FCC Pressured To Let Libraries Bridge Broadband Access During The Pandemic

from the little-things dept

An estimated 42 million Americans lack access to broadband, nearly double official FCC estimates. That's kind of a problem during a pandemic when your education, employment, family connection, healthcare and very survival depend on being tethered to the internet. And it's a particular problem for the tens of millions more Americans who can't afford access because we've happily allowed the US telecom sector to become monopolized by a handful of providers.

Last year, the nation's schools and libraries came to the Trump FCC with a novel idea to bridge the gap during the crisis: why not let libraries and schools temporarily provide broadband access to their communities? The FCC's E-Rate program already helps bridge the digital divide by financing a portion of school and library broadband access. But the rules don't clearly allow them to offer service beyond property lines. So, the American Library Association, which represents the country's 16,557 public libraries, wrote a letter (pdf) to the Ajit Pai FCC, asking if they could provide emergency access without the FCC punishing them for it.

And the Ajit Pai FCC simply... didn't answer their question. The FCC made it clear schools and libraries could leave on existing WiFi hotspots so folks on the wrong side of the digital divide could huddle together in school and library parking lots, but it simply ignored their request to be able to deliver more creative solutions, be it letting students have temporary access to mobile hotspots at home, or the creation of things like mobile WiFi-capable bookmobiles. The FCC Chair has the emergency authority to make this happen, Ajit Pai just... didn't want to.

With new leadership at the FCC, some lawmakers are pressuring the agency to revisit the idea so that kids don't have to huddle outside of Taco Bell just to attend class in the wealthiest country in the history of the planet:

The estimate is that around 12 million kids can't get online, though given the FCC's data collection and broadband mapping efforts tend more toward fantasy than reality, you can be fairly sure that number is notably higher. The catch: existing E-Rate funding would require a boost from Congress. The same Congress that thought nothing of giving AT&T billions in wasted subsidies, regulatory favors, and a $42 billion tax cut in exchange for absolutely nothing, but will hem and haw endlessly over whether we should finance emergency broadband access to poor kids during an unprecedented crisis.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, e-rate, ed markey, fcc, libraries, pandemic

Ajit Pai Tried To Strangle A Broadband Aid Program For Low Income Americans. Then A Pandemic Hit.

from the you're-really-not-helping dept

While recently departed FCC boss Ajit Pai was perhaps best known for ignoring the public and making shit up to dismantle FCC authority over telecom monopolies, many of his other policies have proven to be less sexy to talk about--but just as terrible.

One of the biggest targets throughout Pai's four year tenure as boss was the FCC's Lifeline program, an effort started by Reagan and expanded by Bush Jr. that long enjoyed bipartisan support until Trumpism rolled into town. Lifeline doles out a measly $9.25 per month subsidy that low-income homes can use to help pay a tiny fraction of their wireless, phone, or broadband bills (enrolled participants have to chose one). The FCC, under former FCC boss Tom Wheeler, had voted to expand the service to cover broadband connections, something Pai (ever a champion to the poor) voted down.

Despite constant pledges that one of his top priorities was fixing the "digital divide," Pai's tenure as boss included a notable number of efforts to scuttle the Lifeline program that weren't paid much attention to -- until a pandemic came to town. COVID-19 has shone a bright spotlight on the fact that 42 million Americans still can't access broadband (double official FCC estimates), and millions more can't afford service thanks to monopolization and limited competition.

Under Chairman Ajit Pai's "leadership," the FCC voted 3-2 in late 2017 to eliminate a $25 additional Lifeline subsidy for low-income native populations on tribal land. As part of Pai's effort, he also banned smaller mobile carriers from participating in the Lifeline program. Pai's attempt to neuter Lifeline in tribal areas certainly hurt overall enrollment, but didn't always fare well in the courts. One ruling (pdf), for example, noting that Pai and his staff not only pulled their justifications completely out of their asses, but failed to do any meaningful research whatsoever into how the cuts would impact poor and tribal communities:

"The Commission's adoption of these two limitations was arbitrary and capricious by not providing a reasoned explanation for its change of policy that is supported by record evidence. In adopting the Tribal Facilities Requirement, the Commission's decision evinces no consideration of the exodus of facilities-based providers from the Tribal Lifeline program. Neither does it point to evidence that banning resellers from the Tribal Lifeline program would promote network buildout."

