Verizon Forces Users On To More Expensive Broadband Plans Just To Get $50 Covid Subsidy

from the not-helping dept

As part of a recent COVID bill, the government recently announced that folks struggling economically during COVID would be getting some temporary help. Under the EBB (Emergency broadband Benefit program), U.S. consumers can nab a $50 discount off their broadband bill, or $75 if you live in tribal areas. The program ends when its $3.2 billion in federal funding expires, or six months after the government has declared an end to the pandemic.

It's a useful but temporary band aid, and doesn't really do much to address the regional monopolization and lack of competition that makes US broadband so perennially mediocre in the first place. Nor does it address the fact the Trump FCC gutted its own consumer protection authority because a bunch of telecom monopolies asked them to, using completely bogus justifications.

Under the program, the money is first given to your broadband provider, which is then in charge of ensuring you get the discount. But given these companies' track record of dodgy behavior, it obviously didn't take long for US telecoms to misbehave. Enter Verizon, which is using the program as an opportunity to upsell customers to more expensive plans. Users contacting Verizon to sign up were told the program didn't apply to their existing plans, and in order to get the discount they'd need to sign up for more expensive service. The Washington Post politely points out this is rather sleazy:

"Verizon elicited the most ire from readers. It requires customers to call a phone line to register for the EBB, rather than just signing up online. And when you do, Verizon told some customers the EBB can’t be used on “old” data plans, so they’d have to switch. That might be allowed by the letter of the law but certainly isn’t the spirit of the program."

Granted this is the same company that tried to upsell California firefighters to more costly plans when their data allotment ran out during an historic wildfire, so this shouldn't be too surprising. In short, knowing the subsidy was temporary, Verizon nudged users to more expensive plans so they'd see a revenue boost when the plan ended. U.S. regulators at the FCC didn't do a thing. Fortunately Verizon reversed course after the Post story began circulating online:

"On Wednesday, two days after I initially published this column, Verizon reversed course and said it would accept old plans. “We heard from some customers that they prefer to stay on the legacy plans they have,” it wrote in a blog post. “Moving forward, we will offer customers on legacy Fios plans (no longer in market today) the ability to enroll in EBB."

A few other companies have taken to using misleading websites to trick users into thinking they're enrolling in the government's official program (the real website for which is here).

Needless to say the press shouldn't always be the last line of defense against Americans getting ripped off, especially considering the increasingly tenuous financial situation the press finds itself in. You also wouldn't need a COVID discount program in the first place if the U.S. hadn't spent the last twenty years coddling regional monopolies, resulting in some of the most expensive prices in the developed world for broadband.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, covid, discounts, ebb, fcc, subsidy
Companies: verizon

Dish, Space X Battle At The Broadband Subsidy Trough

from the good-arguments,-dodgy-motivation dept

To be clear: Space X's Starlink low-orbit satellite broadband service won't revolutionize the broadband industry. The service lacks the capacity to service dense urban or suburban areas, meaning it won't pose much of a threat to traditional cable and fiber providers. With a $100 monthly price tag and $500 hardware fee, it's not exactly a miracle cure for the millions of low-income Americans struggling to afford a broadband connection, either.

That said: if you're currently one of the 42 million Americans who lacks access to any broadband at all, the service, capping out at 100 Mbps, is going to be damn-near miraculous (if you can afford it). It's also going to be a major competitive challenge to the companies that not only compete for rural broadband attention (like WISPs, cellular providers, and last-gen satellite providers), but are busy elbowing out one another at the trough to grab a slice of taxpayer subsidies. Understandably, many of these companies are trying to slow Starlink by any means necessary.

Last month, ViaSat urged the FCC to investigate Space X's very real impact on scientific research via light pollution (a genuine problem regulators have done bupkis about so far). Since the 80s, satellite systems have had a baked in exemption from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), excluding their businesses from environmental review. As Amazon and Space X fling tens of thousands of low orbit satellites into space, ViaSat is suggesting that exemption be reversed. ViaSat's motivations here are entirely selfish. But at the same time this is a real problem they're not wrong about.

Dish Network is also trying to slow down Starlink a bit more creatively by telling the FCC the company's broadband plans could cause interference in the 12.2-12.7 GHz band:

"Dish told the FCC that SpaceX's plan "would adversely affect reception at DBS consumer dishes and that the system as modified would exceed the applicable power limits under International Telecommunication Union and Commission rules. In other words, SpaceX would not be able [to] use the 12 GHz band to meet its RDOF obligations if such service interferes with DBS operations."

