broadband access – Techdirt (original) (raw)

The Telecom Industry Is Very Mad Because The FCC MIGHT Examine High Broadband Prices

from the to-the-fainting-couch dept

We’ve long noted how the FCC (regardless of party) largely ignores how muted competition and monopolization drives up prices for consumers. The agency often talks a good (if ambiguous) game about “bridging the digital divide,” but they don’t collect and share pricing data proving market failure, nor are they capable of admitting monopolies exist and are harmful in public-facing messaging.

As part of the Communications Act, the FCC is tasked with giving periodic reports on whether broadband is being delivered to all Americans on a “reasonable and timely basis.” If the answer is no, the regulator is theoretically supposed to, you know, actually do something about it.

Back in November, the agency issued a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) pondering whether they should more seriously analyze the cost of broadband when making those determinations (yes, duh). As per tradition, the FCC NOI is pretty vague about things, but does acknowledge the importance of affordability:

“To truly close the connectivity gap and ensure that all Americans have access to advanced telecommunications capability, broadband services must be affordable.”

Keep in mind this is just the FCC saying they’re thinking about taking a more consistent look at high broadband prices as part of their policy approach. It doesn’t mean they’ll actually do it, do it well, or punish any of the companies found to be monopolizing access and squashing competition to jack up market prices.

But even the faint possibility of the FCC looking at expensive U.S. broadband has been enough to send telecom lobbyists into a tizzy, with cable lobbying organizations arguing in filings that even asking the question is “inappropriate”:

“While the Commission has reiterated that it has no interest in any kind of rate regulation, the proposal to make a traditional deployment analysis contingent on whether the Commission determines that broadband pricing is sufficiently affordable suggests that rate regulation in some form is potentially on the table.”

The majority of Americans live under a monopoly or duopoly for broadband access protected by state and federal corruption. This muted competition consistently results in spotty coverage, high prices, slow speeds, and comically terrible customer service. And again, FCC officials can’t even openly admit there’s a monopoly/duopoly problem, much less field concrete solutions to the problem.

Keep in mind, between the Trump era and the first two years of Biden term (where the FCC lacked a voting majority due to the attacks on Gigi Sohn), the FCC was basically a cardboard cutout for six straight years. The telecom industry has grown fat and comfortable with the FCC performing regulatory theater where its functions are entirely decorative. A sort of regulatory simulacrum.

The fact that it’s 2023 and the FCC and NTIA have only fairly recently realized they should be considering affordability in broadband access policy genuinely speaks for itself.

And in the U.S., where Comcast, Verizon and AT&T dictate the lion’s share of all telecom policy, the idea of rate regulation is treated as the most extreme possibility imaginable. Having a regulator ponder things like affordable wholesale access or any sort of rate caps is genuinely treated the same way you’d treat a batshit, naked streaker in a public mall.

But the FCC is making it very clear they lack the political backbone to get anywhere near price regulation. The net neutrality restoration similarly makes it very clear that price regulation is off the table. But the simple act of even looking more closely at pricing data — so that the public has a clearer understanding of the impact of muted competition — is apparently a bridge too far for unchecked monopolists.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband access, broadband prices, fcc, prices

Facebook Backs Away From Broadband After Years Of Clumsy Global Controversy

from the growth-for-growth's-sake dept

Tue, Dec 13th 2022 09:30am - Karl Bode

Last month, Facebook/Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees as part of the company’s attempt to recover from sagging ad revenues, inflation, and Zuckerberg’s clumsy, poorly executed, and widely ridiculed pivot toward virtual and augmented reality.

Buried in that announcement was the fact that Facebook had also shut down “MetaConnectivity,” its decade-old attempt to shore up broadband access. The program, formerly and quite creatively known as FacebookConnectivity, had done some scattered but interesting work on things like solar-powered drones, fiber-laying robots, and low-Earth orbit satellites.

The project’s goal was always purportedly to expand Internet access, but implementation made it clear that Facebook was often more interested in cornering developing nation ad markets and exerting its power internationally, using connectivity as bridge and entry point for other lobbying efforts.

That was made particularly clear in India around 2015 or so, when the department’s “Free Basics” program attempted to provide low-income users in the global South with a free, highly restricted, Facebook-curated version of the Internet on wireless devices that at one point even banned encryption and only included Facebook-sanctioned content partners.

