COVID-19 Is Exposing A Virulent Strain Of Broadband Market Failure Denialism

from the ill-communication dept

A few weeks ago, the US telecom industry began pushing a bullshit narrative through its usual allies. In short, the claim revolves around the argument that the only reason the US internet still works during a pandemic was because the Trump FCC ignored the public, ignored most objective experts, and gutted itself at the behest of telecom industry lobbyists. The argument first popped up over at AEI, then the Trump FCC, then the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and has since been seen in numerous op-eds nationwide. I'd wager that's not a coincidence, and I'd also wager we'll be seeing a lot more of them.

All of the pieces try to argue that the only reason the US internet works during a pandemic is because the FCC gutted its authority over telecom as part of its "restoring internet freedom" net neutrality repeal. This repeal, the story goes, drove significant investment in US broadband networks (not remotely true), resulting in telecom Utopia (also not true). The argument also posits that in Europe, where regulators have generally taken a more active role in policing things like industry consolidation and telecom monopolies, the internet all but fell apart (guess what: not true).

Usually, like in this op-ed, there's ample insistence that the US broadband sector is largely wonderful while the EU has gone to hell:

"Unlike here, European networks are more heavily regulated. This has led to less investment and worse performance for consumers for years. American consumers are being generally well served by the private sector."

Anybody who has spent five minutes talking to Comcast customer support -- or tried to get scandal-plagued ISP like Frontier Communications to upgrade rotten DSL lines -- knows this is bullshit. Still, we penned a lengthy post exploring just how full of shit this argument is, and how there's absolutely zero supporting evidence for the claims. The entire house of cards is built on fluff and nonsense, and it's just ethically grotesque to use a disaster to help justify regulatory capture and market failure.

While it's true that the US internet, in general, has held up relatively well during a pandemic, the same can't be said of the so called "last mile," or the link from your ISP's network to your home. Yes, the core internet and most primary transit routes, designed to handle massive capacity spikes during events like the Superbowl, has handled the load relatively well. The problem, as Sascha Meinrath correctly notes here, is sluggish speeds on consumer and business lines that, for many, haven't been upgraded in years:

"Right now, an international consortium of network scientists is collecting 750,000 U.S. broadband speed tests from internet service provider (ISP) customers each day, and we’ve been tracking a stunning loss of connectivity speeds to people’s homes. According to most ISPs, the core network is handling the extra load. But our data show that the last-mile network infrastructure appears to be falling down on the job."

Again, your 5 Mbps DSL line might be ok during normal times, but it's not going to serve you well during a pandemic when your entire family is streaming 4K videos, gaming, and Zooming. And your DSL line isn't upgraded because there's (1) very little competition forcing your ISP to do so, and (2) the US government is filled to the brim with sycophants who prioritize campaign contributions and ISP revenues over the health of the market and consumer welfare. And while there's a contingency of industry-linked folks who try very hard to pretend otherwise, this is a policy failure that's directly tied to mindless deregulation, a lack of competition, and, more importantly, corruption. In short, the complete opposite of the industry's latest talking point.

For years we've been noting how US telcos have refused to repair or upgrade aging DSL lines because it's not profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street's liking. Facing no competition and no regulatory oversight, there's zero incentive for a giant US broadband provider to try very hard. Similarly, because our lawmakers and regulators are largely of the captured, revolving door variety, they rubber stamp shitty mergers, turn a blind eye to very obvious industry problems, routinely throwing billions in taxpayer money at monopolies in exchange for fiber networks that are usually only partially deployed -- if they're deployed at all.

Meanwhile, US telcos that have all but given up on upgrading aging DSL lines have helped cement an even bigger Comcast monopoly across vast swaths of America. It's a problem that the telecom sector, Trump FCC, and various industry apologists will ignore to almost comical effect. Also ignored is the fact that this results in US broadband subscribers paying some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world:

"Numerous studies, including those conducted by the FCC itself, show that broadband pricing is the second-largest barrier to broadband adoption (availability is the first). It’s obvious that if people are being charged a lot for a service, they’re less likely to purchase it. And independent researchers have already documented that poor areas often pay more than rich communities for connectivity. Redlining of minority and rural areas appears to be widespread, and we need accurate pricing data from the FCC to meaningfully address these disparities."