Earlier this year we noted how Space X was awarded $885.51 million over 10 years from the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction. The problem: like many companies, critics say Space X gamed the system by being misleading about where the company plans to offer service. As such, it's not really clear that we need to be throwing nearly a billion dollars at one of the planet's richest human beings to deploy service to an extra 642,925 locations they probably would have serviced anyway without taxpayer/ratepayer aid.

As the FCC begins digging more deeply into who actually deserves subsidization under its heavily criticized RDOF auction, Dish is trying to have Starlink's designation as an Eligible Telecommunications Carrier (ETC) under the Communications Act pulled, threatening its subsidies. Starlink's response to Dish's claims is to correctly note that Dish is largely motivated by its own best interests:

"Clearly, this challenge is part of DISH’s larger campaign to cash in on its spectrum speculation in the 12 GHz band by antagonizing non-geostationary orbit satellite operators already licensed to operate in that spectrum. The Commission should decisively reject across all of those proceedings these blatant efforts to misuse Commission resources."

You might recall that Dish is supposed to be building a new 5G network as part of a dodgy plan by the Trump administration affixed to the Sprint T-Mobile merger. The plan: to build a new network over 7 years to help counter the lost competition from losing Sprint. The reality: many still tend to think Dish will spend several years stringing regulators along, only to then cash out of their massive spectrum holdings sometime down the road, with no real network to show for it. So far, the latter path seems like the most likely outcome, in part because T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon really don't want the added competition.

So on one hand, you have a company in Starlink offering a promising technology, but gaming the broken FCC subsidy system to obtain ratepayer money they don't really deserve. On the other, you have a company in Dish that may or may not ever develop a major working commercial wireless network, eager to derail Starlink just in case it someday has to compete with it. Layer on top the fact that countless billions in subsidies never seem to fix US broadband woes because we generally do a terrible job mapping broadband coverage or tracking how those subsidies are spent, and you can start to see why US broadband (and policy) is a bit of a dysfunctional mess.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, subsidies, subsidy
Companies: dish, space x

Section 230 Isn't A Subsidy; It's A Rule Of Civil Procedure

from the make-section-230-boring-again dept

The other day Senator Schatz tweeted, "Ask every Senator what Section 230 is. Don’t ask them if they want to repeal it. Ask them to describe it."

Ask every Senator what Section 230 is. Don’t ask them if they want to repeal it. Ask them to describe it.

— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) December 28, 2020

It's a very fair point. Most of the political demands to repeal Section 230 betray a profound ignorance of what Section 230 does, why, or how. That disconnect between policy understanding and policy demands means that those demands to repeal the law will only create more problems while not actually solving any of the problems currently being complained about.

Unfortunately, however, Senator Schatz's next tweet revealed his own misunderstanding. [Update: per this tweet, it wasn't his misunderstanding his next tweet revealed but rather the misunderstanding of other Senators who have proposed other sorts of "reforms" he was taking issue with. Apologies to Senator Schatz for misstating.] "I have a bipartisan bill that proposes changes to 230, but repeal is absurd. The platforms are irresponsible, but we should not have a government panel handing out immunity like it's a hunting license. We must rein in big tech via 230 reform and antitrust law, not lazy stunts."

I have a bipartisan bill that proposes changes to 230, but repeal is absurd. The platforms are irresponsible, but we should not have a government panel handing out immunity like it’s a hunting license. We must rein in big tech via 230 reform and antitrust law, not lazy stunts.

— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) December 28, 2020

There's a lot to unpack in that tweet, including the bit about antitrust law, but commenting on that suggestion is for another post. The issue here is that no, Section 230 is nothing like the government "handing out immunity like a hunting license," and misstatements like that matter because they egg on "reform" efforts that will ruin rather than "reform" the statute, and in the process ruin plenty more that the Constitution – and our better policy judgment – requires us to protect.

The point of this post is to thus try to dispel all such misunderstandings that tend to regard Section 230's statutory protection as some sort of tangible prize the government hands out selectively, when in reality it is nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it reads like a rule of civil procedure that, like any rule of civil procedure, is applicable to any potential defendant that meets its broadly-articulated criteria.