That's a polite way of the court saying that Pai based his decisions on ideology, not evidence (kind of a theme throughout his tenure as reflected by other court rulings). On the other end of these decisions are real, struggling human beings. Human beings the Washington Post recently did an excellent piece on as it surveyed the real-world damage from Pai's decisions to neuter a program that already did the bare minimum to help struggling Americans:

"The restrictions have been especially problematic during the pandemic, as Americans find themselves more dependent than ever on their mobile devices to stay connected. Many Lifeline subscribers say they have had to make unfair trade-offs — talking either to family or to doctors, for example, or participating in their communities or saving precious minutes for emergencies — that most Americans would find unfathomable."

Lifeline as a program is no stranger to fraud, with companies from Sprint to AT&T being routinely busted for taking money for people that don't technically exist. As the report notes, Pai hid his ideological assaults on the program under the guise that he was exclusively worried about said fraud, yet didn't take the steps necessary to prevent said fraud from happening:

"Under Pai’s watch, for example, the U.S. government for years did not fully implement a national verification system — a state-of-the art digital tool designed to determine eligibility and crack down on the fraud Republicans sought to prevent. The myriad missteps are laid bare in a report released by the Government Accountability Office in late January, which found that by summer 2020, most states still had not implemented the technology. Those that did found it even harder for Lifeline applicants to get approved, creating undue delays even in cases in which low-income Americans should have qualified easily for the program."

Again, Pai's tenure was largely pockmarked by doing huge favors for entrenched telecom monopolies, then using flimsy or nonexistent data to justify those policies. All while simply ignoring the fact that monopolization and a lack of competition creates most of the sector's problems (note how he'd never discuss US broadband prices). Concern about fraud was never symmetrical; while Pai went out of his way often to highlight Lifeline fraud, he never once even mentioned the problem with throwing billions in tax cuts and regulatory favors at monopolies like AT&T in exchange for doing absolutely nothing. That's before you even get to Pai's most recent subsidization scandals, which doled out billions to companies that gamed the FCC process.

This kind of facts-optional ideology has, for years, been brushed aside as normal policymaking (former FCC boss turned top cable lobbyist Mike Powell wasn't all that different). Unfortunately while this stuff gets dismissed as boring policy wonkery or "partisan politics," it's good to remember this kind of behavior has very real costs that the purveyors of said policies try very hard not to think much about.

Filed Under: ajit pai, arbitrary and capricious, covid, digital divide, fcc, lifeline, pandemic

Outgoing FCC's Last Act Is A Delusional Report That Pretends US Broadband Is Wonderful

from the delusion-to-the-last dept

By law, the FCC is required once a year to issue a report indicating whether quality broadband is being deployed on a "reasonable and timely basis." If not, the agency is supposed to, you know, actually do something about it. Unsurprisingly, the Pai FCC last year issued a glowing report declaring that everything was going swimmingly, despite some glaring evidence to the contrary. After all, the nation's phone companies have effectively stopped upgrading their DSL lines, leaving cable giants like Comcast with a growing monopoly over faster broadband speeds (no, neither Elon Musk nor 5G will magically fix this problem).

As one of its last acts in power, the outgoing Trump FCC this week issued its latest annual report on the state of broadband deployment in the US. And, rather unsurprisingly for an agency that took kissing monopoly ass to an entirely new level, outgoing boss Ajit Pai used it to declare the US broadband is perfectly healthy thanks to mindless deregulation and his incredible leadership:

"From my first day as Chairman, the FCC’s top priority has been closing the digital divide. It’s heartening to see these numbers, which demonstrate that we’ve been delivering results for the American people,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

"These successes resulted from forward-thinking policies that removed barriers to infrastructure investment and promoted competition and innovation. I look forward to seeing the Commission continue its efforts to ensure that all Americans have broadband access. Especially with the success of last year’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction, I have no doubt that these figures will continue to improve as auction winners deploy networks in the areas for which they got FCC funding."

The problem: FCC broadband mapping data and methodology is hot garbage, something all FCC Commissioners (after more than a decade of complaints) only started even acknowledging in the last few years. Monopolies like Comcast and AT&T have long fought tooth and nail against more accurate mapping and data collection, knowing full well that once the public gets a better view of how spotty, expensive, and uncompetitive the US broadband market is, somebody might just get the crazy idea to do something about it. Captured regulators eagerly share this view.

