Thankfully, Jay Inslee's Unconstitutional Bill To Criminalize Political Speech Dies In The Washington Senate

from the don't-criminalize-free-speech dept

Over the last few years, it's been depressing to see politicians from both major political parties attacking free speech. As we noted last month, Washington state governor Jay Inslee last month started pushing a bill that would criminalize political speech. He kept insisting that it was okay under the 1st Amendment because he got a heavily biased constitutional lawyer, Larry Tribe, to basically shrug and say "maybe it could be constitutional?" But the bill was clearly problematic -- and would lead to nonstop nonsense lawsuits against political candidates.

Thankfully, cooler heads have prevailed in the Washington Senate and the bill has died. The bill's main sponsor is still insisting that it would survive 1st Amendment scrutiny, but also recognized that it just didn't have enough political support:

State Sen. David Frockt (D), who sponsored the bill, said, "We have to respect that the bill in its current form did not have enough support to advance despite the care we took in its drafting through our consultation with leading First Amendment scholars."

Inslee, for his part, still insists something must be done:

After the bill was defeated on Tuesday, Inslee said in a statement, "We all still have a responsibility to act against this Big Lie ... we must continue to explore ways to fight the dangerous deceptions politicians are still promoting about our elections."

And, look, I don't disagree that the Big Lie about the 2020 election is a problem. But you don't solve problems by censoring 1st Amendment protected speech. That never ends well. At all.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, election misinformation, free speech, jay inslee, lies, misinformation, political speech, washington

Yet Another Telecom-Backed Think Tank Insists U.S. Broadband Is Great, Actually

from the ignore-the-man-behind-the-curtain dept

U.S. broadband suffers from significant regional monopolization, which directly results in the country being mediocre on nearly every broadband metric that matters... be it broadband prices, coverage, speeds, and customer service. This isn't something to debate; the data is everywhere, and anybody who has spent much time dealing with giants like AT&T or Comcast knows the sector has major problems. By developed national standards U.S. broadband is slow, expensive, inconsistently available, with terrible customer support. The cause has always been regional monopolization and the state and federal corruption that protects it.

Granted if you asked think tanks funded directly by the telecom industry, U.S. broadband is secretly fantastic, and critics are unhinged radicals. For example, the "Information Technology and Innovation Foundation," which has AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Verizon, and T-Mobile as financial backers, penned a new report this week trying to frame every single meaningful criticism of the sector as falsehoods being spread by "radicals" and "broadband populists" exclusively looking to undermine the industry. I was tagged by the study's author, so I guess I'm to assume I'm one of the radical populists being mentioned?

Using cherry picked data (or no data at all), the whole piece amusingly tries to argue that every major criticism of the U.S. broadband sector is false, whether we're talking about the sector's high prices (due to a lack of competition) to its well documented privacy scandals. The obvious motivation for the piece? The industry isn't very happy about the continued rise of local community broadband networks as grass roots alternatives to monopoly control:

"The anticorporate broadband populists (and radicals) know that calling for the replacement of large Internet service providers (ISPs) with smaller community-based and municipal providers is likely a losing strategy."

Of course that's not true. Over 1,000 communities around the U.S. have started building their own broadband networks as a direct, organic, grass roots response to market failure. The movement saw renewed growth during COVID, thanks to ongoing frustration with cost and availability. Several studies (like this one out of Harvard) indicate such options often provide better, faster, cheaper service by folks with a vested interest in the communities they serve (because they often live in said communities). The solutions are far from homogenous: they come in all shapes and sizes, from local cooperatives and public/private partnerships, to broadband built on the backs of local utilities. And they're usually tailored to local needs in a way service from AT&T, well, isn't.

The "study" tries to frame these efforts as those of "radicals" and "socialists," despite the fact that most community broadband networks are being built in conservative cities. Again, these folks aren't getting into the broadband business because they've been spurred by "radical socialist ideology," they're building these networks because they're angry about literally 30 years of market failure (and the federal failure that accompanies regulatory capture). This organic, bipartisan market response to monopolization is framed by the ITIF as some kind of nefarious plot to ruin AT&T and Comcast's good time:

"As such, broadband populists understand that a more effective strategy is to burrow into the foundations, gradually chipping away at the credibility of the industry (which they derisively label “Big Broadband”), and advancing endless claims about poor performance, including that U.S. corporate-provided broadband speeds are too slow, coverage and privacy protection are too limited, prices and profits are too high, and the “pipes” are not neutral."

