FTC Launches Probe Into Telecom Privacy Issues. But Whether They'll Act Is Another Matter Entirely

from the words-are-but-wind dept

This week the FTC announced that it would be launching a broad privacy investigation into a sector that's somehow been forgotten during our collective, justified obsession with Facebook: telecom. According to the full FTC announcement, the agency will be collecting data from all manner of broadband providers and wireless carriers to take a look at how these companies "collect, retain, use, and disclose information about consumers and their devices." From the announcement:

"The FTC is initiating this study to better understand Internet service providers’ privacy practices in light of the evolution of telecommunications companies into vertically integrated platforms that also provide advertising-supported content. Under current law, the FTC has the ability to enforce against unfair and deceptive practices involving Internet service providers."

The problem, of course, is that an inquiry doesn't necessarily mean the agency will actually do anything about the problems. The FTC's authority over telecom is limited, and is historically confined to whether something can clearly be proven to be "unfair and deceptive" under the FTC Act. That was the entire reason that telecom lobbyists convinced the Trump administration to effectively obliterate tailored FCC authority over telecom, and shovel it to an FTC that critics (like former FCC boss Tom Wheeler) say is already over-extended and lacks the authority to adequately police broadband.

When it comes to telecom, the FTC's "unfair and deceptive" standard usually falls short.

In the field of net neutrality, for example, telecom operators have long hidden their unfair, anti-competitive behavior behind claims that it was essential for the "health and integrity of the network." Like when AT&T blocked Facetime on iPhones just because it wanted to force folks on to more expensive wireless plans. Or when Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon began implementing arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees to "manage congestion" they were later forced to admit didn't exist. Restrictions that don't apply to their own services, but apply to customers if they use competing services like Netflix.

Unlike Facebook, telecom has spent decades lobbying DC and tailoring its most deceptive and anti-competitive ideas to carefully skirt the line on regulatory scrutiny. And the FTC, tightly constrained by its mandate over telecom, hasn't done a particularly good job policing it. Hopefully this inquiry signals a shift in that tendency, but an inquiry shouldn't be conflated with substantive action -- until there's actual, substantive action. That said, there's so much we don't know about what your ISP and wireless carrier is doing with your data that shining a brighter spotlight on the problem should prove beneficial.

While Facebook has received well deserved heat for its bottomless privacy scandals, the recent fixation on "big tech" has obscured the behavior of telecom companies and their own legendarily bad behavior on the privacy front.

This is a sector that has charged users more for privacy, pondered giving worse customer service to users with lower credit scores, sold private user location data to any nitwit they could find, and have even been busted covertly modifying user data packets to track user behavior online -- without disclosing it or providing opt out tools. Telecom's bad behavior is every bit as terrible as the Facebook scandals that have justly captured nationwide attention.

Yet despite being pioneers in the field of terrible privacy practices and monopoly power, telecom is often somehow excluded in conversations about "fixing big tech," privacy, and even monopoly power. Some of that's by design. As we've noted previously, telecom lobbyists have been spending the last few years piling on the vilification of big tech, urging the government to regulate the Silicon Valley giants telecom wants to compete with in the online ad space, while hoping you'll ignore that the sector just got done obliterating government oversight of its own, equally problematic business practices.

Not only did the telecom sector convince the FCC to effectively neuter itself, it convinced Congress to kill off modest FCC privacy rules before they could take effect in March of 2017. Those rules simply required that ISPs be transparent about the kind of data they're collecting and selling and provide an easy way to opt out of more sensitive (financial, location) data collection. Those rules would have gone a long way in protecting consumers from the ugly location data scandals that have plagued wireless carriers in recent years.

Some FTC Commissioners seem aware that to police telecom, you'll need both the FTC and FCC working in functional concert:

Yet somehow, there's still widespread belief that blind deregulation of predatory telecom monopolies leads to Utopian outcomes. But absent of government oversight or competition, companies like Comcast and AT&T don't magically begin innovating or behaving nicely. They instead double down on even worse behavior. That's been proven time and time again by telecom history and Comcast's very existence, yet it's a lesson we culturally refuse to learn as we approve merger after merger, gut government oversight, then stand around dumbfounded as to why the broadband sector is such a monumental shitshow.