Activists, experts, and groups like Mozilla routinely tore the Free Basics initiative apart as an assault on the truly open Internet and a transparent gambit to exploit connectivity to expand Facebook power and ad dominance in developing nations. Mozilla put it this way in a blog post back in 2015:

“We understand the temptation to say ‘some content is better than no content,’ choosing a lesser degree of inclusion over openness and equality of opportunity. But it shouldn’t be a binary choice; technology and innovation can create a better way, even though these new models may take some time to develop. Furthermore, choosing limited inclusion today, even though it offers short-term benefits, poses significant risk to the emergence of an open, competitive platform that will ultimately stifle inclusion and economic development.”

Activists in countries like India eventually forced Facebook to retreat from the effort, though its underlying mechanics did a great job exposing Facebook’s altruism in the space as often half-hearted. Its rush into international communications connectivity also frequently exposed how the company prioritized international expansion over actually understanding the impact in countries they were “helping.”

That’s not to say that Meta/Facebook hasn’t done some good things on the telecom front. Its Telecom Infra Project, launched in 2016, was a semi-helpful engineering hub. Facebook also toyed with developing helicopters capable of delivering wireless broadband during emergencies. And it flirted with low-Earth-orbit satellites before much of the staff were gobbled up by Amazon.

Broadband ventures aren’t uncommon for tech giants. Microsoft, for example, has been a key proponent of creative uses of wireless spectrum to shore up access. Google runs its own residential ISP to effectively shame the nation’s telecom monopolies. Like Facebook, both companies simply know that more connectivity means more people using their products and viewing their ads.

But whereas Microsoft and Google’s efforts were frequently truly collaborative efforts to provide true Internet access, Facebook spent the lion’s share of its time trying to push a warped, Facebook-sanctioned alternative to access disguised as altruism. If you criticized the dumber aspects of the program you were labeled an enemy of the poor. That kind of hubris wasn’t received well planet wide.

Free Basics was less about connection and more about providing Facebook with lobbying access to governments as the company attempted to dominate ad markets worldwide. It’s unlikely Meta will want to give much of that access up, and much of this program will likely be re-integrated in other departments to help influence Zuck’s clunky vision of the metaverse down the road.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband access, digital divide, free basics, high speed internet, meta, metaverse, telecom, zero rating
Companies: facebook, meta

How To Fix Online Education In The Covid-19 Era

from the from-the-ground-up dept

It goes without saying that the current pandemic has altered our national broadband conversation. What it has not changed, as those of us who have been working in this space are painfully aware, is the reality which existed long before COVID-19. Nor has the virus undone any of the decisions made over the last few decades which have lead us here — a moment epitomized by a viral image of two girls attending classes from a Taco Bell parking lot.

What is particularly difficult to accept are the limited options which can provide immediate relief. There are some quick fixes, like the hotspot the school district provided for those two girls, but these stopgap measures are imperfect and, often, ineffective. Mobile hotspots have limited coverage areas, often come with data caps, can be unsustainably expensive and provide access at sub-broadband speeds. Rather than closing a divide, they shift and mask it while creating two different classes of internet user — yet hundreds of millions of dollars are being expended on them. In a moment like this, we must employ every tool we have; we must also not lose sight of what else is possible.

In Chattanooga, The Enterprise Center has been working to close this divide for some time. We have a program, Tech Goes Home, that provides devices, help in finding low-cost home access and digital skills training to those who need the assistance. We have supported more than 4,900 individuals and worked with over 100 partner organizations through the program, but we still have a lot of work to do. After years of research and hard work by local governments, anchor institutions, and nonprofits across the country, we have made progress, yet the digital divide persists.

It feels callous to point out the opportunity we have, with more than 216,000 Americans now dead of this disease — but the pandemic has shone a light on systemic inequities, and we cannot look away. For particularly those of us who have worked around digital access and inclusion, there is a (perverse) sense of hope that our neighbors may be able to face whatever comes next on more equal footing.

So what else can we do about it? Partners in Chattanooga and Hamilton County recently launched HCS EdConnect, an initiative to ensure every student will have the home access they need to succeed during the pandemic, and beyond; in addition, we’ve worked to expand access to public WiFi across the county. Below, we will tell you how this response became possible while offering both some local best-practices and policy recommendations which can have an impact on other such initiatives.

