FCC Bungled Broadband Mapping And Subsidies So Badly, It Got Boxed Out Of Broadband Infrastructure Plan
from the you-get-a-time-out dept
So we've noted for a long time how the FCC's broadband maps are a bit of a joke, routinely overstating broadband competitors, speeds, and service availability. We've also routinely noted how these bad maps go hand in hand with extremely sloppy subsidy programs that often dole out money to regional monopolies for doing as little as possible. That was punctuated recently by a $9 billion scandal in which the FCC (under Trump appointee Ajit Pai) doled out hundreds of millions of undeserved dollars to ISPs (like Elon Musk's Starlink) so they could deliver broadband to airport parking lots and traffic medians.
While the agency has been taking steps to remedy some of the problems under interim boss Jessica Rosenworcel, the agency's mapping and subsidy dysfunction seems to have resulted in it being boxed out of managing the $65 billion in new broadband funding included in the infrastructure bill:
"What happened: Critics say the program, known as the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), was rushed in order to begin before the end of the Trump administration. Problems with the accuracy of the FCC's broadband maps led to complaints about funds being awarded to provide broadband in parking lots. There are also concerns that the agency did not thoroughly vet companies before allowing them into the auction, leading to questions about whether providers who won subsidies will be able to deliver service.
Axios is fairly polite about this, but your top telecom regulator being boxed out of an historic broadband funding plan because they were too incompetent...isn't great. Yeah, the FCC was also boxed out because Congress wanted governors to have more control and the Biden administration felt it would have more control if the Commerce Department was in charge (instead of a regulator), but it's still pretty damning. And while the Trump administration was particularly bad about using bullshit data to justify or just ignore regional monopolization, that's not exactly a new tendency for the agency.
Despite a decade of development and a $350 billion price tag, the FCC's broadband availability map is a complete joke. It takes only five minutes tinkering with it to notice that it outright hallucinates competitors, broadband availability, and available speeds. It also, at direct industry behest, refuses to include one of the most important metrics: price. The agency's map is so bad, the NTIA recently started developing its own map that pulls from a broader data pool and (gasp) actually acknowledges that price is an important metric.
Of course part of the problem is that the FCC was somewhat eviscerated under Pai at the behest of AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. Much of the agency's consumer protection authority was stripped away during the net neutrality repeal, leaving it incapable of policing a lot of telecom sector harms. The rush late-game appointment of Trump BFF Nathan Simington (as part of that whole doomed quest to have the FCC regulate social media), also left the agency gridlocked at 2-2 commissioners. That means there's no voting majority, and the agency is currently incapable of making any changes of substance.
So because the Biden camp still hasn't even nominated a fifth commissioner and permanent FCC boss seven months into his term, the agency's stuck in kind of a quagmire where it can't make any meaningful changes or improvements. And if he picks the wrong person to permanently lead the agency, like an industry-cozy-revolving-door-type like FCC boss turned cable lobbyist Mike Powell, or a "I'm too afraid to rock the boat" type like Obama's first FCC pick, Julius Genachowski, nothing much will change either.
The FCC is in desperate need of a leader with backbone who can not only shore up the agency's dodgy mapping and broadband subsidy problems, but also restore much of the regulator's eroded consumer protection authority. And it needs a leader willing to recognize that mediocre U.S. broadband is a direct result of regional monopolization and corruption. But because the "big tech" policy debate has sucked absolutely all of the oxygen out of the room in DC policy conversations, "big telecom" continues to get the short end of the stick, despite suffering from many of the very same (and in some cases worse) problems.
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: biden infrastructure plan, broadband, competition, fcc, infrastructure, infrastructure plan, mapping
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
yet another fuck up orchestrated and executed by Pai! how the hell can nothing be done to him? how can no charges be levelled against him? any other person working in any other job/industry would have been strung up by the balls long ago!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Pai is only a symptom of the mess US politics is. With all of the "campaign contributions" and "revolving doors" there is no incentive to change the way things are. This stagnation removes any incentive for innovation... From abroad we just watch the rot grow and wait for the inevitable collapse.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
It's the right wing dream in action, a government agency so massively broken the left and centrists don't trust it to do anything and thanks to legalised bribery, voter suppression and gerrymandering, are highly unlikely to ever have the power needed to fix it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
The fuck does gerrymandering have to do with it?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Because of the rampant Gerrymandering many congressional districts will be very hard to flip away from Republican representatives and make any substantive change in congress.
It's not just the right, democrats have some blame in this as well. To some extent the gerrymandering has been done by both sides with bad results, but the republicans seem to be better at getting there way with it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
Which has what, specifically, to do with the FCC, the thing the article is about?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
And Yet ...
The Biden admin is behind a bipartisan Infrastructure Bill that is defined to do precisely squat about broadband access until AFTER the hogtied FCC completes its new and improved broadband access maps! Acknowledge that the FCC is crippled beyond help and then define your alternative program to be dependent on the success of that crippled FCC. "That's some Catch, that Catch 22"
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
What could something that makes it considerably easier to an unpopular minority party to rule and pass laws against the public interest, something makes it near impossible for any meaningful change or repair to happen in Washington possibly have to do with a government agency that's in desperate need of repair after having all it's powers stripped away? I guess we'll never know.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
What powers were stripped away, by whom, and what are you proposing the House do about it?
What in the everloving fuck are you gibbering about?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dingos
We need another non-dingo in the FCC. Get on it Biden!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
But this story isn't just about Pai and the Trump administration. This story is about long term corruption and regulatory capture that spans multiple administrations across both political parties who are beholden to corporate sponsors and lobbyists. This is underscored by the fact that Biden has yet to appoint an FCC chair after seven months in office, and the well-founded fear that when he does, it may be another lackey from the DC-corporate world revolving door.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Dingos
Biden? Don't hold your breath. Maybe he'll nominate Rahm Emanuel to the FCC.
[ link to this | view in thread ]