In the conversations about "big tech," much of this reality has been lost. Even among the well-intentioned like Elizabeth Warren, you'll notice that telecom receives nary a mention. But with the FCC's authority over ISPs demolished by lobbyists, antitrust enforcement constantly falling flat on its face, and limited competition, telecom's domination of both the content and the conduit (AT&T/Time Warner, Comcast/NBC Universal) poses unique problems that shouldn't be forgotten in the quest to protect competition, the open internet, and consumer privacy.

Telecom's privacy dysfunction and anti-competitive tendencies touch every layer of the internet, and these companies have every intention of following Facebook and Google's lead in the online ad space. If you're really interested in "fixing tech" and shoring up consumer privacy, forgetting about the natural monopolies at the heart of the internet is a monumental mistake.

Filed Under: fcc, ftc, privacy, telcos
Companies: at&t, verizon

FCC (Read: Taxpayers) Forced To Pay Journalist's Legal Bills After Tap Dancing Around FOIA Requests

from the nothing-to-see-here dept

You may or may not remember that FCC boss Ajit Pai promised to operate the "most transparent" FCC ever. Initially, Pai lived up to that promise by changing FCC policy so that FCC orders would be released before they were voted on; a pretty obvious improvement of benefit to both consumers and ISP lobbyists alike. But in the year or two since, Pai has shown that genuine transparency is the very least of the chairman's priorities.

For example, Pai's FCC has actively refused to aid law enforcement inquiries into who was behind the millions of bogus comments that polluted the net neutrality repeal public comment period. Similarly, the Pai FCC's general response to FOIA requests has been to stall, delay, and ignore said requests whenever possible, resulting in numerous lawsuits by media outlets attempting to get to the bottom of all manner of bizarre FCC policy decisions (like that fake DDOS attack emails show they made up to try and downplay public anger over the net neutrality repeal).

One of those lawsuits was filed by journalist Jason Prechtel, whose analysis recently helped shed some light on the telecom and Trump-linked organizations who stuffed the FCC ballot box during the net neutrality public comment period -- in some cases using stolen identities. The Pai FCC repeatedly ignored or stalled in response to Prechtel's FOIA requests regarding this data, so he sued the agency back in 2017. Last week, a court ruled that the FCC (read: taxpayers) will be forced to reimburse Prechtel's legal costs to the tune of $43,000.

As Gizmodo notes, it was probably money well spent if integrity and transparency actually matter to you:

"The data Prechtel ultimately obtained through the case formed the basis of a Gizmodo report last month—which he coauthored—that revealed how investigators had linked various entities, including a prominent Washington, D.C., publication, to potentially millions of fraudulent comments submitted during the 2017 net neutrality rollback.

The same data was previously withheld from law enforcement investigators by the FCC’s top lawyer citing jurisdictional and privacy concerns. Prechtel eventually obtained it under FOIA from a separate agency."

The settlement formally settles the dispute, though the FCC denies any wrongdoing. Still, numerous state AGs, the GAO, and the FBI are all investigating those bogus comments filed during the net neutrality repeal, and have subpoenaed several of the ISP-linked organizations Prechtel's data helped identify as the culprits. As such, this singular FOIA dispute is just one small part of a much larger, weirder story that still hasn't been fully told.

Filed Under: ajit pai, comments, fcc, foia, jason prechtel, net neutrality, transparency

John Oliver Robocalls Ajit Pai For Not Doing More To Thwart Robocalls

from the ill-communication dept

Despite endless government initiatives and countless promises from the telecom sector, our national robocall hell continues. Robocalls from telemarketers continue to be the subject the FCC receives the most complaints about (200,000 complaints annually, making up 60% of all FCC complaints), and recent data from the Robocall Index indicates that the problem is only getting worse. Consumers continue to be hammered by mortgage interest rate scams, credit card scams, student loan scams, business loan scams, and IRS scams. 4.9 billion such calls were placed in February alone:

You might recall that HBO's John Oliver caused Ajit Pai's FCC no shortage of trouble when his coverage of net neutrality drove millions of pissed off consumers to the FCC website to complain. The FCC then got into a bit of hot water (and remains under investigation by the GAO and others) after falsely claiming those angry website visitors were part of a malicious DDOS attack. In reality, emails confirmed FCC staffers were simply trying to craft an alternative explanation to try and downplay massive public opposition to the Trump FCC's policies.

