New Law Bans ISPs From Charging You A 'Rental' Fee For Hardware You Already Own

from the ill-communication dept

For much of this year, broadband customers have been complaining that Frontier Communications, the nation's third-biggest telco, had been charging its customers a rental fee for modems they already owned. Normally, you're supposed to be able to buy your own modem instead of paying your ISP a rental fee upwards of $10 per month. To nab some extra dough from captive customers, Frontier basically decided to charge its customers a rental fee anyway, giving them a polite, though giant, middle finger when they complained.

And because the FCC's net neutrality repeal effectively neutered the agency's ability to police this sort of behavior (not that the Pai FCC would anyway), consumers who complained to the agency were met with a glassy-eyed stare:

"Son filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission; Frontier responded to the complaint but stuck to its position that he has to pay the fee. A voicemail that Frontier left with Son and his wife said the company informed the FCC that "the router monthly charge is an applicable fee, and it will continue to be billed.

The FCC complaints team told Son in an email, "We reviewed the provider's response and based on the information submitted, we believe your provider has responded to your concerns." With FCC Chairman Ajit Pai having deregulated the broadband industry, there's little to no chance of the commission taking action to stop fees like the one charged by Frontier."

Fast forward to last month when the problem was fixed, shockingly enough, by the US Congress. A massive US government spending bill approved by Congress and signed by President Trump last month not only included some updates to the Communications Act cracking down slightly on bullshit cable TV fees, but a little noticed provision that formally bans the nonsense Frontier has been engaged in:

"A new "consumer right to accurate equipment charges" prohibits the companies from charging customers for "covered equipment provided by the consumer." Covered equipment is defined as "equipment (such as a router) employed on the premises of a person... to provide [TV service] or to provide fixed broadband Internet access service."

The companies may not charge rental or lease fees in cases when "the provider has not provided the equipment to the consumer; or the consumer has returned the equipment to the provider."

The new law is an update to the Communications Act and is scheduled to apply six months after passage, which would be June 20. The law gives the Federal Communications Commission an option to extend the deadline by six months if the FCC "finds that good cause exists for such an additional extension." As we've previously written, the FCC hasn't done much of anything to protect customers from bogus rental fees.

The telecom and media sector usually lobbies tooth and nail (usually successfully) to kill these kinds of protections, but the sheer size of the bill apparently let the provision sneak through. Granted the law only matters if somebody's willing to enforce it, and with an FTC and FCC that have repeatedly shown they're a rubber stamp for their BFFs in the telecom sector, that's not going to come easy.

Filed Under: broadband, congress, fcc, fees, isps, rentals

New Law Finally Bans Bullshit Cable TV Fees

from the better-late-than-never dept

For a decade we've talked about how the broadband and cable industry has perfected the use of utterly bogus fees to jack up subscriber bills -- a dash of financial creativity it adopted from the banking and airline industries. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate -- then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. These companies will then brag repeatedly about how they haven't raised rates yet this year, when that's almost never actually the case.

Despite this gamesmanship occurring for the better part of two decades, nobody ever seems particularly interested in doing much about it. The government tends to see this as little more than creative marketing, and when efforts to rein in this bad behavior (which is really false advertising) do pop up, they tend to go nowhere, given this industry's immense lobbying power.

But something quietly shifted just before the holidays. After a longstanding campaign by Consumer Reports, The Television Viewer Protection Act of 2019 passed the House and the Senate last week buried inside a giant appropriations bill that now awaits President Trump’s signature.

The bill bans ISPs from charging you extra to rent hardware you already own (something ISPs like Frontier have been doing without penalty for a few years). It also forces cable TV providers to send an itemized list of any fees and other surcharges to new customers within 24 hours of signing up for service, and allows users shocked by the higher price to cancel service without penalty.

The bill's not perfect. Because of the act itself it largely only applies to cable TV, not broadband service where the problem is just as bad. And cable TV providers can still falsely advertise a lower rate, thanks to what appears to be some last minute lobbying magic on the part of the cable TV sector:

"Initial versions of the legislation actually had the provision as truth in advertising, so you had to advertise the entire fees,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge, a Washington-based public-interest group. “But it’s still an improvement over what currently exists, because you have a right to cancel after signing up."