While there certainly has been improvement over the last four years in terms of broadband access, the Pai FCC also has a four-year history of taking credit for improvements they had nothing to do with. One such example is the steady growth in community owned and operated broadband networks, which Pai FCC's actively opposed. Pai's FCC has even tried to take credit for AT&T fiber deployment mandated as a merger condition by the previous, Obama FCC. That's before you even get to Pai's widely disproven claim that gutting the FCC's consumer protection authority (and net neutrality rules) resulted in incredible new investment.

Pai's last FCC progress report also clings tight to the claim that our definition of broadband (25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up) is still good enough for modern policy making:

"We find that the current speed benchmark of 25/3Mbps remains an appropriate measure by which to assess whether a fixed service is providing advanced telecommunications capability. We conclude that fixed services with speeds of 25/3Mbps continue to meet the statutory definition of advanced telecommunications capability; that is, such services "enable[] users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications."

3 Mbps is pathetic. It in no way meets the urgency of a moment, and that was before entire families became stuck at home gaming, streaming 4K video, and teleconferencing due to the pandemic. And here too is yet another example where Pai's FCC went out of its way to pander to telecom monopolies. Monopolies cried like toddlers in 2010 when the previous FCC increased the definition from 200 kbps symmetrical to 4 Mbps downstream, 1 Mbps upstream. Giant ISPs whined again when the FCC in 2015 bumped it to 25/3. They oppose a higher standard because it would clearly illustrate monopolization and market failure. Captured regulators and lawmakers, again, eagerly share this position.

A slow consensus is emerging that 50/25 or even 100/25 should be the new normal. But Pai not only parroted industry opposition to increasing it, he actively tried to weaken the existing standard. Again, the goal here isn't to "bridge the digital divide," it's to obfuscate it on the behalf of monopolies. Monopolies that employ an army of lobbyists, consultant, academics, and think tankers whose entire function is to pretend that US broadband isn't a monopolistic mess. It's why you'll never see Pai and his ilk even mention US broadband pricing, because they know what that kind of observation leads to.

It remains unclear just what kind of FCC leadership the incoming Biden administration has in mind. But with COVID finally lighting a fire under our collective apathy on this subject, at a bare minimum you'd hope they'll have a fundamental respect for real world data. Real world data that, with any luck, results in us no longer looking at the broken US telecom sector through distorted, rose colored glasses.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, competition, fcc

In Departing Statement, FCC Boss Ajit Pai Pretends He 'Served The People'

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Ajit Pai's tenure wasn't devoid of value. He arguably oversaw some decent moves that will bring more spectrum to market (albeit not without some caveats and casualties), and he implemented the nation's first suicide hotline (988). But by and large it's pretty hard to not see Pai's tenure as a giant middle finger to consumer welfare, and a four year, sustained ass kissing for the nation's biggest telecom monopolies.

In his departing statement, of course, Pai gushes about what an honor it was to serve the "American people":

"Serving the American people as Chairman of the FCC has been the greatest honor of my professional life. Over the past four years, we have delivered results for the American people, from narrowing the digital divide to advancing American leadership in 5G, from protecting consumers and national security to keeping Americans connected during the pandemic, from modernizing our media rules to making the agency more transparent and nimble. It has been a privilege to lead the agency over its most productive period in recent history."

That is, if you've paid even the slightest bit of attention to Pai's tenure, a paragraph of delusion. US 5G is a disappointing mess. "Modernized" media rules is a misnomer for "gutting decades of media consolidation rules with bipartisan support." Pai's purported adoration of the American public is the biggest lie of all, given he spent most of his tenure either ignoring them or making protecting them far more difficult. Often with a total disregard for factual data, or the will of the actual public.

The shining example of this was Pai's net neutrality repeal, which not only killed net neutrality rules, but the agency's ability to hold telecom giants accountable for much of anything. The repeal took the consumer protection authority of an agency crafted to police telecom, and shoveled it to the FTC -- which lacks the resources or authority to do the job (which is precisely why the industry wanted this to happen). As an additional gift to monopolies, Pai's repeal even tried to ban states from being able to protect consumers as well, something only thwarted because the courts told him his agency lacked the authority.