A New Chattanooga Story

HCS EdConnect, powered by EPB will provide home broadband access to every economically disadvantaged family in our school district — roughly 17,700 families or 28,500 students — for at least the next decade and at no cost to them. This access is fiber-backed, offering a minimum 100Mbps symmetrical connection; any family receiving financial assistance through programs like SNAP or the Federal School Lunch Program are eligible, as is any family with a child attending a CEP (Community Eligibility Provision) school.

HCS EdConnect represents a $15.3M commitment to the fundamental reality that the Internet is integral to a 21st century education, and that any equitable public education requires equitable access to the Internet. In utilizing municipal broadband to ensure not just access, but high-speed connectivity sufficient for students and their entire families, EdConnect is truly a first-of-its kind initiative — and our future depends on it being the first of many.

It has been a true community effort. Funding partners for HCS EdConnect include Hamilton County; the City of Chattanooga; BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Foundation, private donors, the Smart City Venture Fund, representing numerous local philanthropies, and CARES, funded under a grant project with the State of Tennessee. Numerous community organizations, public and private, have played vital roles in implementation.

Chattanooga has an advantage stemming from EPB’s investment in municipal fiber more than a decade ago, and it is worth noting that timeline because we want to be clear in saying that this project could not have taken place overnight. Getting started, however, happened almost that quickly. From our perspective, municipal fiber isn’t the only reason we were able to make this commitment, but investment in infrastructure, public, private or some partnership thereof must be part of any long-term solution.

What Made Our Response Possible?

Community Leadership: EdConnect could not have happened without the leadership of the partners at the core of this work: Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Bryan Johnson, EPB CEO David Wade, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke and Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger. From rapid deployment of public WiFi to this decade-long commitment to home access, our community leaders banded together to see this project through; this has not been the work of one organization, buoyed by others, but an all-in approach. Our community, cemented by a mid-size city, often tells the story of “working together works” — this is an instance of living that story.

Multi-stakeholder Partnership: Our multi-stakeholder collaborative has numerous advantages: There has been, from a high level, a commitment to not stopping when confronted by barriers, but going over, around or through them. Because each partner brings differing resources and capacities to the table, navigating challenges (and developing creative solutions) is that much easier. Trust in the community, we have learned again and again, is essential. For families who feel they have been let down by program after program, promise after promise, a relationship, like that with the teacher their child sees every day or a pastor from their church, offers an opportunity to build trust in something new.

Creativity in Funding: This multistakeholder approach extends to funding, as well: Funds for EdConnect and our expansion of public WiFi have come from the public sector (The City of Chattanooga, Hamilton County, Hamilton County Schools and EPB), the private sector (BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee), philanthropy (The Benwood Foundation, Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga, The Footprint Foundation, The Robert L. and Katherina Maclellan Foundation and the Lyndhurst Foundation) and individual donors, as well as through State CARES funding. There was no single source of support available for this initiative, but we treated that as an opportunity for community ownership rather than a reason to scale back.

A Commitment to All Meaning: All An ‘if you build it’ strategy rarely reaches everyone, and it’s impossible simply to make connectivity happen to a community: You’ve got to build with them. For an initiative truly focused on equity, we knew that it could only be as successful as connecting those hardest to reach. This ethos was at the heart of building the tracking system for eligible families, to ensure decisions could be informed by data (Were certain geographies or schools lagging in connection rate? Was a specific demographic not opting in or scheduling service?), as well as in adapting outreach and communication strategies.

A Multi-Pronged Approach: And, finally, knowing that no single solution could work for everyone, we invested in multiple strategies. This includes long-term investment in public WiFi, which offers emergency connectivity now and potential unanticipated benefits later, from neighborhood walkability to test-bed infrastructure, for environmental censors and the like. And, as we explore more sustainable solutions with local co-ops and other ISPs, it also includes mobile hotspots for those few hundred families who live outside of the footprint EPB is, per state policy, legally allowed to serve.

What Else Can Make a Difference?

Local Control: As noted above, EPB cannot provide service to all of Hamilton County; this has not stopped us from finding creative solutions, but not every community can draw on our breadth of providers. (Tennessee, for example, has expanded the authority of co-ops to offer internet service.) There are numerous, successful models for how public interests and private sector opportunities align around broadband, but restrictive preemption laws are a barrier to ensuring universal access.