Try to find any instance where Ajit Pai, or anybody in this chorus of telecom monopoly apologists, actually admits that the US broadband market isn't competitive and, as a result, is hugely expensive for businesses and consumers alike. You simply won't find it. What you will find are a lot of excuses and straw men arguments like this latest one, designed to distract the press, public, and policymakers from very obvious market failure. Market failure that was a major problem in normal times, and exponentially more so during a pandemic where broadband is an essential lifeline.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, congestion, covid-19, eu, failures, fcc, market failure, regulation, us

No, Congress Can't Fix The Broken US Broadband Market In A Mad Dash During A Pandemic

from the round-and-round-we-go dept

COVID-19 has shone a very bright light on the importance of widely available, affordable broadband. Nearly 42 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever--double FCC estimates. And millions more can't afford service thanks to a lack of competition among very powerful, government pampered telecom monopolies.

As usual, with political pressure mounting to "do something," DC's solution is going to be to throw more money at the problem:

"The plan unveiled Thursday would inject $80 billion over five years into expansion of broadband infrastructure into neglected rural, suburban and urban areas, with an emphasis on communities with high levels of poverty. It includes measures to promote rapid building of internet systems, such as low-interest financing for infrastructure projects."

To be clear, subsidies often do help shore up broadband availability at coverage. The problem is that the United States government, largely captured by telecom giants with a vested interest in protecting regional monopolies, utterly sucks at it.

Despite ample pretense to the contrary, nobody in the US government actually knows where broadband is currently available. Data supplied by ISPs has never been rigorously fact-checked by a government fearful of upsetting deep-pocketed campaign contributors (and valued NSA partners). As a result, our very expensive ($350 million at last count) FCC broadband coverage map creates a picture of availability and speed that's complete fantasy. It's theater designed to disguise the fact that US broadband is mediocre on every broadband metric that matters. Especially cost.

While there has been some effort to fix the mapping problem via recent legislation, the FCC still needs several years (and more money) to do so. And while you'd think this would be more obvious, you can't fix a problem you can't even effectively measure. There's also not much indication that the $80 billion, while potentially well intentioned, would actually get where it needs to go. Especially right now, when federal oversight is effectively nonexistent.

You may or may not have noticed this, but US telecom is a corrupt, monopolized mess. Giants like AT&T and Comcast all but own state and federal legislatures and, in many instances, literally write the law. Feckless regulators bend over backward to avoid upsetting deep-pocketed campaign contributors. So when subsidies are doled out, they very often don't end up where regulators and lawmakers intended. There's an endless ocean of examples where these giants took billions in taxpayer subsidies to deploy fiber networks that are never fully delivered.

If you were to do meaningful audit (which we've never done because again we're not willing to adequately track the problem or stand up to dominant incumbent corporations) you'd very likely find that American taxpayers already paid for fiber to every home several times over.

That's not to say is that there aren't things Congress could do to help the disconnected during COVID-19. Libraries for example have been begging the FCC for the ability to offer expanded WiFi hotspot access (via mobile school buses) to disconnected communities without running afoul of FCC ERate rules. But while the FCC said libraries can leave existing WiFi on without penalty, it has been mute about whether they can extend coverage outside of library property. Why? As a captured agency, the FCC doesn't like anything that could potentially result in Comcast or AT&T making less money.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't subsidize broadband deployment once we get a handle on the mapping problem. But it's a fantasy to think we're going to immediately fix a 30 year old problem with an additional $80 billion in a mad dash during a pandemic. US broadband dysfunction was built up over decades. It's the product of corruption and rot that COVID-19 is exposing at every level of the US government. The only way to fix it is to stand up to industry, initiate meaningful reform, adopt policies that drive competition to market, and jettison feckless lawmakers and regulators whose dominant motivation is in protecting AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Spectrum revenues.