Fast forward to last weekend, and Oliver again brought some much-needed attention to the FCC's apathy, this time on the subject of robocalls. The whole missive is well worth a watch if you haven't seen it already:

Oliver's bit (which involves robocalling all five FCC commissioners) does a stellar job highlighting that the previous FCC passed new rules to rein in the robocall threat. But those rules were struck down by the courts after a lawsuit by the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals, a group representing debt collectors (Pai celebrated the ruling at the time). To be clear, Pai has done a few notable things to try and crack down on the problem, ranging from slightly expanding (pdf) carrier abilities to try and block the calls, to issuing major fines against particularly-obvious scammers.

But as Oliver notes, there's a lot more Pai's FCC could do, like demanding big carriers offer their customers free robocall protection services, actually punishing those lagging behind at adopting anti-spoofing authentication tech, and narrowing the definition of robocalls to include debt collection and other purportedly "legit" but overwhelming callers. But that would require Pai actually standing up to major industries, something he's yet to do at any meaningful point during his appointment as FCC boss.

As it stands, predictions are that by next year, half of all calls made will be robocalls. And while companies like AT&T spent a few years trying to blame everybody else for its own failure to police the problem, it's one of several carriers finally on the cusp of deploying SHAKEN/STIR authentication technology that should dramatically put a damper on caller ID spoofing later this year. But evolving scammer tactics and lagging carriers means that to solve this problem, the FCC will need somebody willing to actually punish companies that refuse to do more.

Filed Under: ajit pai, consumer protection, fcc, john oliver, robocalls

New Bill Would Enshrine The FCC's Net Neutrality Rules Into Standalone Federal Law

from the ill-communication dept

This week House and Senate Democrats introduced new legislation that would formally enshrine net neutrality into law. The bill itself is only three pages long because it simply enshrines the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules into federal legislation, providing formal Congressional approval for the FCC's 2015 effort to declare ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Telecom Act:

At a lengthy press conference (video here), unified Democrats made it very clear that net neutrality was going to be a cornerstone of the party's platform through the foreseeable future and likely through the next Presidential election. They also noted that a full markup and hearings on the dual companion bills could be expected sometime in the next few weeks. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel lauded the new Congressional effort, rightly noting all the state and federal legal chaos the Pai FCC created in the wake of their factually-specious repeal:

"The FCC was on the wrong side of the law, the wrong side of history, and the wrong side of the American public when it rolled back net neutrality. The FCC’s deeply unpopular decision is being challenged in the courts, in statehouses, and in Congress. I applaud the effort announced today to reinstate open internet rules at the FCC. I’ll keep raising a ruckus to support net neutrality and I’m glad so many others are too."

The problem for the Democrats, of course, is the immense success the telecom lobby has had at falsely framing net neutrality as a partisan issue. As a result, the bill may likely pass the House, but could very easily stall in the Senate. Even if it passes both houses, it would need to avoid a veto from Donald Trump, who has routinely opposed net neutrality despite pretty clearly not having the slightest idea what it actually is.

Survey after survey has shown that a bipartisan majority of Americans supported the rules and opposed the repeal. But ISP lobbyists work hard to encourage and inflame a partisan divide that shouldn't exist on this subject (the quest for a healthier, competitive internet free of monopoly abuse). This results in a stupid partisan split in Congress with Democrats generally in favor of the idea, and Republicans staunchly opposed --usually under the (false) idea that net neutrality is draconian government over-reach.

In reality, net neutrality violations are just a symptom of monopoly power and the limited competition in broadband, subjects both parties have done a piss-poor job of addressing thanks to lobbying. In the absence of real competition, net neutrality rules are at least some basic safeguards to prevent giants like AT&T and Comcast from using their broadband monopolies to unfairly saddle and disadvantage competitors (despite industry claims this is a theoretical concern, it's something that's already happening).