To force this hugely unpopular proposal through, Pai lied repeatedly about net neutrality's impact, claiming the modest rules (by international standards) had demolished telecom sector investment. Once repealed, Pai lied just as often about how the repeal had resulted in a huge spike in investment (it hadn't). When reporters contacted Pai's FCC to fact check the agency's dodgy numbers, they were literally directed to telecom lobbyists who'd provided the false data. Reporters who asked tough questions were effectively blocklisted during Pai's tenure.

Pai's office also blocked law enforcement inquiries into the broadband industry's (and Trumpland's) use of fake and dead people to provide bogus public support for unpopular policies. And when genuine, pissed off, John Oliver viewers wrote to the FCC to complain, swamping the FCC website, FOIA data revealed that Pai's office repeatedly lied and claimed it had been the victim of a DDOS attack. The entire affair culminated in Pai dancing with a pizzagate conspiracy theorist in a video the internet would like to forget.

As such Pai's tenure wasn't just pockmarked by bad data and bad policy, it was, as is custom for the Trump era, a shining example of trolling as a government policy, where policymakers take an active enjoyment in being insufferable and hostile. Hostile to the press. Hostile to the public. Hostile to experts and expert data, especially if those experts question entrenched industry ideology or rampant US monopolization.

There's a laundry list of other examples of Pai's disdain for the public welfare and market health, including Pai's efforts to utterly dismantle decades-old (and bipartisan) media consolidation rules just so disinformation giants like Sinclair Broadcasting could get ever larger. He flubbed hurricane disaster responses, mindlessly rubber stamped giant, job and competition killing mergers, undermined his own agency's efforts to combat prison telco monopoly price gouging, refused to seriously tackle location data abuse scandals, turned a blind eye while Verizon throttled firefighters during a crisis, and so much more.

So if by "served the American public" you mean ignored them completely and actively made it harder to protect them, sure. Pai now stumbles off to work either in telecom, or at some telecom-funded think tank where he'll spend the next few decades coasting on an illusory reputation as a "free market champion" and noble destroyer of "burdensome regulation," hopeful folks forget or ignore that his primary agenda was, fairly uniformly, to act as an apologist for, and denier of, American monopolization and the laundry list of obvious problems it creates.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, competition, consumer welfare, fcc, net neutrality

In His Last Two Weeks, Ajit Pai Finally Finds A Backbone And Refuses To Move Forward With Trump's Ridiculous 230 Attack

from the too-little-too-late dept

On Thursday, a day after his boss helped incite a mob to storm the Capitol, only then did outgoing FCC chair Ajit Pai finally "distance" himself from Trump and say he won't go forward with Trump's plan to have the FCC reinterpret Section 230.

In an interview on C-SPAN's "The Communicators," Pai told Protocol and C-SPAN co-host Peter Slen that he does not intend to move forward with a rule-making on Section 230, which was laid out in Trump's social media executive order. He said he won't "second-guess" the decisions made by Facebook and Twitter to bar Trump from posting. And he said the president bears some responsibility for the riots that engulfed Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

Specifically on 230, this was the exchange:

On Oct. 15, you said that you intend to move forward with a rule-making for clarity on Section 230. What's the status of that?

The status is that I do not intend to move forward with the notice of proposed rule-making at the FCC.

And why is that?

The reason is, in part, because given the results of the election, there's simply not sufficient time to complete the administrative steps necessary in order to resolve the rule-making. Given that reality, I do not believe it's appropriate to move forward.

If you could, what do you think should be done on Section 230?

There's now a bipartisan consensus among elected officials that the law should be changed. Obviously the president believes it should be repealed, President-elect Biden has campaigned repeatedly on its repeal, but within Congress there appears to be a consensus also that it should be revised or reformed in some way. Obviously in terms of changing the law, that's a decision for lawmakers to consider, but I do think there are certain bipartisan consensus areas forming regarding how it should be revised.

It's a very complicated issue, one that I think Congress will have to study and deliberate on very seriously. I personally would think about it more carefully in terms of the immunity provision, for example, but those are the kinds of things that I think the next administration and Congress will think about very carefully.