Maybe the pandemic finally provides the incentive to actually do that, but until the US does, these subsidization efforts are largely theater.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband deployment, competition, congress, covid-19, fcc

Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over Data On Fake Net Neutrality Comments

from the plot-thickens dept

We've long discussed how the Pai FCC's net neutrality repeal was plagued with millions of fraudulent comments, many of which were submitted by a bot pulling names from a hacked database of some kind. Millions of ordinary folks (myself included) had their identities used to support Pai's unpopular plan, as did several Senators. The Trump FCC stonewalled both law enforcement and journalist inquiries into who was behind the comments, and why the FCC didn't lift a finger to either stop them or to help identify those responsible.

Numerous journalists like Jason Prechtel have submitted FOIA requests for more data (server logs, IP addresses, API data, anything) that might indicate who was behind the fraudulent comments, who may have bankrolled them, and what the Pai FCC knew about it. Thanks to that effort, early last year, Gizmodo's Dell Cameron worked with Prechtel to link some of the fake comments to Trump associates and some DC lobbying shops like CQ Roll Call. Then late last year, Buzzfeed's Kevin Collier and Jeremy-Singer Vine showed how, unsurprisingly, the broadband industry funded at least some of the fraudulent efforts.

Meanwhile two reporters for the New York Times, Nicholas Confessore and Gabriel Dance, sued the FCC under the Freedom of Information Act after the agency refused to reveal logs that could show the IP addresses used to submit the mass comments. Last week, a Manhattan federal judge hand over copies of the logs to both Confessore and Dance:

"The FCC attempted to quash the paper’s request but failed to persuade District Judge Lorna Schofield, who wrote that, despite the privacy concerns raised by the agency, releasing the logs may help clarify whether fraudulent activity interfered with the comment period, as well as whether the agency’s decision-making process is “vulnerable to corruption."

Keep in mind this sort of thing wasn't a one off; numerous regulatory agencies have been plagued by similar efforts for years. Generating bogus support for shitty government policy is now just an additional service many law, lobbying, and PR firms offer corporations and clients as an added service. But much like astroturfing -- which often extends to real world protests -- it's such an obscure concept to most people it never warrants a second thought. But it's ethically grotesque all the same, especially given it pollutes some of the only opportunities the public has to comment on harmful government policies.

At this point there's enough evidence to reasonably conclude that the broadband industry and GOP hired a bunch of K Street firms to "stuff the ballot box," and the FCC -- likely knowing the broadband industry's involvement -- took steps to try and help cover it up. This lawsuit is likely to reveal even more data to help bolster that conclusion. The question now is whether the courts (or anybody else) will actually care, and whether anybody's going to do anything about it.

Filed Under: ajit pai, comments, fcc, foia, net neutrality, transparency
Companies: ny times

As Pandemic Exposes US Broadband Failures, FCC Report Declares Everything Is Fine

from the rose-colored-glasses dept

42 million Americans lack access to any kind of broadband whatsoever -- more than double official FCC estimates. Millions more can't afford broadband because the monopolized US telecom sector suffers from a dire lack of competition in most markets. US telcos, bored with the slow rate of return, have effectively stopped upgrading their DSL networks across broad swaths of America, leaving cable giants like Comcast and Charter spectrum with a bigger monopoly than ever across wide swaths of America. And no, wireless 5G won't magically fix the problem due to patchy availability and high prices.

This is, to hear the FCC tell it, all going swimmingly.

By law (Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) 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. But every year like clockwork, the FCC issues the report ignoring all of the biggest problems in the telecom sector, to the obvious benefit of an industry eager to keep things precisely as they are: largely uncompetitive. Never will you see policy that improves competition, because the lack of competition isn't even acknowledged.

This year was no exception. The Trump FCC's latest report once again insists that broadband "is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion," so no shift from the status quo is necessary. And in a very Trumpian statement, FCC boss Ajit Pai congratulates himself for incredible leadership, while repeating the falsehood that his decision to take an axe to already fairly filmsy FCC oversight of the broken sector has somehow resulted in a massive wave of new investment:

"Under my leadership, the FCC's top priority is to close the digital divide, and I'm proud of the progress that we have made. Having grown up in rural Kansas, I have a deep commitment to expanding broadband to all corners of the country. That's why we've taken aggressive steps to remove regulatory barriers to broadband deployment and reform our Universal Service Fund programs."

