd be saturating the towers continually so you can sit mesmerized by HD video, while anyone calling the Fire Dept to actually report a fire can't get a few bytes of bandwidth. Don't seem to understand limited capacity.
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Re: What's "anti-competitively" about charging heaviest users more?
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Re: What's "anti-competitively" about charging heaviest users more?
You seem to think that having inherently low capacity and the right to charge more when the capacity gets tested, rather than having adequate capacity, not just for today's usage, but for what might be coming, especially when they KNOW it's coming far in advance, is something we should put up with.
Net Neutrality means that all traffic get the same priority. Now that priority might be lower for, say torrents, and higher for, say video streaming. The problem is that they want THEIR video streaming to have a higher priority and lower cost as compared to THE OTHER GUYS video streaming which gets a lower priority and higher cost. That is not neutral. Then there is their concept of 'unlimited' which is severely limited and speed impacted whey 'THEY' feel like it.
An ISP, no matter how one gets the service, should be a dumb pipe. That an ISP also owns content providers should not affect that dumb pipe. Using the dumb pipe to market their content is an abrogation of the original deal. I buy Internet access from an ISP. Not content. If I buy content, then I choose a content provider. If I choose the content the ISP owned content provider provides, well good for them. Why should I be penalized, by the ISP for choosing someone else's content?
You want everyone to pay by the byte. Well they do. That the lack of competition allows them to change the deal while in mid deal and raise prices willy nilly, without giving anything more, or even justify the supposed underlying inflation, is again, not the users fault. THEY use their money to buy legislators and laws that prevent or hinder the competition that would both improve quality AND price because THEIR investors want growth. Both growth in quarterly profits and overall growth annually. Something that is unsustainable given that there are only so many customers, a commodity that won't expand very rapidly, and may shrink. Hence the mergers that try to forestall the fact that the market is limited. But even when there is only one left, growth will not be sustainable. What will they do then? I am fairly certain that you, a telecom shill, will be happy with whatever they come up with.
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Re: What's "anti-competitively" about charging heaviest users more?
Calling people Kids simply because you hold a different viewpoint is not only insulting but it undermines your argument.
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Re: What's "anti-competitively" about charging heaviest users more?
Congestion happens when too much bandwidth is demanded now, like this millisecond. Data caps limit how much data can use in a month. The time scale difference is such that data caps have nothing to do with avoiding congestion. If, as is common there as some sources sources allowed outside the data caps, it becomes even more obvious that they have nothing to do with capacity management, but a lot to do with market manipulation for extra profit.
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Re: Re: What's "anti-competitively" about charging heaviest users more?
It's not at all clear that this link is strong enough to justify the argument for data caps as a way to fight congestion, however.
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Re: What's "anti-competitively" about charging heaviest users more?
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Love fake news..
Any phone calls are ADVERTS..
How many things can we SUGGEST are adverts??
IF its not FACT, its an advert??
If its NOT NEWS...its an advert??
Where is that SUPER fine text that runs up my screen, excusing them from LYING??
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As usual Bodey McBodeface is missing the point
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Re: As usual Bodey McBodeface is missing the point
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