FCC Wants To Hear Your Thoughts On Crappy US Broadband
from the reality-based dept
One consistent point of pride for the Trump FCC, like many Trump agencies, was its active disdain for real world data. It didn't matter how much data showed that US broadband was expensive and spotty due to monopolization (and there's a lot of data clearly proving that point), the Trump FCC didn't care. It didn't matter that surveys showed that net neutrality was popular among consumers. Guys like Ajit Pai believed that the US broadband sector was perfectly healthy and competitive and you make things even more wonderful by gutting already fairly feckless regulatory oversight even further.
In short, some people have an ideology and refuse to accept any data that challenges it, no matter how clear it is. The Ajit Pai Donald Trump FCC was the poster child for this mindset. Yeah, it can be hard for anybody to be open to changing your opinions in the face of new or shifting data, but the Trump FCC didn't try. Like, ever. It blacklisted all reporters that even remotely criticized policy. It actively embraced bogus data from lobbyists. It routinely and knowingly spread absolute, disproven falsehoods. It wasn't interested in real world data. It simply wasn't.
It's not entirely clear yet what the Biden FCC is going to look and behave like, as the Biden camp still hasn't yet fully staffed the agency with a third Commissioner and possible permanent boss (kind of a problem during a pandemic busy highlighting how essential broadband is to... everything). But there are indications it's going to at least listen to the data and objective experts instead of just, you know, making shit up completely.
Whereas the Pai FCC basically killed a program that used real world data collected from real consumer routers to measure consumer broadband experience (again, because it revealed truths that clashed with Pai's ideology), the new FCC says it's making real world consumer experiences a priority again. That includes a new portal and a new form US broadband users can use to explain their experiences with customer service, prices, speeds, availability, and other sticking points in a highly monopolized business sector.
That data will then, purportedly, be used to actively inform policymaking (crazy!):
"As the Commission develops the tools needed to enhance the accuracy of its existing broadband maps, this new form provides a way for consumers to share their broadband experiences. Stories shared by consumers will help to inform the work of the FCC’s crossagency Broadband Data Task Force.
Take note. We're going straight to consumers. https://t.co/bZzsFo46ap
— Jessica Rosenworcel (@JRosenworcel) March 22, 2021
Of course having access to real world data doesn't mean that data will be used to seriously fix the problems in telecom, most of which orbit around two main problems: monopolization and state and federal corruption. Most of the Biden FCC's decisions so far have been relatively basic and unsurprising, and until the Biden administration gets around to appointing a permanent boss it remains stuck in partisan gridlock (thanks to that last minute appointment of Trump BFF Nathan Simington to the Commission). Until that's remedied, it's hard to determine just how tough this new FCC will actually be.
Either way, it's still essential to have real world data and accurate broadband maps to inform your policy decisions. US broadband for a good 30 years now has relied on an intentionally distorted view of the industry; one enabled by an industry that doesn't want obvious market failure highlighted... or fixed.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: fcc. broadband, feedback
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
There's only one reasonable standard for broadband, and it looks something like this:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: About that Point Number 2....
Which number of a symmetrical pair is the lower of the two??
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: About that Point Number 2....
Companies shouldn't be punished if some technical idiosyncrasy makes their connection 1000/970 or whatever. But in such cases, treat it as 970/970.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
That triples the cost of providing a connection, and leads to bankruptcy if the customers are not spread evenly across the providers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Still serves the public. There are still 3 fiber lines running to the home, and someone else will buy up those assets at auction, and they get another stab at it.
It's strange that you don't seem to realize this, or worse, that you do realize it but seem to have more concern for the businesses than the customers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
So, to enable competition, rather than solve the regulatory problems, you will pay more for your connection. That seem like using the idea of competition to raise prices, and not reduce them.
Most of the rest of the world has settled on a regulated monopoly for the infrastructure, and competition for services over that infrastructure.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'm not sure what principle of economics makes you believe that you'd end up paying more for such service. It's true that you'd be subsidizing the installation of that service through payment... but that's true for all utilities.
With the presence of two other competitors, they'd be forced to keep prices as low as the fundamentals would allow them to. The idea that somehow monopolies will behave and keep prices low because they don't worry about competition is bizarre and illogical.
Hell, if the price were below $50/month, I'd likely pay for two services. If it's $40/month or so, I might get all 3. I've already got a self-installed NID on the back wall of my house with 6 SC ports.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
If say three companies install enough fibre to serve every building, then 2/3 third of that investment goes unused. One way or another users will end up paying for that build out. In practice, if one company gains more users, it can reduce it prices, gaining more users, and driving the others out of business.