Unsurprisingly, the Pai FCC was quick to issue a statement lambasting the proposal. The statement itself is a greatest hits of false Pai FCC claims to date, including the ongoing suggestion that the internet is seeing incredible growth thanks to their extremely unpopular decision to gut broadband consumer protections:

"The FCC’s return in 2017 to the bipartisan, light-touch approach to Internet regulation has been a success. This time-tested framework has preserved the free and open Internet. It has promoted transparency in order to better inform consumer choice. It has unleashed private investment, resulting in more fiber being deployed in 2018 than any year before and download speeds increasing by an astounding 36%. And it has proven wrong the many hysterical predictions of doom from 2017, most notably the fantasy that market-based regulation would bring about ‘the end of the Internet as we know it.’ The Internet in America today is free and vibrant, and the main thing it needs to be saved from is heavy-handed regulation from the 1930s."

We've already discussed at length how these claims are bunk. One, the "record" fiber growth Pai's FCC tries to credit for killing net neutrality was actually courtesy of fiber build-out requirements affixed to the AT&T DirecTV merger by the previous FCC (rather the opposite of less regulation). Two, the speed data the FCC uses was only current as of the end of 2017. Net neutrality rules weren't repealed until June of 2018, meaning this growth occurred while net neutrality was technically active. It's stuff like this that showcases why so many have a hard time taking the Pai FCC seriously.

Should this latest legislative gambit fail in the Senate or face Trump veto, the rules still have a shot at being restored via the ongoing lawsuit against the FCC. Should both fail, it will fall on the shoulders of voters to eject Luddite or cash-compromised lawmakers from both parties who prioritize protecting monopoly revenues over consumer welfare and the heath of the internet. At the very least, this looming vote should provide voters with a pretty clear 2020 scorecard as to which lawmakers actually have their backs when it comes to protecting an open and competitive internet.

Filed Under: congress, ed markety, fcc, net neutrality

FCC Uses Cherry-Picked Stats To Justify Giving Consumers A Giant Middle Finger

from the ill-communication dept

One of the fundamental cornerstones of disinformation and propaganda is repetition. As in, if you state something often enough, the idea gets lodged in the recipient's head and becomes truth by an act of sheer will. It's called the “illusory truth effect,” and it's been essential across most of the Trump administration as it attempts to convince the public that up is down, and black is white. It has been absolutely essential at the Trump FCC, where the agency has worked tirelessly to convince the nation that kissing the ass of the biggest telecom operators is intelligent policy.

You'll of course recall that one of the FCC's key justifications for killing consumer protections like net neutrality is that the modest rules stifled industry investment. Objective data from a litany of different sources has confirmed that's simply not true, including SEC filings, earnings reports, and the statements of countless industry CEOs. That hasn't stopped Ajit Pai, major telecom providers, or the litany of their dollar-per-hollar consultants and think tankers from making the claim anyway.

As required by Congress, the FCC periodically releases a Broadband Deployment Report indicating whether affordable, fast broadband is being deployed in a "reasonable and timely" fashion. This week, the FCC circulated a draft order of the initial report among Commissioners. It wasn't made public, but a statement by the agency (pdf) offered up a few choice statistics to imply that its attacks on consumer protections is having a miraculous impact on the telecom market. The FCC's chosen metrics are very...specific:

The number of Americans with access to 100 Mbps/10Mpbs fixed broadband increased by nearly 20%, from 244.3 million to 290.9 million.

The number of Americans with access to 250 Mbps/50 Mbps fixed broadband grew by over 45%, to 205.2 million, and the number of rural Americans with access to such service more than doubled.

What the Pai FCC doesn't tell you is these numbers have absolutely nothing to do with its policies. One, this data is only current up to late 2017, when net neutrality wasn't even repealed until June of 2018. In other words, this growth occurred while net neutrality regulations were technically still active. That didn't stop a lot of outlets from unquestioningly parroting the FCC's claims that this growth was somehow thanks to killing net neutrality or other "burdensome red tape."

A huge chunk of this growth in 100 Mbps connections is simply thanks to the cable industry's deployment of faster DOCSIS 3.1 coaxial technology. Those deployments began before Pai came to office, and were fairly quickly rolled out because they cost the industry relatively little to deploy. Again, these upgrades have absolutely nothing to do with his actual policies. This growth would have occurred had Pai done absolutely nothing.

What's more important is what the Pai FCC doesn't talk about. While cable giants like Comcast and Spectrum have been deploying these upgrades, the nation's phone companies have effectively stopped upgrading their DSL lines. That's providing cable giants with a monpoly over broadband across countless markets, resulting in higher rates and less incentive than ever to improve the industry's Achilles' heel: utterly atrocious customer service.