The trick now will be enforcement by a government and FCC that has routinely shown it's entirely cool with industry repeatedly ripping consumers off with bullshit fees to the tune of around $28 billion annually:

"We seriously hope the cable industry doesn't try to game its way out of complying with a very straightforward disclosure requirement: let consumers know what they will actually pay each month once all the fees are tacked on to the advertised price,” emailed Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel with Consumer Reports, which lobbied for this bill. “And we hope cable operators can do so well before the six month enactment date, and not ask the FCC for an extension for doing something so simple."

Filed Under: broadband, cable tv, hidden fees, television viewer protection act, truth in advertising

Bernie's Broadband Plan Gives A Big Green Light To Community Broadband

from the dysfunction-junction dept

We've long noted how community broadband networks are often an organic response to the expensive, slow, or just-plain unavailable service that's the direct product of a broken telecom market and regulatory capture. While you'll occasionally see some deployment duds if the business models aren't well crafted, studies have shown such local networks (there are 750 and counting now in the States) offer cheaper, faster service than many incumbents. Chattanooga's EPB, for example, was rated the best ISP in America last year by Consumer Reports.

This direct grass roots threat to incumbent revenues is a major reason why ISP lobbyists have passed protectionist laws in around 20 states trying to block your town's ability to even consider the option. It's why industry cozy FCC officials have falsely tried to suggest community broadband is an ominous assault on free speech. And it's why you'll find an endless parade of telecom-linked think tankers, consultants, and lobbyists routinely trying to portray this organic response to market failure as "vile socialism" or an inevitable boondoggle.

Enter Bernie Sanders, whose new broadband plan was released last week and appears to have been cobbled together from the collected nightmares of AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast executives. The plan would not only restore the FCC's net neutrality authority and the agency's authority over ISPs in general, but it would restore the FCC's broadband privacy rules scuttled in 2017 by telecom lobbyists. It would also ban arbitrary and unnecessary broadband usage caps and overage fees, and ban the sneaky fees ISPs use to covertly jack up the advertised price post sale.

But the plan takes some extra time to highlight how a Sanders administration would embrace community broadband, including the elimination of protectionist state laws, and the doling out of $150 billion to be used largely toward building alternatives to the private sector telecom status quo:

"Municipalities across the country running their own internet services have proved they can deliver high-quality service at a fraction of the price of established monopolies. Cities can run their own networks just like a water or electric utility or build out an open access network to allow multiple providers to compete on price and service, rather than one or two conglomerates gouging customers and setting their own prices. Bernie believes it’s time to stop relying on profit-focused corporations to get to universal broadband. Bernie will provide the necessary funding for states, cities, and co-ops to build out their own broadband networks, and ensure all households are connected by the end of his first term."

Needless to say, the telecom sector isn't going to much like any of this. Especially given the fact that the sector has been immensely successful in convincing government to void all meaningful oversight of these natural monopolies in recent years. Yeah, most of this will never come to pass without a significant shake up in Congress. And yeah, telecom lobbyists will do everything in their power to scuttle Sanders before he ever reaches the Presidency. Still, it's pretty clear the Sanders team has been paying close attention to the broken sector and is at least offering up a proposal, whereas most other Democratic candidates (outside of perhaps Warren and Klobuchar) have offered little more than vagaries.

The proposal isn't without its problems. Several economists versed in telecom and media tell me that the proposals to retroactively break up giants like Comcast NBC Universal and AT&T Time Warner are little more than pipe dreams that would be logistical nightmares in actual practice. And the Sanders camp also oddly opposes so-called "one touch make ready" rules (which allow any qualified third party to move pole equipment instead of just incumbent ISPs) despite widespread support of such proposals (unions tell me "one touch" poses a safety and security risk, but those claims are hotly contested).

Still, the plan at least acknowledges the US telecom sector, which ranks in the middle in nearly every broadband metric that matters, is a broken mess thanks to consolidation, regulatory capture, limited competition, and corruption. That's something countless experts and lawmakers refuse to acknowledge. Bernie's plan is certainly no more ludicrous than the US' current and most favored approach: gutting regulatory oversight, throwing billions of unaccountable dollars at predatory monopolies, then standing around with a dumb look on our collective faces wondering why Comcast is such an immeasurable shitshow.