The industry's credibility isn't in the gutter because some "radical populists" were mean to AT&T. The industry's credibility is in the sewer for literally decades of well documented, terrible behavior, relentless bullying of competitors, high prices, slow speeds, and statistically some of the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any industry in America (really think about that last one for a moment). If the industry really wanted to thwart the movement, they could offer better, faster, cheaper service. Instead they've found it cheaper to lobby lawmakers into apathy (aka regulatory capture) and pay for reports that deny factual reality.

The combination of limited competition and feckless regulators means the U.S. telecom industry generally doesn't see much accountability for market failure. If you're a regional monopoly like AT&T or Comcast, creative, local broadband solutions with broad bipartisan public support are just about the only real, existential threat to your continued domination of a broken sector. And instead of directly addressing the problem by spending money on better support and better service, it's far less expensive to lobby DC and portray critics as unhinged radicals exclusively interested in attacking "traditional values."

Filed Under: broadband, community broadband, competition, lies, rob atkinson
Companies: at&t, comcast, itif, verizon

California Regulators Say T-Mobile Lied To Gain Sprint Merger Approval

from the synergies dept

To gain regulatory approval for its $26 billion merger with Sprint, T-Mobile made numerous promises. One was that the deal would immediately create jobs (there've been 5,000 layoffs so far). Another was that the company would work closely with Dish Network to help them build a fourth wireless network that would replace Sprint, theoretically "fixing" the reduction in competition the deal created. As predicted, that plan isn't working out well either.

Dish and T-Mobile have been fighting like cats and dogs since the deal was finalized. Instead of helping Dish Network grow, T-Mobile has been poaching Dish customers with promotions specifically targeting Dish. T-Mobile also promised to keep its older 3G, CDMA network operational for Dish to use until 2023 (giving it time to build out its own 5G network), but Dish has been accusing T-Mobile of turning that network off on January 1, 2022, far earlier than originally promised. Dish argues that millions of its Boost Mobile branded wireless subscribers could lose access to service in the new year.

This week California regulators sided with Dish and effectively accused T-Mobile of lying to gain merger approval:

"T-Mobile's false and misleading statements under oath indicated, among other things, that T-Mobile would make its CDMA network "available to Boost customers until they were migrated to Dish Network Corporation's LTE or 5G services" and that Dish would have up to three years to complete the migration, the ruling said. The CPUC can impose penalties against T-Mobile of up to $100,000 for each offense."

In short Dish says T-Mobile simply isn't living up to its merger commitments. In turn, a T-Mobile blog post effectively accuses Dish is just making everything up, and insists Dish is simply too cheap to give its wireless users discounted 4G and 5G phones to avoid problems when T-Mobile's 3G network shuts down. California regulators, including Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer and a CPUC commissioner, appear inclined to believe Dish Network based on their review of T-Mobile's pre-merger promises:

"Their ruling said there is "a reasonable basis to conclude that T-Mobile... misrepresented material facts and misled the commission" with statements under oath. The ruling said that when the CPUC allowed the merger, it "relied on the specific false statements, omissions, and/or misleading assurances T-Mobile gave regarding its use of [Sprint's] PCS spectrum and its repeated references to a three-year customer migration period without a degraded experience... it appears that these false statements, omissions and/or misleading assurances and the related time references were intended to induce the commission to approve the merger."

Again, simply blocking this deal and finding some other way to prop up Sprint (without eliminating a direct competitor) was always the simpler, cleaner, option. Instead, the Trump DOJ and FCC constructed this elaborate and likely doomed alternative which (ironically for a party with a purportedly "hands off" and "government never works" mindset), involves having government try to nanny a cumbersome arrangement to fruition for the better part of a decade. With Dish consistently losing both wireless and TV subscribers, it's not clear Dish will even remain viable enough for that to work.

Dish is a company with no experience in wireless, with a history of being cheap and difficult to work with, that has to not only build out a world class 5G network in a few years, but has to make a network so popular with consumers it successfully leeches subscribers from AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. And it has to do it without financially imploding as it continues to hemorrhage wireless and TV subscribers. And US regulators, not exactly the model of consistent oversight, would need to hold all companies involved meaningfully accountable should they miss build-out metrics.

