Cable Lobby Working Hard To Ensure Biden Broadband Plan Doesn't Encourage Real Competition

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

While the Biden administration's $2 trillion American Jobs Plan set aside $100 billion for broadband infrastructure, the details of how that money is to actually be spent remains murky. Enter cable industry lobbyists, who are hard at work attempting to dictate who gets access to those funds, while also trying to make sure the funds aren't used for anything that could threaten their regional monopolies. They're particularly worried about the Biden administration's promise that a big focus of the effort will be on giving aid to locally owned and operated broadband networks, as detailed in this good piece by Issie Lapowsky at Protocol:

"Comcast, Charter, AT&T and their respective industry associations have spent years beating back municipal broadband networks in states across the country, lobbying for laws that prohibit such networks and arguing that government-funded broadband puts the thumb on the scale of competition. With potentially $100 billion in federal funding on the line, the last thing the cable lobby wants is to see those restrictions lifted and funding diverted to cities, not their own coffers."

Granted as we've noted for years, these communities aren't getting into the broadband business because it's fun. They're doing so as an organic, voter-backed response to decades of market failure and regional monopolization. Said monopolization is obviously hugely profitable, and the cable industry lobby is working overtime to prevent anything upsetting that broken status quo. As Lapowsky notes, Charter and Comcast alone spent $7 million on lobbying Congress last year, and that doesn't including the millions in additional dollars spent by their policy and lobbying organizations like the NCTA (run by former FCC boss Mike Powell).

Nor does that tally include the millions spent annually by AT&T and Verizon on an army of consultants, lobbyists, think tankers, academics, and astroturfers, all of whom are now working overtime to ensure a lot of that money goes into their pockets, and not the pockets of regional community broadband networks threatening to bring real competition to bear. Networks that wouldn't exist if America's entrenched telecom monopolies actually cared about things like competition and consumer welfare.

Historically, the telecom lobby has had success after success when it comes to ensuring the U.S. government doesn't take regional monopolization and corruption seriously. But as Protocol notes, COVID (specifically news stories showing toddlers having to huddle in the dirt just to get online for class because home broadband either isn't available or is too expensive) has changed the dynamic and really showcased the harm of monopolization and corruption:

"But as this fight moves from the states to the federal level, local broadband proponents have some advantages they haven't had before. They don't just have the backing of the White House and support of Democrats who control Congress. They also have more than a year's worth of examples of how people on the wrong side of the digital divide in both cities and rural America have struggled during the pandemic — and how cable giants have failed to fill the gap."

Even then, some community broadband proponents are expressing concern that the telecom lobby is already having a negative impact on the important terminology being used at departments like Treasury to dictate where U.S. government funding is going to go:

"Earlier this year in March, the Biden Administration signed the American Rescue Plan Act, which included, among many other things, multiple sources of funds for broadband infrastructure. The U.S. Department of Treasury was tasked with writing the rules of how local governments can spend the various funds. The Interim Rule has been published and it appears to significantly limit local ability to invest in needed networks."

While community broadband is framed by telecom as "socialism run amok" or a "government takeover of the internet" to try and encourage partisan division, being pro-competition and pro-accountability is yet another subject that isn't actually partisan. Most community broadband networks have been built in conservative areas with the support of local voters. And again, the telecom lobby has a 25 year history of fighting tooth and nail against all broadband competition, not just community-run broadband. While getting slathered in tax breaks and subsidies for networks they routinely half deliver.

It has taken a quarter century to even get the U.S. broadband policy conversation to the point where we can admit (barely!) that monopolization and regulatory capture (corruption) are the two primary reasons U.S. broadband is expensive and mediocre. It's not clear how many more decades it will take to actually do something about it.

Filed Under: american jobs plan, broadband, community broadband, competition, infrastructure, joe biden, municipal broadband