Filed Under: bernie sanders, broadband, competition, municipal broadband

The FCC Helped AT&T Hide Its Crappy Broadband Speeds

from the revolving-door-whiplash dept

Unless you're in fairly stark denial, it's clear the Trump Federal Communications Commision has been a rubber stamp for the every fleeting whim of the telecom sector, be it the agency's decision to effectively neuter itself at telecom lobbyist behest, or the attack on net neutrality rules with widespread bipartisan support. But such revolving door regulation has more subtle casualties, as well. The Wall Street Journal this week for example offered up an interesting deep dive into how ISPs successfully pressure the FCC to ignore slower broadband speed test data when analyzing whether ISPs are delivering the speeds they promise:

"AT&T Inc. was dismayed at its report card from a government test measuring internet speeds. So the telecom giant sought to change its grade.

The company pushed the Federal Communications Commission to omit unflattering data on its DSL internet service from the report, which assesses whether providers are delivering the speeds they advertise. AT&T also didn’t provide information the FCC needed to validate speeds on those customers, the test officials confirmed.

In the end, the DSL data was left out of the report released late last year, to the chagrin of some agency officials. AT&T’s remaining speed tiers notched high marks.

The Journal is quick to highlight how this kind of gamesmanship results in FCC studies and data that doesn't accurately reflect reality, something that obviously excites incumbent broadband executives all too eager to obscure incomplete deployments and a lack of competition in the sector:

"Companies wield tremendous influence over the study and often employ tactics to boost their scores, according to interviews with more than two dozen industry executives, engineers and government officials. As a result, the FCC’s report likely gives consumers an unreliable measure of internet providers’ performances by overstating speeds."

Hoping to use real world data to inform policy decisions (crazy, I know), just about a decade ago the previous FCC struck a deal with UK measuring firm SamKnows to measure real world broadband speeds under the creatively named Measuring Broadband America program. The firm in turn began using volunteers and custom-firmware embedded routers to obtain an objective, third party analysis of just what kind of speeds users see in the wild. Not too surprisingly the Pai FCC has been trying to discontinue the program, and AT&T says it will no longer cooperate with the FCC on the effort anyway (apparently with no penalty from the FCC).

Meanwhile, AT&T tries to claim to the Journal that the reason it wanted its slower DSL speed ratings removed from the study is because it no longer markets the service:

"AT&T said that in its case, the company asked the FCC to remove DSL data from the report because it no longer markets that older technology, which relies on copper phone lines, used by a small percentage of its customer base. The company said the commission’s own policies should have excluded the “obsolete” internet plans. AT&T also said that it did validate the DSL accounts for the FCC."

But we've noted for years that AT&T has been a cheapskate when it comes to finishing fiber deployments the company has received billions in taxpayer dollars for, leaving vast swaths of the country with the choice of either a cable monopoly or sluggish, capped DSL. AT&T would prefer it if government reports just floated the fuck over that fact, and the Pai FCC seems more than happy to oblige, with zero to no penalty for big ISPs that mislead the agency or refuse to take part in projects that give consumers an accurate view of the market.

This of course isn't the first time this problem has been brought up. FCC reports are routinely assailed as being rose-colored-glasses affairs designed not to inform, but to avoid upsetting deep pocketed telecom campaign contributors. The FCC's $350 million broadband map, which all but hallucinates competitors and speeds, and omits pricing data, is a perfect example of the end result of this dysfunction. The end goal is government reports that again hide the country's mediocre and expensive broadband shortcomings, lest somebody get the crazy idea to try and do something about it.

The Journal's report likely won't get much attention, since exclusively hating on big tech while forgetting big telecom is just as bad is all the rage right now. But uncharacteristically for a major US paper, the Journal does a nice job highlighting how a captured FCC is now a full throated apologist for the broken US broadband industry and its half-built, expensive, taxpayer-funded networks.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband speeds, competition, data, fcc, influence, lies
Companies: at&t

Wireless ISP Starry Says It Will Apply California's Privacy Requirements Nationwide

from the swimming-with-the-currents dept

Like Microsoft, wireless startup Starry -- the brain child of Aereo creator Chet Kanojia -- has decided to view the public's desire for solid privacy rules as a marketing opportunity instead of something to ceaselessly undermine or whine about.