The main reason that DSL systems are being left to rot is that where cable exists, that cannot compete on price and capacity. Losing those customers means that the more expensive to maintain rural DSL is no longer subsided by the urban system, and they too are being left to rot. That is competition to provide fixed line service does not work, and leads to a local monopoly and an abandoned and worthless system.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"I'm not sure what principle of economics makes you believe that you'd end up paying more for such service. It's true that you'd be subsidizing the installation of that service through payment... but that's true for all utilities."
More like principle of causal reality. Building triple redundance does cost more than not. You don't really need more than one set of power cabling, sewage and water lines, or ethernet cable.
Most of the rest of the world handles this by simply enforcing an equal competition over built infrastructure - which usually leads to last mile being built by joint ventures of the local ISP's who then compete across the lines built.
The US issues around broadband and ISP monopoly is just one more of those "Only in America" problems. Apparently in order to make capitalism work you first need a solid socialist base to put the free market on.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Why 3 lines and only 3 providers? Much less wasteful would be to have 1 line, and tens or hundreds of providers, like we did in the ’90s. Some municipal networks are trying something like this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Point number 3
So long as the delivery is reliable, consistent and affordable, with low enough latency and high enough bandwidth, does the delivery method really matter? These can all be achieved with glass fiber, copper (coax), terrestrial OTA, low-earth orbit satellites and maybe more besides (though this being April 1, not homing pigeons - see RFC 1149).
I have doubt about the benefit of giving this standard legal weight. Given sufficient competition, absent illegal conspiracy, it is unlikely that most current deficiencies will occur. The problem is how much protection from competition the uncumbents have bought themselves and setting a legal standard is of no help if the agency that polices that standard just turns a blind eye on failure to meet that standard, especially if courts deny citizens standing to sue the malefactors.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Point number 3
No. Only glass fiber can provide what's needed.
OTA may provide a pipe as fast as glass... but it's exactly one pipe, shared by the entire footprint. Coax is 1950s technology, hobbled by companies who don't even want to be in the internet business.
This is why we can't have good things. Because you're constantly trying to talk up the table scraps you have now, as if were you to self-propagandize well enough they'd toss you a few more crumbs.
Only glass will do. Everything else is inferior or science fiction.
Businesses may ultimately be rational, and given the correct incentives they may ultimately come to the correct solutions.
But not on any timescale that will help you or I. They've learned to crony up and swindle, and corporate-cultural inertia will last 100 years or more. Culture is persistent.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Point number 3
You really don't know much about technology, at least as it applies to infrastructure, do you Melvin? Glass doesn't guarantee anything. ISPs may lay optical cable right to the customer's residences, but it comes from a local office where those cables are aggregated into a backbone connection. If the bandwidth of that connection is less than the total number of front-end connections times their bandwidth - as is almost universally the case - then the customers are still sharing bandwidth and there is no guarantee that a user will get their full bandwidth when they want it.
Insisting on glass for the front end BUYS YOU NOTHING. Putting laws in place to ensure what you consider equitable access is equally pointless if they are entrusted to the oversight of a government agency that has been proved to ignore its responsibilities. The market cannot solve the problem when established players have captured the regulators and had protectionist legislation enacted so that they never have to worry about competition. Dolling out public money as bribes to companies to do what they should be doing anyway is no solution, especially if they just take the money and ignore what they promised to get it (once you pay the danegeld you will never be rid of the Dane).
There simply are no quick solutions to this problem. Any real solution will need to see the dismantling of protectionist legislation, laws enabling true competition, other laws entitling customers to leave providers at will, with criminal consequences to obstruction, perhaps even constitutional amendments, as any such effort will almost certainly bang heads with the supreme court at some point. It will be a long, difficult journey. Perhaps what's needed is a concerted campaign in a single state, with career ending ramifications for the elected officials who enable or support the incumbent service providers in their legislative shenanigans, "to encourage the others".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Point number 3
It most certainly does. It guarantees that they're not using some inferior l1/l2 with built in limitations.
True, someone might come along and design some system that uses copper that would be sufficient... but there are no such designs, no such prototypes, and no such off-the-shelf hardware.
Glass guarantees that they're not trying to foist hfc off on us, that they're not trying to foist some other variation on shitty DSL on us, that they're not trying to foist fixed wireless on us, or god help us, 5g.