Access to Funding: Infrastructure is expensive, but we are witnessing the devastating cost of failing to invest play out in real-time. Chattanooga was creative in response to the pandemic, but we had to be. As a city of fewer than 500,000 residents, despite an MSA of that size, Chattanooga did not have access to dedicated CARES funds, while larger municipalities like Nashville and San Antonio were able to draw on single funding streams to invest in connectivity solutions. Tennessee does fortunately have a state broadband office, and, working with state officials, our local delegation was able to secure more than $3 million in CARES funding to help bridge the digital divide for students locally — but not every state or community has these resources. Additional dedicated funding, for more than an emergency response and with a timeline beyond December 30th, is essential.

Modernizing E-Rate: Schools should be able to utilize E-Rate funding to provide or subsidize home access. The very existence of homework supposes that essential learning happens outside of the classroom. Schools, underfunded as they are, make incredibly difficult budget decisions every day; continuing to hamstring their ability to operate and equitably serve students with funding already available will have needless and devastating consequences.

Accurate Mapping: Finally, we need better mapping — not just of where service is available, but at what speeds and at what cost. Our current digital divide is not just a question of access, but of affordability. That we largely use FCC maps which only illustrate a partial story (and which overestimate coverage) to determine funding for deployment leads to families going unserved. In preparing both our public WiFi deployment and EdConnect outreach, we often relied on proxy data to inform decision making, like food insecurity mapping, from our United Way and 211; information from the school district on families who had not been in touch following the March closures; and modelling from Esri and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s GIS department.

Where We Go From Here

We firmly believe Chattanooga’s model is a replicable one, but we also know that the digital divide impacts more than K-12 students and their families. College students, the rising number of unemployed Americans, seniors and other medically vulnerable populations are just a few groups for whom affordable access to broadband is a dire necessity. COVID-19 has highlighted decades of systemic redlining, underinvestment and restrictive policy decisions, but it has also led to a newly shared understanding and experience of this digital divide. Closing it, though, is possible; we’re proving it.

Deb Socia is President and CEO of The Enterprise Center, a nonprofit that nurtures innovation in Chattanooga with the goal of connecting people to resources and building an inclusive community. Geoff Millener serves as senior program and operations officer for The Enterprise Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband access, chattanooga, covid, devices, digital divide, education, tech goes home
Companies: the enterprise center

Wireless Carriers Once Again Fight Efforts At More Accurate Wireless Availability Maps

from the you-can't-fix-what-you-don't-understand dept

Fri, Aug 28th 2020 01:42pm - Karl Bode

If you live in a rural area, or have driven across the country anytime in the last five years, you probably already know the telecom industry’s wireless coverage maps are misleading — at best. In turn, the data they deliver to the FCC is also highly suspect. Regardless, this is the data being used when we shape policy and determine which areas get broadband subsidies, and, despite some notable progress in improving this data in recent years, it’s still a major problem. Last year, for example, the Trump FCC quietly buried a report showing how major wireless carriers routinely overstate wireless voice and data availability.

Facing massive political pressure from pissed off (and bipartisan) state lawmakers eager for a bigger slice of federal subsidies, the FCC has started taking the basic steps necessary to start to improve things. One of those improvements is a recent proposal (pdf) that would include requiring carriers actually drive around testing their network performance so they can provide more accurate, real-world data. This isn’t a huge ask. But T-Mobile and AT&T are fighting back against the proposal, claiming it’s “too expensive”:

“With respect to cost, AT&T estimates that to drive test just 25 percent of the square kilometers of its nationwide 4G LTE coverage would cost approximately 45millioneachyearandthatdrivetestingonly10percentofitscoveragewouldstillcostasmuchas45 million each year and that drive testing only 10 percent of its coverage would still cost as much as 45millioneachyearandthatdrivetestingonly10percentofitscoveragewouldstillcostasmuchas18 million/year. Requiring that all carriers conduct such nationwide drive tests, especially on a regular basis, is simply too costly especially at a time when investment in 5G deployment is a top national priority. The [FCC order] proposes to use a statistically valid sample where carriers would be expected to conduct a certain amount of drive tests “that is statistically appropriate for the area tested.” However, there is no indication of how an “area” would be defined, which makes it difficult to assess the feasibility of developing a sample.”

This is, you’re supposed to forget, the same AT&T that just received a $42 billion tax break from the Trump administration. This tax break was supposed to “fuel investment” and “create jobs”; instead AT&T has fired 41,000 employees since the 2017 tax cuts, and trimmed its overall 2020 CAPEX by around $3 billion. Killing net neutrality and other regulatory favors doled out billions more to these companies. Now, after four years of ceaseless taxpayer handouts, AT&T is claiming it’s “too expensive” to do basic drive-by confirmation of data reliability.