Knowing that the telecom giants they're hoping to disrupt have an abysmal record on privacy, Starry has announced that, like Microsoft, it will be using California's looming privacy law as a template for its business nationwide. While California's looming law is admittedly under-cooked and needs some major revisions before serious enforcement begins later next year (it takes effect in January but won't be seriously enforced until June), Starry, which is slowly pushing uncapped wireless service to major metro areas around the US, announced it's going to adhere to its core principles in every state it does business.

That includes getting permission before sharing data, being transparent about what data is being collected and who it's sold to, and giving consumers at least some passing control over what data is already stored (largely mirroring the FCC broadband privacy rules industry lobbyists killed in 2016). Both Starry and Microsoft seem to understand that after an endless sea of corporate privacy scandals and incompetence, the public wants at least some baseline privacy protections, and swimming against that sentiment is going to prove counterproductive:

"Inevitably, there will be grumblings that these common-sense privacy principles are too simple, or conversely, that they go too far. To us, this is a starting point, a baseline from where we believe all companies need to begin, not necessarily end, when it comes to consumer privacy. We prioritize privacy because it’s the right thing to do, even if it means we give up short term opportunities and shortcuts. In today’s climate, that can be a hard choice to make – but it’s not."

There are any number of companies (AT&T, Facebook) that claim they support the US having an actual privacy law for the internet era, but you shouldn't be fooled. In reality, what they want is a law their lawyers write, filled with so many loopholes as to be utterly useless, with one real goal: pre-empting tougher, better state or federal efforts. They don't really want a meaningful law, since any law worth its weight would inform and educate consumers, who'd in turn opt out of data collection and monetization, costing them billions.

It goes without saying that building a meaningful US privacy law for the internet era is going to be an unholy mess courtesy of Congressional Luddites and corrupt lawmakers and cross-sector lobbyists who'll attempt to undermine the process at every conceivable opportunity. The alternative however is to just keep stumbling idiotically down the path we're on, which as Facebook, Equifax, the DMV and countless others make very clear, involves giant corporations and government agencies routinely trampling your privacy rights then seeing little to no penalty as a result.

At least some companies seem to realize that swimming against the current is a waste of calories, the quest for some basic privacy rules are an opportunity to compete on privacy and ethics, and there might be some PR benefit in winning the support of a very pissed off US public.

Filed Under: broadband, california, ccpa, privacy
Companies: starry

Apathy Isn't A Business Model: Major US Telcos Teeter Toward Bankruptcy

from the dysfunction-junction dept

For more than a decade we've noted how the US broadband industry's biggest problem is a lack of healthy competition. In countless markets consumers either have the choice of a terrible phone company or a cable giant. The nation's phone companies have spent the last decade refusing to upgrade (or in some cases even repair) their aging DSL lines, because they don't see residential broadband as worth their while. That in turn is giving giants like Comcast and Spectrum an ever greater monopoly in many markets, reducing the already muted incentive to compete on price or shore up comically terrible customer service.

Many US telcos now exist solely to milk subsidies while doing the absolute bare minimum. This dynamic often results in some absurd dysfunction. Like in West Virginia, where incumbent telco Frontier has repeatedly been busted in a series of scandals involving substandard service and the misuse of taxpayer money. The graft and corruption in the state is so severe, state leaders have buried reports, and, until recently, a Frontier executive did double duty as a state representative without anybody in the state thinking that was a conflict of interest.

Frontier has also been facing investigations in states like Minnesota, where regulators have questioned why the company has received taxpayer subsidies for doing little to nothing. Unsurprisingly the company has been struggling with using apathy as a business model, and there's chatter that a long awaited bankruptcy may finally be imminent. Unlike AT&T and Verizon, telcos like Frontier, Windstream, and CenturyLink don't have wireless income to offset the losses:

"Some financial analysts have been predicting a Frontier bankruptcy for several years. According to these analysts, companies such as Frontier and Windstream continue to rely, in large part, on copper network infrastructure, which can’t support the speeds that cable infrastructure can support. As a result, these telcos will continue to have difficulty competing in both the residential and business market. And unlike companies such as AT&T and Verizon, the second-tier telcos don’t have a wireless business to fuel growth."