You're not just wrong. You're not even wrong. You're confused. I managed to express all of this in an easy to understand phrase, but you being unintelligent had to challenge me, and I had to write all this out too. You're probably not intelligent enough to understand it even with the full explanation.
Wow, as bad at politics as you are at technology.
The agency is worthless in the long run, it's true. But who gives a fuck? If in the next few years the push for all of this results in you having 3 fiber cables hooked up to your home, the agency can go fuck off and competition itself will be sufficient for people to have the sort of internet access they need. Glass doesn't rot, doesn't rust.
It will last awhile. Or would, if you weren't busy negotiating on the enemy's behalf and undermining our position. Gee, why don't you just tell them we've already got what we need, thank you, please be nice to us.
There are no polite solutions that are quick. If they were incentivized, we'd have 99% coverage on the mainland US in 8 years, and probably 80%+ in Alaska.
Stop being polite. Stop saying "gee, your coax could be good enough Mr. Comcast, but I'd really appreciate it if you could reduce the over-datacap fee by 10%!"
With you along for the ride, sabotaging the rest of us the whole trip, I doubt we'll ever arrive.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Point number 3
So what? Fiber is 1930s technology. (See the work of Heinrich Lamm; or Manfred Börner in 1965 if you insist on LASER-based data transmission.)
Cable companies are hobbling it. That has absolutely nothing to do with the technology, which is cabable of delivering upwards of 10 Gbit/s with low latency. Sure, it's inferior to fiber (and DOCSIS is over-complicated), but that's far from being anyone's biggest broadband problem. It'll be another decade or two before physical-layer technological limits bother anyone.
Cable companies should be installing fiber for all new service. But they're still cable companies; they're gonna hobble that just as they do with co-ax.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: the internet is a utility
You can't live a modern lifestyle without the internet, which puts it in the same class as water and power. Hey you could live without water and power if you wanted to be a caveman.
So the internet should be regulated as a utility. And there's more justification for it vs water and power because the US government invented the internet. Why has private enterprise been allowed to hijack it at all? Why shouldn't every American get free internet considering that our (well our parents and grandparents) taxes were used to invent it?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I filled out the form, but . . .
It will take an absolute flood of complaints (as in "break the Internet" kind of flood) to stand even a snowball's chance of making a difference. It will be nigh impossible to generate enough public outrage to cause that flood. I also don't see this issue as being high on the Harris / Biden list of grandstanding / pandering topics.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I filled out the form, but . . .
Might be higher than you think. Biden's making a push for it in his American Jobs Plan. Of course, the true test will be if he keeps pushing when the opposition mounts up.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
first thing is to agree with the heading. the broadband really is crap! the likes of AT&T have had billions in tax payer funds to make USA broadband a world beater but all that money has gone into the pockets of the bosses and the shareholders. absolutely the least has been done to keep our broadband running, let alone improve it! the biggest problem is those in government who are more interested in lining their pockets than sorting this problem out and the ISPs are only too glad to carry on. every time a new company comes along that tries to do improvements or even start from scratch, along come the incumbent lobbyists who persuade the law makers etc to kill things before they even get going! if the main 'players' wont do what they're supposed to, in reasonable time frames, they should definitely NOT have the ear of government bent to refuse the best thing ever, COMPETITION! and when those ISPs wanna stop the use of THEIR poles etc, remind them of where the money originally came from!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Broadband? What broadband?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Speed Test?
Couldn't they accomplish crowd-sourcing a ton of data by setting up a speed test, like Speedtest.net / Ookla / Speakeasy, the same tools we use? Combine that with voluntary zipcode info and tying speed data to each ISP's netblock, you could get a real picture of speed and availability, even digging down to primetime network congestion (that 100Mbit doesn't matter if it doesn't deliver when you're actually home).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Speed Test?
They used to have their own app where you could do speed test for wireless carriers and it would upload supposedly to a database but who knows whatever happened with that app or the data. Probably got swept under a rug somewhere and disappeared.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
telecom failures
here's a simple idea! MAKE OUR INTERNET EQUAL TO OR GRATER THEN other country's! with a price point to match.... and fix the monopolization and state and federal corruption.
there is NO reason why we should have the WORST internet in the world!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: telecom failures
There is a reason, political patronage at the senior levels of regulatory agencies, which has resulted in their capture as short term jobs leads to people having their eye out for the next job, along with changes in objectives with every change of administration.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]