Trump, Big Telecom Continue Quest To Ban States From Protecting Broadband Consumers

from the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too dept

As we've noted a few times, the Trump administration's repeal of net neutrality did a lot more than just kill net neutrality rules. It effectively neutered the FCC's ability to hold giant broadband providers accountable for much of anything, from attempting to charge customers a rental fee for hardware they own, to the litany of bogus fees ISPs use to falsely inflate their advertised rates. So when a select group of folks try to claim that "killing net neutrality must not have mattered because the internet still works," they're advertising their ignorance.

Another problematic aspect of the FCC's net neutrality repeal was that it also attempted to ban states from protecting consumers. The goal of the telecom sector, if you haven't noticed, is a complete and total oversight vacuum of one of the least competitive, and most disliked, business sectors in America. And it's fairly shocking how far along they've gotten in their quest without more people generally pointing out it's kind of a bad idea to let the Comcasts and AT&Ts of the world run amok sans regulator oversight or meaningful competition.

Unfortunately for the telecom sector, its quest to block states from filling the consumer protection void hasn't gone that well. The courts so far have generally ruled that the FCC can't abdicate its authority over consumer protection, then turn around and try to dictate what states can or can't do. That's not stopping the Trump administration or telecom giants, which have continued their lawsuits against states like California on a state by state basis. Last week, the DOJ and ISPs filed amended complaints in California in a bid to scuttle that state's net neutrality rules:

"California will likely point to other portions of the DC Circuit order, which found that the FCC's power to preempt is limited because the commission abandoned its Title II regulatory authority over broadband. "[I]n any area where the Commission lacks the authority to regulate, it equally lacks the power to preempt state law," judges wrote in that case. The FCC's "affirmative" sources of regulatory authority come from Title II, III, and VI of the Communications Act, judges wrote. But Pai's FCC chose to apply Title I to broadband, which contains no such authority."

ISPs (and the various policy wonks under their employ) like to whine that states pursuing their own consumer protections (be they privacy, net neutrality, or anything else) creates a "fractured landscape of discordant state laws." But that ignores the fact that this is a problem created by the telecom sector. It in effect wants to have its cake and eat it too, all the while ignoring the broad consensus of the public and experts that the agency's previous net neutrality rules were little more than a modest effort to keep telecom monopolies from abusing their monopoly power in the streaming video era.

Some FCC Commissioners, like Jessica Rosenworcel, weren't particularly impressed:

There remains a delusion among a certain subset of tech and telecom policy folks who believe that if you neuter regulatory oversight of an uncompetitive sector like broadband, magic and ponies somehow sprout from the sidewalk. But as U.S. telecom history has made pretty clear by now, when a company like AT&T or Comcast sees neither competition nor meaningful regulatory oversight, they simply double down on the same bad behavior. That means higher prices, worse customer service, patchy availability, and bad privacy and net neutrality practices (you know, like AT&T only excluding its own video services from usage caps).

In Comcast and AT&T's ideal world, nobody, anywhere would be able to do a damn thing as they protect their geographic monopolies from competition and accountability. And shockingly, there's still a small subset of folks (including the Trump administration) who seem to think that's a good idea.

Filed Under: broadband, california, competition, consumer protection, fcc, fees, net neutrality, state's rights