I still tend to think the entire deal was performative theater providing flimsy justification to approval a deal experts made very clear would reduce competition, raise prices, and harm jobs. It was pushed by folks whose only real interest was reducing competition so the remaining three players could inevitably jack up prices. And while I do think Dish is making a good show of it (because they have to), I still tend to think this could end with Dish selling its trove of valuable spectrum (once deal restrictions end), making tens of billions, then throwing a few peanuts at any flimsy regulatory penalties on their way to the exit.

Filed Under: antitrust, california, competition, doj, fcc, jobs, layoffs, lies, review
Companies: dish, sprint, t-mobile

How Do You Debate Section 230 When One Side Constantly Lies About It?

from the this-is-not-a-both-sides-issue dept

The Federalist Society this week released an interesting and well-produced video all about the Section 230 debate. Whatever you might think about the Federalist Society, the video is worth watching. The video does not take a position on 230 but basically presents it as if there are two equally competing visions of 230 -- one in which it's good and one in which it's a problem. And if you just watch the video, you might think that this is because there are just disagreements about how 230 works and the impact it has on speech online. But that's only because one side of the debate is completely making shit up and the other is being accurate.

In this case, the person making up shit about 230 is... Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz has been lying about Section 230 for years. Indeed, I think we can trace most of the blatant falsehoods about 230 that seem to come from Republicans to Ted Cruz. It seems like 3 years ago, Cruz decided that it would be a fun culture war thing to "attack big tech" and lying about 230 seemed like the easiest way to do so. Other politicians (most notably Josh Hawley) have since followed him down that path, but it's Cruz who seems to be patient zero of the GOP's "making shit up about 230." Of course, what's perhaps most ironic is that everything that Cruz has been falsely saying about 230 conflicts directly with the other stuff he made up about net neutrality back when that fight was on.

Back in 2014, when the FCC finally put in place reasonable net neutrality rules, Cruz flipped out and insisted that simple rules against throttling or blocking access to websites was the government taking over the internet. Now, with 230, he insists (falsely) that 230 had some built in neutrality requirement, and he's mad that it's no longer there. He's wrong on... all of this.

Let's dig in:

Who in their right mind would want all of political discourse in America governed by a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires? With unfettered power to silence anyone. That's what we have now and I think it threatens our elections, it threatens our democracy, and it threatens free speech in a way we've never seen before in our democracy.

Oh come on. First of all, pre-internet, the vast majority of people had no outlet for them to speak to the vast majority of other Americans (or people around the globe). They could only speak to people around them, and that was an extremely limited audience. Today, the internet has enabled people to speak to tons of people across a wide variety of platforms or -- even better, to set up your own website and communicate to whatever audience you can attract. The idea that a few popular sites have "unfettered power to silence anyone" is ridiculous. First of all, they can't silence people. They can only refuse them service on their platforms. And the internet is much bigger than those platforms.

Second, they have strong incentives not to just randomly silence people and really are not doing so. While they sometimes make mistakes, it's not like they're suddenly deciding that idiots like Ted Cruz can't lie to the American public and create bogus culture wars. Hell, this video is... hosted on YouTube. Are there cases where these sites have over moderated content that they probably should not have? Sure, absolutely. But there remain many other options out there, and the idea that a few sites having moderation policies Ted Cruz doesn't like is in no way a "threat to free speech." And, it most certainly is not a historic threat the way Cruz presents it.

Again, compare this to what we had before. Before people had no significant tools to get their speech out there. If you wanted to speak to a wide audience, you were immediately limited by a bunch of giant gatekeepers who suppressed way more speech than any internet platform ever has. You needed to get a newspaper publisher, book publisher, or TV or radio station to agree to allow you to speak, and they rejected nearly all such efforts. They only allowed through a tiny fraction of those who wished to be published or put on the air.

The change today is massive. But if we're talking about the power of big companies to silence speech, we're in a fundamentally different world today where the primary purpose of many of these companies is enabling the vast majority of people to be able to speak to wider audiences. The old systems were focused on just allowing through a tiny minority of people to speak. We're currently in amazing times for freedom of speech, and the fact that a few platforms don't want assholes and disinformation merchants is not an attack on free speech.