None of this prevented Ajit Pai from enjoying a victory lap:

“For the past two years, closing the digital divide has been the FCC’s top priority,” Chairman Pai said. “We’ve been tackling this problem by removing barriers to infrastructure investment, promoting competition, and providing efficient, effective support for rural broadband expansion through our Connect America Fund. This report shows that our approach is working. But we won’t rest until all Americans can have access to broadband and the 21st century opportunities it provides to communities everywhere.

Pai likes to present himself as a hero to rural America and consumers. And he likes to repeat the idea that mindless "deregulation" (which in telecom parlance means killing consumer protections) provides untold benefits to the public. But you'd be hard pressed to find a single consumer group (you know, the people paid a pittance to try and protect consumer rights) that supports his policies. And when you go into many rural markets (and tribal lands), you'll be quickly told that many of his industry-favored policies are actually hurting these communities, driving up costs, and making the problem worse.

Another metric the FCC throws around as evidence that its "deregulatory" strategy is working is the claim that 2018 saw record growth in fiber deployments:

The private sector has responded to FCC reforms by deploying fiber to 5.9 million new homes in 2018, the largest number ever recorded. And overall, capital expenditures by broadband providers increased in 2017, reversing declines that occurred in both 2015 and 2016.

Except the FCC just issued a separate report stating that fiber deployment "appears to have slowed recently," largely thanks to US telcos that are refusing to upgrade or even repair aging DSL lines. More importantly, at least 3 million of those locations only occurred because the previous FCC required AT&T to expand its fiber deployment to an additional 3 million homes each year, which is the opposite of deregulation, and once again, had absolutely nothing to do with Pai's industry-cozy policies. Other reporters have noted this period's growth was about even with, and in some instances slower than past reports.

It apparently doesn't matter how many times you repeat the fact that net neutrality didn't stifle CAPEX or deployment. It doesn't matter how many times you point out that CEOs themselves have admitted this claim isn't true to investors (who, by law, they can't lie to). It simply gets repeated over and over again. Legit condemnation is routinely ignored, no matter how factually sound. This repetition is an attempt to use the illusory truth effect to forge a new reality: one where sucking up to entrenched monopolies and ignoring both consumers and a broken market somehow results in near-magical outcomes.

You'll notice that Pai's FCC goes comically out of its way to avoid talking about the one thing that probably matters most to American consumers: broadband pricing.

It's a subject they avoid because it's an argument they know they can't win, even with repetition. Americans continue to pay some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world thanks to limited competition and market failure. And thanks to the cable industry's growing monopoly, that problem's only getting worse. But instead of actually pushing an agenda that truly drives more competition to market, the Pai FCC is burying its head in the sand, parroting whatever Verizon and Comcast tell them to say, and trying to sell it to you, the American public, as adult policy.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband deployment, cherry picking, fcc, net neutrality, stats

Trump Administration's 'National Broadband Plan' Comically Refuses To Acknowledge A Lack Of Competition

from the ill-communication dept

We've well documented how the telecom sector is a pit of regulatory capture and dysfunction, pretty evident if you've ever tried to switch ISPs, negotiate a lower rate, or contact Comcast customer support. And since these companies have their lobbying teeth stuck deep into regulators and lawmakers (something that teeters toward parody on the state level), the government's "solutions" to the problem tend to wind up being of the decidedly half-assed variety. That's not helped by many folks who still labor under the misconception that you motivate natural monopolies to behave by eliminating already modest regulatory oversight.

So every few years, regardless of the party in charge, the government will put forth a new broadband plan it promises will finally address this cavalcade of dysfunction. And time and time again, these proposals fall well short of actually pushing policies that could actually drive more competition to market, because that's the very last thing the companies holding sway over our lawmakers and regulatory agencies actually want. The result is plans that sound really good upon superficial inspection, but don't come close to fixing the real problem. Again, because the wealthiest providers don't want it fixed.

That was certainly the case with the FCC's 2010 "national broadband plan," a collection of politically-timid policy goals set forth by Obama's first FCC boss, Julius Genachowski. The plan failed to really offer a solution to drive competition to market, downplayed the potential role of open access, public/private partnerships, and community broadband as useful motivators for natural monopolies, and failed to really even mention the competitive logjam at the heart of the problem.