He's trying to escape this one with his reputation intact, and no one should let him get away with it. He could have spoken up earlier. He could have actually defended the 1st Amendment and the fact that internet websites have the right to moderate as they see fit. That's what his ideologically aligned colleague on the FCC, Mike O'Rielly, did in calling out that social media moderation is not an issue for the government. Pai sat by and said nothing, and watched as his colleague, who had backed up every other nonsense position Pai has taken for years, got fired for it.

Then Pai could have done the correct thing and refused to even bother to take up the issue of CDA 230 after the NTIA, under orders from Trump, sent over a petition. He chickened out and asked for comments, wasting everyone's time. Then, he could have taken those comments -- in which every single substantial comment explained how he had no authority and shouldn't be engaging at all -- and decided not to move forward. But, he spinelessly moved forward with it anyway, pushing out a laughable legal justification that was diametrically opposed to everything he had said about the net neutrality issue.

It's only now -- with two weeks left in the Trump Presidency, after more and more people (including Republicans) have come to realize that maybe Trump is a destructive mess who helped incite a riot at the Capitol -- that Pai pretends to find a backbone and push refuse to move forward on this issue. And he does it in the weakest possible way -- saying that he's run out of time. It's a spineless move from someone who has spent nearly all of his years in public office publicly patting himself on the back for standing by his "keep government out of business" principles.

Obviously, Pai has made a political calculus here, and he's hoping to slide away from this mess and the stench associated with it on the same day that a bunch of other Republicans hoping to revitalize their reputations are doing so as well. But it's not principled to wait until the politically convenient point to do what you should have done months ago. The truth is simple: Pai isn't the principled defender of "free markets" and "light touch regulation" he has positioned himself as over the years. He's just another political hack who took the convenient path.

Filed Under: ajit pai, donald trump, fcc, free speech, michael o'rielly, section 230, social media

FCC Takes A Break From Not Caring About Consumers To Hassle Some Landlords Over Pirate Radio

from the odd-priorities dept

It's been pretty clear for a while now that the Trump/Ajit Pai FCC simply doesn't give a shit about consumer protection, healthy markets, high prices, or competition. It's why they've effectively dismantled the FCC's authority and ceded US telecom policy-making to AT&T and Comcast lobbyists. All in the repeatedly disproven belief that gutting oversight of a bunch of politically powerful natural monopolies somehow results in free market magic. Of course the end result of thirty-years of this kind of policy thinking is Comcast, which pretty much speaks for itself.

Instead of doing one of its core jobs of protecting markets and consumers, the Pai FCC has spent an inordinate amount of time hyperventilating over pirate radio broadcasts. Every few months or so the FCC will crow about how it has cracked down on some piddly pirate radio broadcaster that (usually) is causing minimal harm (and can't pay the resulting fine anyway). Often, some of these broadcasts are catered to very narrow and underserved minority communities, and taking them offline isn't worth the time and enforcement cost unless it's causing significant, major harm to a legit regional broadcaster or public safety.

But recently the FCC took things to the next level, by using recently expanded authority under the PIRATE Act to target property owners and landlords who host those engaging in pirate radio broadcasts:

"The bureau issued an announcement that it is exercising the FCC’s new authority under the recently enacted PIRATE Act, which gave the commission a significant new hammer in its anti-pirate toolkit: “Parties that knowingly facilitate illegal broadcasting on their property are liable for fines of up to $2 million,” it stated.

Enforcement Bureau Chief Rosemary Harold said, “It is unacceptable — and plainly illegal under the new law — for landlords and property managers to simply opt to ignore pirate radio operations. Once they are aware of these unauthorized broadcasts, they must take steps to stop it from continuing in their buildings or at other sites they own or control."

There is, of course, a whole slew of secondary liability issues that crop up from the FCC cracking down hard on landlords that not only may not really understand they're hosting a pirate radio broadcast, especially given the "real" threat these often tiny pirate broadcasts pose. Some of the fines are upwards of $2 million; and landlords could wind up paying significantly more in penalties than the actual pirate broadcasters, who usually can't afford to pay the fines anyway. That's assuming FCC lawyers can show the landlord "knowingly tolerated" the broadcasts, which seems like a bit of an uphill climb.