Later Cruz does this misleading garbage thing where he says that the big tech companies have refused to tell him how many Republican candidates for office have had their content "blocked, shadowbanned, or restricted." He insists that there is a clear number "an integer" that these companies know and refuse to tell him and "that unchecked power is dangerous."

Except that entire statement is garbage. First of all, "shadowbanning" is not a defined thing, and most companies don't do anything that can be reasonably defined as "shadowbanning" or "throttling." But all of these platforms do have algorithms that suggest content to users, and they may rank certain content higher than others, because the algorithms believe users are more likely to want to see some content, and less likely to see other content. Is having the algorithm decide that one politician's content is less interesting than another's... is that "shadowbanning"? Is that "throttling"? Who the fuck knows? That's why Cruz's question is so disingenuous. He's asking an unanswerable question, and then pretending that when companies don't answer a question that can't be answered that they're dodging the issue.

And, no, that power is not "unchecked." Remember when Ted Cruz was a Republican who pretended to believe in the market? If these companies were really terrible at all of this, then that's an opportunity for alternatives to spring up. Or it's a reason for users to stop using the platforms. Or for advertisers to go elsewhere. There are all sorts of market incentives for these companies to be better. Cruz is just making shit up again.

Right now, Section 230 is part of how Congress continues to protect these monopolies that are abusing their power and trying to silence you.

Oh come on. Section 230 protects everyone online. It's got nothing to do with "monopolies" (and just the fact he is referring to multiple companies as monopolies should make you question if he knows what the word monopoly means). And, no, they're not trying to "silence you." They're trying to balance a ton of competing interests, including stopping spam, harassment, abuse, and disinformation that is creating larger societal problems that cynical opportunist politicians like Ted Cruz want to brush under the rug or deny.

The question of what to do about big tech censorship is a difficult question. I will readily concede that as a policy matter, that is not easy to solve. Nobody in their right mind wants to see a federal government speech police.

And here he is trying to have it both ways, because everything else he says is demanding exactly that. Having the federal government force websites to host some speech while removing some other speech. But Cruz wants to have it both ways. Because he's lying.

But it's no longer the case that tech companies are these tiny little startups. It's no longer the case that they're a couple of kids starting something in their college dorm room.

Uh, there are still tons of startups, including started by kids in their dorm rooms that are protected by 230.

So it then becomes a thorny problem. How do you solve this blatant censorship and bias coming from Silicon Valley. First, which we're talking about right now, is repealing or modifying Section 230. Eliminating the special immunity from liability that big tech gets that was based on the belief that they would be neutral public forum. They've abandoned that promise. They've decided that they're not neutral. They're partisan, they will silence your views if they disagree with them.

Everything he says here is hogwash. First, the small lie: Section 230 is not about "big tech." It protects small sites and users as well. It protects Ted Cruz when he retweets something or when he forwards an email.

Then the big lie: the idea that 230 was premised on "neutrality." While the video later does show Chris Cox -- who wrote Section 230 -- debunking this myth, it's much later in the video and people watching it might not even realize that he's basically calling out Cruz as a blatant liar. Section 230 was never based on the idea of any website being "a neutral public forum." As Cox says later, how would that even make any sense? No one would expect, say, the Republican National Committee to have to host speech promoting Democrats.

The entire point of Section 230 was to allow websites to moderate how they saw fit for the community they wanted to have on their website. It's why we see so many different websites with so many different approaches. Because no one wants or needs a one-size-fits-all approach. So, if websites wanted to be biased, that's exactly what 230 was designed to support. So no site "broke" any promise, because no promise was made.

And finally, it's bullshit that any of the big companies are "partisan" in their moderation. They're not banning people for their political views. They're banning them when they're spewing disinformation or harassment in a way that makes it difficult for others using the site as well. The only site I've seen admit to being "partisan" was Parler, whose former CEO bragged to reporters about banning "leftists." I didn't see Cruz complain about that.

I think there should be strong incentive in federal law for the big companies to go back to being neutral public fora. They know how to do that. They did that for years. Because if they silence anyone who disagrees with the leftwing orthodoxy we'll only hear one view.

Oh come on. Again, they were never "neutral public fora." They have always had content moderation policies, removing spam and harassment -- and things they were legally required to remove, such as copyright infringement and child sexual abuse material.

And, again, remember that the one regulation we did have about making a part of the internet "neutral" resulted in Cruz himself screaming about how it was "Obamacare for the internet" and "the government takeover of the internet." Ted Cruz is a lying fucking hypocrite.