Much of Frontier's debt came courtesy of a massive 2015 deal to acquire Verizon's unwanted territories in states like Florida, Texas, and California for $10.5 billion. Frontier's focus at the time was growth for growth's sake, despite the obvious fact that many of these customers were on aging phone and DSL lines that needed to be upgraded lest they fall apart. Like many of its companions, Frontier chose the latter option, and now faces a bankruptcy protection proceeding that was already technically paid for by the American taxpayer.

Again, the inevitable outcome of these telco bankruptcies is a bigger, stronger cable broadband monopoly. Despite the predictions of many, wireless isn't going to be a magical panacea that fixes the problem. And while low-orbit satellites may help, that sector too has its own lengthy history of failed promises. With the government recently deciding that the sector needs neither competition nor meaningful regulatory oversight to function properly, there's not much in the way accountability or repercussion for the mass of US telecom giants that simply refuse to give a damn.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, finances, telcos
Companies: frontier

Will Google's Stadia Game Streaming Platform Be A Dud?

from the stream-this dept

On November 19, Google is expected to finally launch the company's long awaited game streaming platform, Google Stadia. Stadia is being heralded as the vanguard of a new push to eliminate your local game console, and shift all of the computing and processing power to the cloud. The shift to game streaming is likely inevitable, the only problem is that Stadia may be a little ahead of its time. And, like so many Google projects (like Google Fiber), game developers are apparently worried that Google may waffle on its commitment to the project:

"The biggest complaint most developers have with Stadia is the fear is Google is just going to cancel it. Nobody ever says, 'Oh, it's not going to work.' or 'Streaming isn't the future.' Everyone accepts that streaming is pretty much inevitable. The biggest concern with Stadia is that it might not exist.

Granted, that same developer then proceeds to point out there's plenty of projects Google hasn't waffled on:

"if you think about it like that, that's kind of silly. Working in tech, you have to be willing to make bold moves and try things that could fail. And yeah, Google's canceled a lot of projects. But I also have a Pixel in my pocket, I'm using Google Maps to get around, I only got here because my Google Calendar told me to get here by giving me a prompt in Gmail. It's not like Google cancels every fucking thing they make."

Having watched Google promise massive societal transformation with Google Fiber only to have Alphabet bean counters suddenly cripple the project without admitting as much, the worries still aren't entirely unfounded. But while Google's ability to stick with ambitious projects is a worry, there are more pressing concerns facing the project's success. For one the launch lineup is fairly pathetic. There are only going to be twelve titles at launch, most of which (including three games from the Tomb Raider series) have already been out for years. As such, many view this as more of a proof of concept and a paid beta than a serious commercial launch.

But the biggest problem for Stadia, as we've mentioned previously, is America's shitty broadband connections.

Thanks to limited competition and negligent regulators, ISPs have imposed monthly usage caps as low as 150 GB on the nation's broadband lines. Stadia, according to estimates, can consume upwards of 15 gigabytes per hour at 4K resolution. Yeah, you can scale back the service to lower resolutions, but that defeats the idea of Stadia as any kind of symmetrical replacement for traditional game consoles.

ISPs, for their part, have spent years pretending that these caps are a good idea, despite the fact that even the industry has admitted they serve no real technical purpose outside of charging you more money for the same service. They're glorified price hikes only made possible by a lack of competition and regulatory capture. To try and make the limits seem generous, ISPs love to measure them based on how many emails you can send or web pages you can browse. Here's AT&T's breakdown from the company's website:

Whether Google is the company that will dominate the space or not, one thing is clear: ISPs are going to need a new schtick, and a lot of consumers are going to be surprised by the fact game streaming burns through broadband caps like popcorn shrimp.

Maybe Google succeeds in the space, maybe it doesn't. Maybe Google sticks with the project, or maybe like Google Fiber Alphabet execs get cold feet and hang up on developers mid-stride in a year from now. Either way, game streaming is likely inevitable. From Sony and Microsoft to Verizon (net neutrality and zero rating should prove interesting in the case of the latter), there are any number of companies eyeballing this space. Who's going to come out on top is far from clear, though what is clear is we're going to need better broadband for the idea to gain widespread commercial appeal.

Filed Under: broadband, stadia, streaming, video games
Companies: google