For non-lawyers "rules of civil procedure" may sound arcane and technical, but the basic concept is simple. When people want to sue other people, these are the rules that govern how those lawsuits can proceed so that they can proceed fairly, for everyone. They speak to such things as who can sue whom, where someone can be sued, and, if a lawsuit is filed, whether and how it can go forward. They are the rules of the road for litigation, but they often serve as more than a general roadmap. In many cases they are the basis upon which courts may dispense with cases entirely. Lawsuits only sometimes end with rulings on the merits after both parties have fully presented their cases; just as often, if not more often, courts will evaluate whether the rules of civil procedure even allow a case to continue at all, and litigation frequently ends when courts decide that they don't.

Which is important because litigation is expensive, and the longer it goes on the more cost-prohibitive it becomes. And that's a huge problem, especially for defendants with good defenses, because even if those defenses should mean that they would eventually win the case, the crippling cost involved in staying in the litigation long enough for that defense to prevail might bankrupt them long before it ever could.

Such a result hardly seems fair, and we want our courts to be fair. They are supposed to be about administering justice, but there's nothing just about letting courts being used as tools to obliterate innocent defendants. One reason we have rules of civil procedure is to help lessen the danger that innocent defendants can be drained dry by unmeritorious litigation against them. And that is exactly what Section 230 is designed to do as well.

An important thing to remember is that most of what people complain about when they complain about Section 230 are things that the First Amendment allows to happen. The First Amendment is likely to insulate platforms from liability in their users' content, and it's also likely to insulate them from liability for their moderation decisions. Section 230 helps drive those points home explicitly for providers of "interactive computer services" (which, it should be noted, include far more than just "big tech" platforms; they also include much smaller and non-commercial ICS providers as well, and even individual people), but even if there were no Section 230 the First Amendment would still be there to do the job of protecting platforms in this way. At least in theory.

In practice, however, defendant platforms would first have to endure an onslaught of litigation and all its incumbent costs before the First Amendment could provide any useful benefit, which will likely be too little, too late for most if not all of them. The purpose of Section 230 is therefore to make sure those First Amendment rights can be real, and meaningful, and something that every sort of interactive computer service provider can be confident in exercising without having to fear being crushed by unconstitutional litigation if they do.

What people calling for any change to Section 230 need to realize is how these changes will do nothing but open the floodgates to this sort of crushing litigation against so much that the Constitution is otherwise supposed to protect. It is a flood that will inevitably chill platforms by effectively denying them the protection their First Amendment rights were supposed to afford, and in the process also chill all the expressive user activity they currently feel safe to enable. It is not an outcome that any policymaker should be so eager to tempt; rather, it is something to studiously avoid. And the first step to avoiding it is to understand how these proposed changes will do nothing but invite it.

Filed Under: brian schatz, civil procedure, section 230, subsidy

Bad Analogy: Comparing Social Media To Guns

from the no,-no,-no dept

We've been seeing all sorts of really dumb analogies lately as people try to complain about social media. During the recent Senate hearing about social media and content moderation, Senators from both parties compared social media to cigarette smoking, somehow ignoring the fact that in that analogy the "tobacco" is "1st Amendment protected speech." But Reuters decided to one up that and compare social media companies to gunmakers. And, if that sounds incredibly stupid as a concept, reading the actual article makes it worse. Much worse.

Guns and social networks have several things in common. Many people enjoy them responsibly, but in the wrong hands they’re dangerous. Yet both enjoy an unfair subsidy in the form of legal protections that shield them from the actions of their users. That can’t last forever.

I mean... what? The article argues that Section 230 is an "unfair subsidy" in the same way that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act is an "unfair subsidy" to gunmakers. But, in both cases, these laws aren't a subsidy. They're both laws that properly apply liability to those committing the crimes, and in doing so, creating rules that help protect key Constitutional rights.

Without these shields, both industries would change radically. Gun-rights supporters claim that without PLCAA, a sector with 47,000 workers would go bust. That’s probably hyperbole. But lawsuits and safety features would impose legal costs and make guns more expensive to produce. For social media, more active moderation would mean more employees. Users would have to get more used to the idea that their Facebook or Twitter posts aren’t free.

I don't know how changing the PLCAA would impact gun makers, but this article takes a huge fucking leap in assuming that removing 230 would "mean more employees" and "more active moderation." After all, pre-230, the courts seemed to be zeroing in on using traditional distributor liability concepts, which would mean that there was a knowledge standard to create liability. And thus, without 230, you'd be likely to see the opposite in many cases: fewer moderators, fewer employees, and less moderation. More lawyers, though.