Oh, and there is no site out there that is silencing "anyone who disagrees with leftwing orthodoxy." Again, Ted Cruz -- who clearly disagrees with leftwing orthodoxy -- is still on all these platforms. This video is hosted by YouTube. Cruz is just culture warrioring, by lying to you.

That's the world of big tech, but it's even worse because it's 3 or 4 billionaires in Silicon Valley deciding what you get to hear, what you get to say, what you get to know. That is an incredible danger to our Constitution, to our Bill of Rights, and to our democracy.

Again, no. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution are mostly about limiting what Congress can do. Private companies exercising editorial discretion on their platforms is actually protected by the Bill of Rights.

I'm not sure there was a single thing in this entire video that came out of Ted Cruz's mouth that was anywhere near truth. It was all cynical bullshit that was not only ridiculous and wrong, but was designed to mislead people. I know the Federalist Society wants to present "both sides" of this issue, but how do you do that when the people you choose have no compunction about just flat out lying?

Filed Under: content moderation, lies, neutrality, section 230, ted cruz

Cop's Lies About A Traffic Stop Are Exposed By A Home Security Camera Located Across The Street

from the golden-age-of-surveillance-of-public-officials dept

Cops lie.

This is undeniable. But why do cops lie? There seems to be little reason for it. Qualified immunity protects them against all but their most egregious rights violations. Internal investigations routinely clear them for all but their most egregious acts of misconduct. And police union contracts make it almost impossible to fire bad cops, no matter what they've done.

So, why do they lie? If I had to guess, it's because they've been granted so much deference by those adjudicating their behavior that "my word against theirs" has pretty much become the standard for legal proceedings. If a cop can push a narrative without more pushback than the opposing party's sworn statements, the cop is probably going to win.

This reliance on unreliable narrators has been threatened by the ubiquity of recording devices. Some devices -- body cameras, dashcams -- are owned by cops. And, no surprise, they often "fail" to activate these devices when some shady shit is going down.

But there are tons of cameras cops don't control. Every smartphone has a camera. And nearly every person encountering cops has a smartphone. Then there's the plethora of home security cameras whose price point has dropped so precipitously they're now considered as accessible as tap water.

The cops can control their own footage. And they do. But they can't control everyone else's. And that's where they slip up. A narrative is only as good as its supporting evidence. Cops refuse to bring their own, especially when it contradicts their narrative. But they can't stop citizens from recording their actions. This is a fact that has yet to achieve critical mass in the law enforcement community. A cop's word is only as good as its supporting facts. Going to court with alternative facts -- especially ones contradicted by nearby recording devices is a bad idea. (h/t TheUrbanDragon)

But that still doesn't stop cops from lying to courts. Cops in Lake Wales, Florida tried to claim a driver attacked them during a traffic stop -- something that could have resulted in a conviction on multiple felony charges. But camera footage obtained from a home security camera across the street from the traffic stop undermined the officers' sworn perjury:

A Lake Wales man, who could have been sent to prison for years based on the claims in a police report, was saved by a home surveillance camera. It showed he didn’t attack an officer, as claimed in the report.

[...]

Officer [Colt] Black’s report said, “Cordero immediately exited the driver door and began to charge towards my patrol vehicle.”

It also indicated Cordero approached the officer with closed fists.

Sounds like an attempted assault on police officers -- an assault only negated by the swift (and brutal) acts of officers on the scene. But here's what really happened, according to an unblinking eye located across the street.

Cordero stood by his car for more than 20 seconds.

[...]

Black approached Cordero about 30 seconds later.

“He sucker-punched me from the back, right here, cracked a piece of my tooth out. I landed on the ground,” Cordero said.

Despite this being an assault of a citizen by Officer Black (with an assist by Officer Travis Worley), Officer Black claimed he "delivered an elbow strike" because he thought Cordero was reaching for a weapon. This lie was added to the lie that Cordero had "approached" the officers with "closed fists." The security camera recorded the whole thing, which showed officers attacked Cordero as he stood motionless by his car.

So, what was the excuse given after security cam footage showed Officer Black had lied? Officer Black lied again. He claimed he was unable to accurately recall the traffic stop because it was so "stressful."