It's also a bit odd to see the FCC aggressively flex here, given its complete and total apathy to its broader mission: protecting consumers, small competitors, and the market from giant regional monopolies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon. Yes, pirate radio broadcasts can certainly cause harm, especially if they're interfering with public safety broadcasts. But the scale of the actual harm is usually a far cry from the harm caused by letting natural telecom monopolies with thirty years of anticompetitive behavior under their belts literally dictate state and federal internet and telecom policy. It's odd to fixate on the smaller problem of pirate radio while being utterly apathetic to stuff like... rampant broadband monopolization.

Yes, these pirate broadcasters are breaking the law. Yes, they should just shift to streaming and avoid the legal hassle, risk, and potential harm they can cause. Yes, the FCC should investigate and punish pirate broadcasters when they're causing clear, significant, provable harm. But recall, this is also an FCC that's been totally apathetic to the way unchecked media consolidation has been harming marginalized minority voices for decades, so turning around and over-reacting to what are often creative (albeit illegal and potentially unwise) alternative solutions to navigate the US media landscape shows a lack of foresight and broader thinking.

Such high profile actions do, however, generate headlines that imply the Trump FCC hasn't been utterly negligent when it comes to doing its broader job of protecting the public at large because a bunch of giant monopolies told them to.

Filed Under: ajit pai, fcc, harm, landlords, pirate radio, secondary liability

FCC Accused Of Falsely Inflating U.S. Gigabit Broadband Availability

from the rose-colored-glasses dept

However spotty and uncompetitive U.S. broadband is, it's particularly bad when it comes to faster speeds. Why? Because in many areas regional telcos simply refused to upgrade their aging DSL lines since doing so wasn't profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street's liking. As a result we've literally let these networks fall apart with no regulatory attention. That, in turn, has given cable giants like Comcast massive monopolies that cover huge swaths of the U.S., resulting in spotty coverage, higher prices, slower speeds, and routinely poor customer service.

Granted, the Ajit Pai and Trump FCC haven't been a big fan of data that accurately measures this problem. The agency has been caught time and time again leaning on data it knows isn't accurate to paint a rosy picture of U.S. broadband, which is designed to justify repeatedly kissing the ass of U.S. telecom monopolies.

Last week, the agency was again caught aggressively overinflating the availability of gigabit-speed broadband in the U.S. According to the official FCC tallies, gigabit broadband speeds are available to roughly 84% of the U.S. public, up from just 4 percent in 2016. This, the FCC will be quick to tell you, is thanks to its decision to kill net neutrality and neuter its consumer protection authority over giant broadband providers.

But when researchers at BroadbandNow did their own independent research to verify that data, they found that time and time again, the FCC's data was not just inaccurate, but immensely incorrect. Places the FCC claimed had gigabit broadband service consistently did not:

"We manually checked 75 addresses in zip codes where the FCC shows gigabit coverage, but BroadbandNow data shows that there is not an internet plan sold at that speed. We checked these addresses by calling internet service providers and asking if gigabit service was available. In all 75 cases, none of them had a gigabit service available."

In reality, somewhere around 56% of Americans may have an active gigabit connection, but even that estimate is considered optimistic given that the FCC's form 477 data collected from ISPs routinely isn't confirmed to be accurate. This creates inaccurate broadband availability maps (including the FCC's $300 million public facing one), which in turn prop up the agency's false claims that U.S. broadband is largely wonderful thanks to mindless deregulation of the sector. Worse, despite repeated criticism, the FCC's methodology remains comically bad, also resulting in an overestimate of both speed and availability:

"Chief among them is the caveat that a provider can mark a given census block – the level of granularity used within the form – as “covered” if so little as one home within the block has service in reality. This has led to widespread issues of over-reporting when it comes to where plans are actually available at the neighborhood level."

There's the added irony that a lot of the growth the U.S. did actually see during this period is thanks to things the Trump FCC either had nothing to do with, like the 2015 AT&T/DirecTV merger conditions requiring additional fiber deployment, or the hundreds of community-run municipal broadband networks agency commissioners have repeatedly demonized and have supported banning outright. This FCC then, in Trumpian fashion, claims that improvements it had nothing to do with, and those that succeeded despite it, justify deregulating Comcast and AT&T.

There's a reason that folks like Ajit Pai, hand in hand with industry, aren't fans of hard, clear data showing U.S. broadband is uncompetitive and overly expensive: somebody might just get the crazy idea to try and do something about it.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, competition, data, fcc, fiber, gigabit, lies, mapping