Here we are, nearly a decade later, and America's broadband problem is in many ways getting worse. As America's phone companies give up on residential broadband and deploying fiber, companies like Comcast are securing a bigger monopoly than ever across huge swaths of American broadband markets. And while many look to the miracle of wireless to somehow act as a competitive panacea, we've discussed at length how that's not likely to happen anytime soon for a wide variety of reasons, most of which also have to do with too little competition in both retail and the business data services market.

Enter the Trump administration. Last week, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released its American Broadband Initiative Milestones Report, the latest update to the administration's inter-agency agenda plan to "stimulate increased private investment in broadband infrastructure" and finally cure what ails the U.S. broadband sector:

Under the leadership of the White House, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce, the American Broadband Initiative is based on a fundamental principle: nothing drives innovation more effectively than unleashing the free market economy.

While a lot of work remains to be done, today’s report represents a significant step forward toward delivering the modern broadband infrastructure that all Americans deserve.

Given the FCC's belief that kissing the ass of telecom giants solves everything, the plan is unsurprisingly focused on a "free market" approach to spurring investment. A cornerstone of this belief in telecom circles involves ideologically viewing government as a perpetual nemesis and obstacle, not a democratically-driven ally.

The problem is that sort of stern ideological position ignores the fact that profound market failure is forcing countless local governments to get into the broadband business. Not because they want to, but because the market is dominated by monopolies that have literally purchased regulatory apathy. It also ignores that in many instances, these local-grown ISPs offer far better service than their private counterparts. As such, in telecom, the die-hard Libertarian-leaning free market demonization of government as always harmful is not only wrong, it's counterproductive to the goal of better broadband.

To be clear there are some good things in the plan, even though most of them have been in process for several administrations now, including scattered subsidization of rural broadband connectivity, forcing divergent government agencies to work more closely, doubling down on the use of government land to cite cellular towers, and expediting the permitting process for towers and other infrastructure.

But the plan also doubles down on all of the government's worst impulses. Like relying on broadband mapping data we all know isn't accurate (but the industry doesn't really want fixed for fear of highlighting the sorry state of availability and competition). In fact, the report begins by throwing out data that anybody that has covered (or visited) rural America knows to be patently false:

As of 2016, more than 92% of the U.S. population had access to fixed land-based broadband at speeds of 25 Mbps/3 Mbps. Nonetheless, the remaining 8% represents more than 24 million Americans who lack access to this basic service. Of those households, 80% live in rural communities. This is more people than live in the States of New York or Florida.

So while the report is at least honest that there's a problem, those numbers are being seen through decidedly rose-colored glasses. And the statement also kind of brushes over the fact that most of these users only have the choice of one ISP if they want actual "broadband" defined as 25 Mbps by the FCC. That's a monopoly, but you'll note that the word monopoly is never uttered once for fear up upsetting said monopolies. At faster speeds there is literally no competition whatsoever in American broadband, but the word "competition" is similarly uttered just once in the report's 62 pages.

You can't fix problems you refuse to admit even exist.

The report also perpetuates the government's belief that a one-size-fits all approach to broadband will somehow work when local, niche, community options are proving to be the lifeblood driving connectivity to rural and low-ROI areas. As we saw with the FCC's attack on net neutrality, the ideology driving the report is that you create a better telecom market by getting government out of the way. But while that may work in healthier markets, that doesn't work in telecom. When you eliminate guardrails for giants like Comcast, they simply double down on bad behavior. Especially in a country where antitrust law isn't enforced and consumer protections are being routinely obliterated at direct lobbyist behest.

There's literally nothing in the plan that addresses the sector's two biggest problems. One being the lack of real competition across countless markets. The other being the comical amount of regulatory capture and telecom lobbying influence on both the state and federal level that kills any well-intentioned improvement efforts in the cradle. That includes letting giants like AT&T and Comcast literally write protectionist state laws that ban towns and cities from building their own broadband networks or striking public/private partnerships, even if that's what citizens democratically voted for.

You don't fix American broadband until you fix American corruption and telecom regulatory capture, and based on the last few years at the Ajit Pai FCC, it's pretty god-damned clear we're far from learning this lesson yet. In other words, enjoy your Comcast monopoly for another decade, everybody.

Filed Under: american broadband initiative, broadband, broadband plan, competition, fcc