After Cordero shared the footage with police, Officer Black wrote in another report, "I believe my perception was altered due to the high stress of the incident.”

If a regular traffic stop is so stressful it alters officers' recollection of events, no officer -- or at least not this officer -- should be considered trustworthy when it comes to testifying about traffic stops or any other unrecorded interactions with citizens. Presumably most interactions are stressful. But that's the job. And if the stress makes you make shit up about incidents that implicate a host of constitutional rights and people's actual physical freedom, you probably shouldn't be a cop.

Filed Under: colt black, evidence, florida, lake wales, lies, police, security camera

T-Mobile Promised Major Job Growth Post Sprint Merger. SEC Filings Show The Exact Opposite Happened

from the Charlie-Brown-and-Lucy-Football dept

When T-Mobile was selling its $26 billion Sprint merger to regulators, it told anybody who'd listen that the deal would create a parade of new jobs. In a 2019 blog post that still hasn't been deleted (amateur move, guys), ex-T-Mobile CEO John Legere didn't mince words in his predictions:

"So, let me be really clear on this increasingly important topic. This merger is all about creating new, high-quality, high-paying jobs, and the New T-Mobile will be jobs-positive from Day One and every day thereafter. That’s not just a promise. That’s not just a commitment. It’s a fact."

"...These combined efforts will create nearly 5,600 new American customer care jobs by 2021."

2021 is here, and a recent SEC filing shows that the company has actually lost about 5,000 jobs in a little under a year and a half. That number could potentially be even higher. As noted last April, T-Mobile quickly set about immediately shuttering its Metro prepaid division (a decision that had nothing to do with COVID), resulting in an estimated 6,000 layoffs (something T-Mobile said wouldn't happen). Last June, the company fired hundreds of additional Sprint employees during a conference call that lasted all of six minutes.

There's likely more where that came from, as the company is still operating dual headquarters in both the Pacific Northwest and Overland Park, Kansas. In most mergers like this, the acquiring company tries to keep things the same for about a year to keep folks calm before the hatchets are unveiled.

Of course, this is all something that consumer groups, antitrust experts, unions, and even Wall Street stock jocks predicted. Most of those folks predicted that, even though it would take time, the deal would eliminate anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 jobs. That's in addition to their complaints that the deal effectively reduced US wireless competition by 25% via 4-3 carrier consolidation, something that historically always, sooner or later, results in higher prices for consumers (see: Canada, Ireland, Germany).

Granted in his original blog post, Legere made fun of those critics and insisted they were simply making shit up:

"I guess if the real numbers don’t tell the story you want, you can just make up new ones? It’s actually offensive."

Yes, accurate predictions are so offensive. Granted John Legere, who successfully built T-Mobile from an also-ran into a major competitor (thanks in part to regulators blocking AT&T's 2011 merger with T-Mobile), was quick to leave the company shortly after the deal, offloading his Central Park West Penthouse to Giorgio Armani for $17.5 million (how many employee jobs is that?). And as Light Reading notes, T-Mobile's revenues continue to soar as it continues job cuts it promised wouldn't happen:

"In 2015, T-Mobile was making about $650,000 per employee. Last year, it generated almost $912,000. For workers at the company, that is not a source of comfort."

Granted this happens absolutely every time there's a major telecom merger. Companies throw out bullshit job growth claims, knowing full well such consolidation inevitably will result in massive job cuts a year or two later as redundant positions are eliminated. The press hypes the false merger "synergy" claims, then (usually) can't be bothered to follow up with reports highlighting how the promises were empty. It's a massive ouroboros of dysfunction, and no matter how many times we live through the exact same experience (AT&T's countless mergers, Verizon's countless mergers, Comcast's repeated mergers), America has a severe allergy to learning absolutely anything from experience.

Mindless consolidation and "growth for growth's sake" hurts employees, markets, and consumers. Full stop. Regulators could have forced Sprint to find another suitor, preferably one that didn't result in a loss of overall competitors (Dish, Comcast, Charter, Google, Amazon). Instead we signed off on another massive deal, based on a parade of false promises. Then, in two or three years when US wireless prices (already some of the highest in the developed world) are even higher, everybody will stand around with a dumb look on their faces wondering how exactly we got this point. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Filed Under: competition, hiring, jobs, john legere, lies, merger, mobile service
Companies: sprint, t-mobile

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

from the rose-colored-glasses dept

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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