For about the four-thousandth time, investment at major ISPs like Comcast and AT&T has dropped under Pai's "leadership," which has effectively consisted of rubber stamping AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and T-Mobile's every request. And Pai's version of "reforming" programs like the universal service fund (created by Reagan and expanded by Bush to provide a small subsidy to the poor) has involved trying to dismantle the program using shaky logic that the courts have rejected.

Much like Pai himself, the report goes to comic lengths to pretend US broadband isn't a broken market dominated by a handful of monopolies. It goes well out of its way to ignore the fact that Americans pay more for broadband than a long-list of other developed nations. It goes well out of its way to pretend that US broadband providers don't have the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any sector in America, a monumental feat. And it goes well out of its way to pretend that the overarching US policy of kissing the ass of companies like Comcast and AT&T is an effective, serious policy.

In a dissenting statement, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wasn't particularly impressed, calling her agency's own report "baffling":

"This report is baffling. We are in the middle of a pandemic. So much of modern life has migrated online. As a result, it has become painfully clear there are too many people in the United States who lack access to broadband. In fact, if this crisis has revealed anything, it is the hard truth that the digital divide is very real and very big.

But you'll find no evidence acknowledging that in today's Broadband Progress Report from the Federal Communications Commission. Instead, you'll find a glowing assessment that all is well. According to this rosy report the nation's broadband efforts are all good. They are proceeding in a reasonable and timely fashion and they are reaching all Americans. This is just not right."

It's certainly not right, but it's not particularly baffling.

Major telecom providers are so politically powerful, they all but own the majority of state and federal legislators, to the point where they often literally write the law. As a result US telecom policy for the better part of 30 years has involved refusing to even acknowledge the sector's most basic problems. Try to find a moment where Ajit Pai even acknowledges that US broadband prices are high and the sector isn't particularly competitive. You won't find it. And you can't fix a problem you refuse to acknowledge and can't be bothered to accurately measure.

US telecom policy remains stuck in fantasy land where there is no problem to fix, a narrative propped up by an ocean of telecom industry think tankers, consultants, hired economists, and others who'll engage in mental gymnastics to insist there's absolutely no serious problems here. In reality, US policy priority involves protecting the revenues of giants like AT&T, who are too big to fail and bone-grafted to the country's intelligence surveillance apparatus. Companies we repeatedly throw tax breaks, subsidies, and regulatory favors at in exchange for a myriad of empty promises.

Telecom giants and their allies have gone to comical lengths to justify regulatory capture and ignore the sector's biggest problems. With a pandemic clearly showing that broadband is an essential lifeline, that kind of denialism is going to be a lot harder to sell in the years to come.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, digital divide, fcc

AT&T Provided FCC Bunk Broadband Availability Data Across 20 States

from the driving-blind dept

We've noted repeatedly that despite a lot of talk from U.S. leaders and regulators about the "digital divide," the United States doesn't actually know where broadband is available. Historically the FCC has simply trusted major ISPs -- with a vested interest in downplaying coverage and competition gaps -- to tell the truth. The FCC's methodology has also long been flawed, considering an entire area to be connected if just one home in a census tract has service. The results are ugly: the FCC's $350 million broadband availability map all but hallucinates broadband availability and speed (try it yourself).

As pressure mounts on the agency to finally improve its broadband mapping, the scope of the problem continues to come into focus. Like this week, when AT&T was forced to acknowledge that the company provided the FCC with inaccurate broadband availability data across 20 states, impacting some 3,600 census blocks:

"AT&T disclosed the error to the FCC in a filing a week ago. The filing provides "a list of census blocks AT&T previously reported as having broadband deployment at speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream/3 Mbps upstream that AT&T has removed from its Form 477 reports." The 78-page list includes nearly 3,600 blocks."

You'll recall that last year, Ajit Pai tried to claim that his "deregulatory agenda" (read: gutting oversight of an uncompetitive and hugely unpopular business sector) resulted in some amazing broadband expansion. Only later was it revealed that much of this growth either was triggered by things Pai's FCC had nothing to do with (like fiber build-out requirements affixed to AT&T's 2015 merger with DirecTV by the previous FCC), or a broadband mapping blunder by a small provider by the name of BarrierFree, which overstated its footprint to the FCC by a cool 1.5 million locations.