AT&T wants the FCC to rely on tower data because it’s easier and cheaper to collect. But regulators in both California (pdf) and Vermont have found that you can only really get accurate data from actual driving measurement programs. Small carriers have also noted that such drive tests are the only way to prove major carriers are lying about coverage. One guess on which side of the aisle the captured Ajit Pai FCC is going to come down on? Especially given it’s in Pai’s and the industry’s best interests to portray his “hands off, deregulatory agenda” (read: mindlessly pandering to the telecom industry’s biggest companies) as an incredible success?

The broadband industry has long lobbied against better broadband maps, knowing that better data will only highlight the scope of the U.S.’ broadband competition and coverage problems. More recently, the industry attempted to lobby the FCC to exclude 5G from any wireless mapping improvements. Again, the motivation here is obvious. Were we to actually grasp the full failure of the telecom sector in terms of coverage, competition, and price… (especially during a health crisis that’s advertising broadband as an essential utility) somebody might just get the crazy idea to actually do something about it.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband access, data, fcc, maps, mobile access, rural
Companies: at&t, t-mobile

Nobody (Even His Industry BFFs) Likes Ajit Pai's Latest Attack On Low Income Broadband Programs

from the death-by-a-thousand-cuts dept

Wed, Mar 7th 2018 12:06pm - Karl Bode

So we’ve noted a few times how Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai enjoys wandering the country informing everyone he’s a massive champion of closing the digital divide. But those claims have been repeatedly and consistently undermined by Pai’s own actions, whether that involves rolling back net neutrality (a move that will make life harder and more expensive for countless consumers, non-profits, minority communities and startups alike), or his slow but steady dismantling of programs intended to make life a little bit easier for the poor.

One of Pai’s biggest targets has been the FCC’s Lifeline program. It’s an arguably modest program that was started by Reagan and expanded by Bush, and it long enjoyed bipartisan support until the post-truth era rolled into town. Lifeline doles out a measly $9.25 per month subsidy that low-income homes can use to help pay a tiny fraction of their wireless, phone, or broadband bills (enrolled participants have to chose one). The FCC under former FCC boss Tom Wheeler had voted to expand the service to cover broadband connections, something Pai (ever a champion to the poor) voted down.

Now Pai is back with a new proposal that would prevent anybody but the nation’s biggest carriers from helping provide service to the poor via the Lifeline program. According to Pai’s new proposal, only “facilities-based broadband” providers (companies that own and operate their own networks) could participate in the program, forcing millions of the nations’ poor off of existing MVNOs and other resellers, and forcing them onto the networks of incumbent wireless carriers.

If you’ve followed Pai’s ideological rhetoric, it’s pretty clear he sees government as a pesky impediment to the miracles of the broadband free market, which, in Pai’s head, will always do the right thing if left in an accountability vacuum. But if you’ve also followed the broadband industry, you’ll know it’s not a free market. It’s a mish-mash of regional monopolies that enjoy regulatory capture on the state and federal level, resulting in limited competition, high prices, and awful service. In telecom, history shows us that mindlessly gutting regulatory oversight instead of reforming it doesn’t magically fix this problem, it makes it worse.

Still, it’s clear that Pai believes that slowly dismantling the FCC as both an agent of altruism (empathy is painfully unfashionable) and oversight is the path to nirvana. And he’s justifying his latest efforts to scale back Lifeline by insisting that booting resellers off the program somehow will magically boost broadband deployment:

“[W]e believe Lifeline support will best promote access to advanced communications services if it is focused to encourage investment in broadband-capable networks…We believe this proposal would do more than the current reimbursement structure to encourage access to quality, affordable broadband service for low-income Americans. In particular, Lifeline support can serve to increase the ability to pay for services of low-income households. Such an increase can thereby improve the business case for deploying facilities to serve low-income households.”

Consumer advocates argue in their own filings with the FCC (pdf) that the effort is a pointless attempt to help drive additional revenue to incumbent carriers. And former FCC staffer Gigi Sohn recently noted in Wired how this is part of a broader effort that will make life more difficult for low-income Americans to actually get broadband:

“One of Pai?s first acts as chair was to chill competition and innovation in the Lifeline program. Pai reversed a decision made by former FCC chair Tom Wheeler that allowed nine new Lifeline providers into the program. In the process Pai got rid of new competitors who could drive down prices and improve services.

