from the actually-helping-people dept
We’ve documented for decades how U.S. telecom is an uncompetitive mess dominated by politically powerful telecom monopolies that see no competition and effectively own Congress. As a result, the U.S. telecom and broadband market is an uncompetitive mess, with Americans still seeing higher prices, slower speeds, spottier access, and worse customer service than in many developed nations.
Generally, U.S. regulators are too captured to even acknowledge there’s a problem. When they do propose a solution, it either involves throwing money at the problem, or developing performative half-measures that don’t take aim at the real problem: monopoly power and the corruption that protects it.
With the Trump administration butchering whatever’s left of federal consumer protection and telecom oversight, states are taking a bigger role in telecom policy. That includes New York State, which, during peak COVID, passed a law mandating that big telecom companies provide low-income state residents with affordable broadband (25 Mbps broadband for $15 a month, or 200 Mbps for $25 a month).
That’s not a huge ask for regional telecom giants that routinely overbill for service.
Telecom giants didn’t much like that, though their legal efforts to kill the law fell short recently when the Supreme Court refused to hear their challenge. Now California is exploring its own, similar, law (AB353), which would require giant telecoms like Comcast and AT&T provide low-income state residents 100 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up broadband for $15 a month.
“Broadband affordability is not an urban versus rural issue, nor does it have to be a partisan issue. We all should agree that broadband is an essential service that must be affordable for all,” California Assemblymember Tasha Boerner said of the law.
The proposal comes after Republicans killed a federal FCC program that provided a $30 discount off the broadband bills of low-income Americans. The Republicans in question claimed they killed the popular program to save money, but a follow up study showed that the program more than paid for itself (by a factor of four) because it helped expand access to remote healthcare, employment, and education.
This is, to be clear, a nightmare if you’re a lumbering giant like AT&T and Comcast, which have carved out lucrative regional monopolies, then glommed onto the federal tit as unaccountable domestic surveillance buddies. They’ve long insisted that any oversight of their business practices is “radical extremism,” and I suspect their lobbyists are extremely hard at work trying to scuttle California’s plan.
But this is, again, a byproduct of these companies’ own making. They’ve worked relentlessly for decades to not only crush regional broadband competition, but to lobotomize federal government oversight. They’re finally on the cusp of achieving this generational victory thanks to Donald Trump, whose government believes that affordable, equitably-deployed fiber optic broadband is “woke.”
Now the only thing that stands between them and unchecked broadband price gouging and predation are a handful of states that occasionally try (with various degrees of success) to do the right thing. And the hundreds of local municipalities that are building their own (usually better, faster, and cheaper) community-owned fiber networks.
I think you’ll find this theme of localism becoming a steady constant drumbeat in the months and years to come. As the corrupt federal kakistocracy fails around us, state and local fights become exponentially more important and heated.
California, despite its well documented flaws on policy, has actually been doing a lot of interesting stuff on broadband. Like using billions in ARPA (COVID relief) bill funding to effectively build a massive new middle-mile fiber network, and fuel a whole bunch of new fiber broadband deployments to neighborhoods long neglected by shitty regional monopolies.
They’re actually targeting the real problem: consolidated monopoly power. That’s being layered with AB353, which just passed the state’s Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee by a vote of 7 to 2. Combined with a huge looming infusion of federal infrastructure bill broadband grants (assuming they don’t all get siphoned off by Elon Musk, AT&T, and Comcast), and there’s some actual potential for reform here, despite the insanity and ignorance going on at the federal level.
Filed Under: affordability, broadband, california, fiber, high speed internet, low-income, minority, monopoly, telecom