AT&T insists this latest error was caused by a "software bug," and while relatively small in the scope of AT&T's overall service area, consumer groups are a little curious how it could have gone unnoticed for the better part of two years:

"Aside from one even bigger error by an ISP called BarrierFree last year, Turner said he hasn't "seen any other ISP reporting error like this before" and that "it is curious that the [AT&T] error may have gone unnoticed for 2-plus years."..."While relatively small errors like this don't end up changing conclusions about national trends, it certainly can impact the FCC decisions about where to spend—and where to not spend—scarce subsidy funds," Turner said. "AT&T should be quite a bit more forthcoming about the exact nature of this error and how it discovered it, so that other ISPs can be sure they're not making similar errors."

While there's no evidence of intentional under-reporting by AT&T, the timing is curious all the same.

After several decades of complaints, pressure has mounted on the FCC and Congress to actually do something as states vie for additional deployment subsidies. That culminated in the recent passage of the Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability (DATA) Act, which mandates the FCC to use more accurate geolocation and crowdsourced data to create more accurate maps and actually verify where broadband's available before doling out billions in subsidies or issuing policy (fancy that!).

It will take years to complete, the FCC has warned they can't afford to finish it without more funding, and the industry, which has spent years lobbying against mapping improvements for obvious reasons, could still find ways to either scuttle the effort or make access to the data difficult. Still, baby steps and all that. There are at least indications that the "what US broadband competition problem?" telecom policy set finally realizes this is a problem that needs fixing, even if truly better broadband maps are still several years away.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband map, data, digital divide, fake data, fcc
Companies: at&t

ISPs Ignore Toothless FCC Demand To Not Kick Users Offline During COVID-19

from the ill-communication dept

A few weeks back, the Trump FCC put on a big show about a new "Keep America Connected Pledge." In it, the FCC proudly proclaimed that it had gotten hundreds of ISPs to agree to not disconnect users who couldn't pay for essential broadband service during a pandemic. The problem: the 60 day pledge was entirely voluntary, temporary, and because the FCC just got done obliterating its authority over ISPs at lobbyist behest (as part of its net neutrality repeal), it's largely impossible to actually enforce.

Well, guess what:

"Some people who just lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic are finding that they have lost something else — phone and internet access. Across the country, suddenly unemployed residents are getting threatening notices, despite an initiative from the Federal Communications Commission that pledged last month to "Keep Americans Connected."

Yes, gosh, who could have predicted many ISPs would simply ignore voluntary guidelines from an agency that repeatedly signals that there's no real penalty for bad behavior under the Trump administration?

As a result, Sprint, Verizon, and others are all following normal procedure and shutting down accounts, even after informing their subscribers that this most certainly wouldn't happen:

"It was a surprise when my line was suddenly disconnected, because I had actually got an email saying that during this time there would be no interruptions to phone service," Aaron Joshua Perra, a hairstylist from Minneapolis, told NBC News. He had his Sprint phone shut off soon after his salon closed down last month. Sprint has since reconnected him."

Meanwhile, over in Ohio, one disabled woman tells the tale of Charter Spectrum severing her service in the middle of a telemedicine appointment, again despite insisting this would not happen:

"The phone cut out in the middle of a telemedicine visit with her brother’s doctor. Joyce Manz had called Spectrum’s customer service a few days earlier and told a representative that she would pay the phone and internet bill as soon as her disability check arrived. It would be OK, she said she was assured.

“I was in tears when the phone cut out,” the 59-year-old Cleveland resident said. “I started panicking."

None of this this particularly surprising. The telecom industry has some of the worst customer service in the country, in large part thanks to a lack of competition or regulatory oversight. In short: they don't really have much of an incentive to improve it. It's a problem that's particularly notable during disasters, when cable and broadband companies routinely try to immediately bill disaster victims for destroyed cable boxes -- even if the customer just lost everything they owned. Not because ISPs are intentionally malicious, just because they don't give fixing these systems priority. Again, because they don't have to.