Now, Pai proposes to limit Lifeline even further. Eliminating a Wheeler-era designation that welcomed new broadband providers into the program, the FCC said in December, will ?better reflect the structure, operation, and goals of the Lifeline program.? But if the goal of the program is to ensure that low-income Americans have affordable access to broadband, reducing competition in the program will do the exact opposite.

The problem is only compounded by Pai’s failure to do anything about a lack of competition in general in the telecom market. And while incumbent ISPs (like Pai’s former employer Verizon) routinely applaud Pai’s efforts on these fronts, even they doubt the effectiveness of Pai’s proposal. For example Verizon was quick to point out in its own filing (pdf) that Pai’s plan wouldn’t do what he claims and would actually be harmful:

“The proposed exclusion of resellers from the Lifeline program would be highly disruptive to existing Lifeline beneficiaries and is at odds with the Commission’s goal of supporting affordable voice telephony and high-speed broadband for low-income households.”

Even all of the dollar per hollar think tankers, academics, and others the industry uses to parrot anti-consumer policies aren’t impressed by Pai’s proposal. US Telecom, a lobbying group spearheaded by AT&T, also panned Pai’s plan for Lifeline, saying it wouldn’t accomplish what Pai says it would (pdf):

“[T]he proposed elimination of resellers from the Lifeline program would not materially further the deployment of broadband infrastructure, because revenue from resellers already contributes to facilities-based carriers’ deployment of broadband facilities.”

Again, you’ve got industry and consumer advocates agreeing here that Pai is wrong and his plan will actually harm the poor.

But as his attack on net neutrality made pretty clear, Pai’s blinded by an ideological vision of the telecom market that may or may not be supported by actual reality. And whereas a good leader would listen to opposition to his plans and reconsider positions that run in contrast to the will of the public, the insight of experts, and the facts — Pai’s default tendency is almost always to double down on bad ideas. And it this case Pai’s bad idea is pretty clear: dismantling telecom programs that help the poor via death by a thousand cuts, no matter how counterproductive it is.

There’s still time for Pai to back off his plan, given the FCC isn’t expected to vote on the proposal until sometime after the public comment period ends on March 23. Still, when your definition of “helping the poor” includes ensuring cable boxes stay expensive and closed, allowing duopolies to abuse net neutrality and drive up service costs, protecting prison monopoly telcos that have price-gouged families for years, and preventing smaller ISPs from actually helping the poor you profess to love — you have to wonder what it looks like when Pai actively wants to harm something.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband access, digital divide, fcc, lifeline, poverty

Mozilla Study: Zero Rating Isn't The Miracle Broadband Duopolies And Facebook Pretend It Is

from the on-ramp-to-nowhere dept

Fri, Aug 11th 2017 11:59am - Karl Bode

For years now we’ve explored how large ISPs have (ab)used the lack of competition in the broadband market by imposing completely arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees. But in addition to these glorified price hikes, ISPs have also long taken to exempting their own content from usage caps, while penalizing competitors — allowing them to use this lack of broadband competition to tilt the content playing field in their favor. Incumbent ISPs have long tried to twist and distort this narrative, claiming that zero rating is the bits and bytes equivalent of a 1-800 data or free shipping.

Of course that’s simply not the case, and zero rating simply shifts costs around to the benefit of entrenched mono/duopolists. Since caps and overage fees are arbitrary implementations not tied to any sound, real-world economics, the consumer isn’t technically really saving anything (especially in the States, where we already pay more for data than most developed nations). And because content companies are often penalized while ISPs exempt themselves, this reduction in overall competition has very real negative cost impact on the end user.

This gross distortion of the market doesn’t just benefit ISPs. Overseas, companies like Facebook have partnered with mobile carriers to cook up their own, poorly-received zero rating efforts, providing an AOL-esque portal to the internet stocked with Facebook-chosen content. Facebook tried to convince folks in India that it wasn’t just trying to corner the international ad market, it was simply worried about the plight of the impoverished farmers.

When Facebook’s plan was being debated last year, Mozilla quite-correctly pointed out that if Facebook was so worried about the poor getting access to the internet, it could… you know… actually help fund connections to the actual internet. Mozilla’s now back with a new study that further deflates some of the common, bunk narratives surrounding zero rating, particularly the Facebook and ISP claim that zero rating is a wonderful “on ramp to the internet” that showers immeasurable benefits upon the backs of the poor.