Or you'd get the other extreme: a few specialized sites, with very, very heavy handed moderation, which would effectively be true gatekeepers for speech, and not the open arenas for discussion we see today.

Facebook and Twitter have an edge over gunsmiths. They know their legal impunity is threatened and are trying to get ahead of the problem. Dorsey and Zuckerberg have welcomed Section 230 changes. That’s sensible, because they can help reset the rules. Compared with gunmakers, they’ll then be better equipped to survive when their magical armor is taken away.

What? Dorsey and Zuckerberg support narrowly tailored reform (mainly around transparency reporting) in part because they know that they can handle the regulatory burden to deal with the increased liability. All the smaller companies and individual websites could not.

Bad analogies are not useful in understanding how free speech works online -- and comparing social media to gunmakers is particularly ridiculous. And, how does it compare to guns? In this analogy, with guns people get killed. In social media... people say dumb stuff? And that needs to somehow be regulated? Really?

It's really not that difficult to understand how Section 230 works, and the kinds of things that would happen if it were removed. You'd think that a media organization like Reuters would at least make sure the stories its publishing would understand basic concepts. After all, as a publisher, they're "liable" for whatever they publish.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 2nd amendment, free speech, guns, liability, plcaa, section 230, social media, subsidy

Foxconn's Wisconsin 'Factory' Is An Even Bigger Joke Than Everybody Thought

from the words-are-but-wind dept

We've been covering for a while how Paul Ryan's once-heralded Foxconn factory deal in Wisconsin quickly devolved into farce. The state originally promised Taiwan-based Foxconn a $3 billion state subsidy if the company invested $10 billion in a Wisconsin LCD panel plant that created 13,000 jobs. But as the subsidy grew the promised factory began to shrink further and further, to the point where nobody at this point is certain that anything meaningful is going to get built at all.

Last October, reports emerged clearly illustrating the ever-shrinking nature of the deal. They also highlighted how Foxconn was effectively just using nonsense to justify its failure to follow through, showing that while the company hadn't built much of anything meaningful in the state, it was still routinely promising to deploy a "AI 8K+5G ecosystem" in the state to somehow make everything better. Shockingly, that mish-mash of buzz words is effectively meaningless.

Fast forward to this week, and reporters who've been visiting the state to determine the progress of the project continue to find its even lamer than everybody had initially worried. One local politician effectively compares the scandal directly to the Fyre Festival, and the piece is littered with disappointment by locals who say the company is being aggressively secretive and often misleading. Even many of the "innovation hubs", which Foxconn promised would somehow be better than the ever-shrinking factory it originally proposed, are little more than empty buildings at this juncture:

I walked to the second building in Foxconn’s technology hub, down a street lined with lampposts mounted with speakers playing smooth jazz. At first, the six-story former bank seemed to be farther along. A yellow debris chute snaked out from a top window, and there were hardhats visible in the foyer in front of heavy circular vault doors. But there was also a sign in the window that said the building was for lease. I called the number and asked whether Foxconn was renovating the building, as it announced it would last summer. No, the person on the other end told me. The building never sold.

In short there have been endless promises but little to nothing of substance accomplished, all covered in a cloak of secrecy -- which isn't going over particularly well in Wisconsin. But for its part, Foxconn itself just keeps doubling down on meaningless jargon in the apparent hope that it will satisfy those concerned that taxpayer money may have been wasted on a glorified head fake:

Foxconn is building an AI 8K+5G ecosystem in Wisconsin because the positive impact we envision far surpasses that which can be achieved by building a factory or manufacturing site alone. We are creating Wisconn Valley, which will comprise an ecosystem, or a thriving community, of partner organizations that are intimately linked and interact with each other to develop technological solutions.

Again though, that's a combination of terms that sounds nifty, but is utterly meaningless (the only thing lacking is a fleeting reference to the blockchain). While Foxconn has convinced a few folks an "AI 8K+5G ecosystem" is a real thing, the general consensus of the piece is that the company bought numerous buildings to use effectively as props to justify its massive handout, but then failed to do anything of substance with the lion's share of them. Something will come from the massive subsidies being thrown in Foxconn's general direction, but whether it's more than glorified set dressing remains an open question.

Filed Under: boondoggle, factory, paul ryan, scott walker, subsidy, wisconsin
Companies: foxconn