Mergers (growth for growth's sake) don't usually scale customer service to handle the growth because it's not profitable to do so. Geographical monopolies also mean there's no organic market pressure to do so either. Then you've got regulatory capture, and U.S. regulators and lawmakers that are all but owned by AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast on both the state and federal level. The current FCC can't even acknowledge there's a broadband competition problem, or that Americans pay more for broadband than most developed nations. So it's a problem that's not getting fixed.

Pai, like many of his ideological bent, operates under the illusion that if you eliminate oversight of telecom, miracles happen. Except that's never been true: when you eliminate regulatory oversight of an uncompetitive sector dominated by politically powerful monopolies like Comcast, those monopolies simply double down on bad behavior. Market based, regulatory, or antitrust, there's no U.S. incentive to improve because corrupt lawmakers and regulators have prioritized monopoly profits over everything else, gutting all systems of accountability, then dressed this blind greed up as some kind of sophisticated, elaborate ethos.

Like much of the Trump administration, the FCC's reply to the complaints is largely just hubris and misdirection. In short, the agency implies that the only reason we're seeing these complaints is because the FCC brought attention to the problem:

"Although we have received some disconnection complaints recently, we think it may reflect increased attention on the FCC's work to keep people connected," the spokesman said."

That's nonsense. One, because the FCC's "solution" to this very real problem was a voluntary proposal ISPs know they don't have to adhere to because the current FCC is a bunch of feckless pushovers. Two, because the FCC doesn't even collect disconnection data. It's so typically Trumpian: coddle monopolies, then pretend said coddling is resulting in wonderful outcomes that simply aren't supported by factual reality. Rinse, wash, repeat.

The Trump FCC and its supporters claim the net neutrality repeal was a good thing because it "freed the industry from burdensome regulations." But that's fantasy. The repeal gutted the FCC's authority to hold ISPs accountable for a wide variety of bad behaviors, including obvious billing fraud. It then shoveled any remaining authority to an FTC that lacks the resources or authority to police a sector rife with hugely unpopular regional monopolies. This accountability vacuum is the entire reason the industry lobbied for the plan. All of the claims about how the repeal increased "internet freedom" encouraged "unbridled innovation" or "stoked network investment" is a heaping pile of bullshit.

It's corruption and regulatory capture, propped up by a mountain of bogus data, magical thinking, and telecom policy concepts debunked decades ago. And as former FCC staffer Gigi Sohn pointed out a few weeks back, that discarded agency authority sure would come in useful during a pandemic where broadband connections are now widely seen as an essential cornerstone of survivability.

Filed Under: broadband, covid-19, disconnect, fcc, keep america connected, pandemic, voluntary

Tracfone Made Up "Fictitious" Users To Defraud Taxpayers, FCC

from the ill-communication dept

For decades, big and small telecoms alike have abused the FCC Lifeline program, a fund that's supposed to help subsidize telecom connectivity for low income users. Started by Reagan and expanded by Bush Junior, the fairly modest program 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).

On one hand, the program (which you pay into via your telecom bills) genuinely has helped many low income Americans. On the other, the program has routinely been mired in fraud and scandal due to unethical telecom giants, spotty enforcement, and a failure to adequately track how this money is spent.

Case in point: the FCC last week announced it would be fining low cost mobile service provider Tracfone a cool $6 million for making up "fictitious" subscribers in order to nab Lifeline money it wasn't owned. Some of the fraud was almost comical in its depth and scope, and should have been fairly easy to spot earlier:

"TracFone's sales agents—who were apparently compensated via commissions for new enrollments—apparently manipulated the eligibility information of existing subscribers to create and enroll fictitious subscriber accounts. For example, TracFone claimed support for seven customers in Florida at different addresses using the same name, all seven of whom had birth dates in July 1978 and shared the same last four Social Security Number digits. The Enforcement Bureau's investigation also found that, in 2018, TracFone apparently sought reimbursement for thousands of ineligible subscribers in Texas."

Late last year, the Wall Street Journal also issued a report showing Sprint had allegedly been engaging in this kind of fraud for the better part of the last decade. AT&T also spent years ripping off the program before receiving a wrist slap for the behavior. Like most U.S. regulator enforcement action, the fines usually wind up being a tiny fraction of the money that was gleaned for ripping off taxpayers, users, or competitors for the better part of several decades (see: the FCC's wireless location data enforcement action). Often, with some elbow grease by lobbyists and lawyers, the fines can be reduced or eliminated entirely.

While cracking down on this fraud is certainly a good thing, there are a few problems here. One, the Trump FCC is focusing on enforcement on this issue because they're eager to see the program eliminated entirely, despite the fact that the traditionally Republican-created program provides genuine aid to a lot of U.S. low income homes that need it. The Trump FCC already was slapped down by the courts for trying to take subsidies away from tribal areas without providing anything in the way of, well, factual data supporting the move.

The other program is that while the current FCC has cracked down on this kind of fraud (when the evidence is obvious), it has turned a blind eye to oodles of fraud perpetrated on consumers by these same companies. For example the agency did nothing when one major ISP began charging consumers a "rental fee" for hardware they already owned. Nor has the agency ever cracked down on ISPs that use assorted bullshit fees to falsely advertise a lower rate.

So while you'll see this FCC crack down (sometimes) on fraud to try and discredit a program it ideologically disagrees with, genuine enforcement of fraud remains patchy at best. Especially in the wake of the net neutrality repeal, which further eroded the FCC's authority to hold giant ISPs to account for a laundry list of bad behaviors that extend well beyond net neutrality violations.

Filed Under: fake users, fcc, lifeline, scams
Companies: tracfone

FCC Still Doesn't Know Where Broadband Is As It Eyes $9 Billion In New Subsidies

from the can't-fix-what-you-don't-understand dept

Despite what you might think, the U.S. government doesn't actually know where broadband is really available, which is kind of a problem when you consider the FCC doles out billions annually in subsidies to expand and improve service.

Later this month, the Pai FCC is expected to sign off on a new plan (pdf) that would dole out $9 billion in funding to help shore up fifth generation (5G) wireless coverage to rural areas. Consumer groups and academics have long argued, however, that the FCC's broadband availability maps have only a fleeting relationship to reality. That concern was mirrored by the Competitive Carriers Association, a coalition of largely small and mid-sized carriers, which issued a statement warning the FCC that it shouldn't be throwing billions in subsidies around without having an accurate understanding of the problem the agency is trying to fix:

"Unfortunately, the FCC is publishing eligibility maps that bear little relationship to where there is or is not actually coverage. The analysis itself notes that the maps released today may bear little resemblance to the areas actually available for funding in an auction, which is extremely concerning. At a time when everyone is recognizing the importance of bridging the digital divide, the FCC seems intent on moving forward with spending $9 billion without bothering to measure the scope of the problem they are purporting to solve.

This approach does nothing to help ensure that unserved and underserved areas have access to robust mobile broadband services. Instead of further analysis on what areas could be eligible, the FCC should focus on implementing the Broadband DATA Act to make data-driven decisions about what areas should receive funding for the next decade of mobile deployment."

And this is the industry saying this. Activists, consumer, groups, and other experts have been using more colorful and direct language to complain about this problem for the better part of two decades now.

Granted, terrible U.S. broadband maps are a feature, not a bug. Bigger ISPs have routinely lobbied to kill any efforts to improve data collection and analysis, lest somebody actually realize the telecom market is a broken mono/duopoly whose dysfunction reaches into every aspect of tech. Bad maps not only help hide a lack of competition and high prices (two subjects the current FCC can't even acknowledge, much less fix), but they help obscure the billions we've thrown at carriers to build sometimes duplicative network assets that often don't fix the problems the money was assigned for.

Fortunately the recently passed Broadband Data Act should help improve mapping somewhat, requiring the FCC explore and adopt measures to shore up accuracy via crowdsourcing and other data. Carriers will now be penalized under law for falsifying data, and the use of broader data sources (rather than just taking a carrier's word for it, the norm for 20 years) should certainly help. But like many starved regulators, the FCC lacks the funding to actually implement the act at present, and even ideally it could be years before the better data is put to policy use. Bigger carriers are also trying to exclude 5G from the improvements.

In the interim, we'll continue doing what we've always done, flinging about billions in subsidies without actually fully understanding the scope of the problem we're trying to fix. That was always a problem, but it's a far more pressing one now that many folks understand the essential nature of decent, affordable broadband connectivity.

Filed Under: 5g, broadband, broadband data act, competition, coverage maps, data, fcc, rural coverage

It Shouldn't Have Taken A Pandemic To Make Us Care About Crappy U.S. Broadband

from the ill-communication dept

For years politicians have paid empty lip service about the "digital divide," or the essential lack of broadband access and affordability. Yet for decades the problem just kept getting kicked down the road. Why? Because U.S. regulators and lawmakers lacked the courage to tackle the biggest problem: a lack of broadband competition due to monopolization of the market. Nor were they willing to stand up to the politically powerful companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon which fight tooth and nail against any meaningful disruption of this broken status quo.

As a result, Americans have paid some of the highest prices in the world for broadband service that's not only spottily available, but routinely ranks as mediocre across a wide variety of metrics. From telecom linked think tankers and hired economists to consultants and lobbyists, there's an entire secondary industry dedicated to pretending this problem is either overblown, or doesn't exist at all.

Needless to say, it shouldn't have taken a pandemic to expose the superficiality of such claims, or the fact that US telecom issues deserved more attention. With millions of Americans hunkered down at home, a brighter light than ever is being shined on the fact that 42 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever (twice what the FCC claims). Millions more can't afford service because we've allowed an essential utility to be monopolized.

Anybody claiming that any of this is a surprise should be rightfully laughed at:

"...we can’t claim to have been caught off guard by this pandemic. We have long had the data to show that millions of households with children ages 6 to 17 don’t have home internet service. Even before this crisis,90% of high school teachers were assigning online homework, despite the fact that almost one in five teens reported lacking the internet access to complete it. This “homework gap” also reflects—and further entrenches—our country’s stark racial inequities; a Pew study found that 13% of white students were sometimes unable to complete homework due to internet access, compared to 17% of Hispanic students and 25% of black students surveyed."

If you genuinely don't give a shit about that fact you should own it, instead of trying to dress up apathy and a singular focus on ISP revenues and stock performance as a sophisticated tech policy ethos.

For decades bipartisan U.S. policy circles have talked endlessly about the digital divide, but delivered little more than empty, political show ponies. For just as long, policy circles were caught up in the debate over whether broadband was a luxury or an essential utility. The U.S. government has long refused to seriously consider broadband the latter, because it would erode the revenues of entrenched campaign finance giants like AT&T and Comcast. Now the check is coming due, and it's all but guaranteed that the folks that should be forced to own their intentional myopia... probably won't:

"These statistics are appalling. Since 1994, we’ve had the technology to deliver the internet to every household in America, but we’ve never mustered the will to make it so. Almost three decades later, we’ve learned two important lessons: one, having the internet at home is not a luxury, but a necessity for modern life; and two, market forces will never close this gap. Now is the time to change this reality, for good, by eliminating every barrier facing communities who want to take action to ensure that broadband is in every home."

We've thrown endless billions at U.S. telecom giants for a rotating crop of fiber networks that were, time and time again, never delivered. Not that we'd ever do one, but I'd wager any audit of U.S. telecom subsidization would find we should have collectively been able to deploy fiber to every home in America several times over based on what American taxpayers have shelled out for so far.

There's long been a chasm between telecom policy and reality, and its never been more stark. Ajit Pai, for example, has spent three years insisting that "curing the digital divide" was his top priority. Yet time after time his policies have made the pricing and availability problem worse, whether it's pretending there is no competition or price problem (you'll rarely hear him acknowledge either), gutting FCC authority, refusing to police outright ISP billing fraud, or eliminating consumer billing fraud protections.

Crappy U.S. broadband is caused by two things: corrupt, feckless governments and a lack of meaningful competition among entrenched monopolies. Either you give a shit about fixing these problems or you don't. Either way, it's a problem that shouldn't have taken a global pandemic to finally take seriously.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, digital divide, fcc