More specifically, Mozilla and its international research partners found that zero rating isn’t really an on ramp to anywhere useful:

“In all countries surveyed ? excluding India where zero rating has been banned by the regulator ? focus groups revealed that users are not coming online through zero rated services. While more research is needed, if zero rating is not actually serving as an on-ramp to bring people online, the benefits seem low, while the resulting risk of these offerings creating an anti-competitive environment is extremely high.”

The study also gets to the real reason companies like Facebook are so breathlessly in love with zero rating — it tends to keep users focused on just a handful of websites (and obviously the advertising companies like Facebook want seen). It should probably go without saying that users who are stuck with only a limited window to the internet, aren’t getting the full benefits the internet has to offer. But one of Mozilla’s research partners (pdf) also noted that many users of these walled garden, zero rated services wind up conflating “Facebook” with “the internet,” which is one of Facebook’s primary goals:

“In discussing promotions and Internet-use more broadly, respondents focus on Facebook. Some respondents from rural focus groups use Facebook and the Internet interchangeably, as, for example Internet search for them means searching within Facebook…Our findings raise concern of Facebook?s influence within Myanmar, as these zerorated promotions may serve to perpetuate its dominance and undermine widespread understanding of the distinction between its services and the ?open Internet?.

Of course the decision to drive users to a handful of websites instead of the entire internet has a dramatic, negative impact on overall content competition. That’s why India banned Facebook from engaging in this behavior, hoping to encourage efforts that help bring the real internet to the poor, not bizarre walled gardens where Facebook, Google or your ISP has the final say when it comes to the content and services you’re seeing. Here in the States, where we’re facing both a gutting of net neutrality rules and a looming reduction in competition thanks to mindless merger mania, we’re about to get a crash course in how the “help” provided by zero rating is no real help at all.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband access, net neutrality, zero rating
Companies: facebook, mozilla

Mozilla: If Facebook Really Wants To Help Developing Nations, It Should Ignore Zero Rating And Fund Real Internet Access

from the get-the-hell-out-of-the-way dept

Fri, May 15th 2015 06:16am - Karl Bode

Facebook’s been taking a lot of heat lately for failing to understand (or pretending to fail to understand) how its Internet.org initiative spells trouble for net neutrality. As noted previously, Facebook’s vision has been to deploy a “free” walled-garden service like AOL to developing nations. Critics have been dropping out of Internet.org, stating they don’t like Facebook picking which companies get included in the walled garden. Things have gotten particularly heated in India, where neutrality advocates have made it very clear they think Facebook’s vision hurts the open Internet long term.

Zuckerberg’s response so far? You’re hurting the poor if you don’t like the way we’re doing things, because a walled garden is better than no Internet at all. Of course that’s a false choice: Facebook could offer subsidized access to the real Internet, it just wouldn’t get pole position in delivering ads to billions of new users in dozens of developing nations. It’s a mammoth advertising play dressed up as utterly-selfless altruism, with a dash of indignant at suggestions there’s a better way.

Mozilla recently decided to jump into the conversation with a series of blog posts offering a much more intelligent, nuanced take on the problem with zero rated apps. In one post, Mozilla notes how if you let Facebook create a new definition of the Internet today, you’re setting the stage for notable problems down the road:

“We understand the temptation to say ?some content is better than no content,? choosing a lesser degree of inclusion over openness and equality of opportunity. But it shouldn?t be a binary choice; technology and innovation can create a better way, even though these new models may take some time to develop. Furthermore, choosing limited inclusion today, even though it offers short-term benefits, poses significant risk to the emergence of an open, competitive platform that will ultimately stifle inclusion and economic development.”

That mirrors concerns by folks like Stanford Professor Susan Crawford, who have lambasted such models for “entrenching and amplifying existing inequalities and contributing to poverty of imagination.” Mozilla notes there’s plenty of ways to help fund Internet access to developing nations that doesn’t involve building walls and cherry picking program participants. For example the company has struck a partnership with Orange to provide $40 Firefox OS smartphones with 6 free months of voice, text, and up to 500 MB per month of data. Another effort offers a small allotment of free data for watching an ad.

In short, there are options that don’t turn the Internet into a glorified version of CompuServe. But rushing toward walled gardens again isn’t just about today, it’s about what these ideas mutate into over the longer haul. Mozilla Foundation Chair Mitchell Baker took this idea further in a second blog post:

“Selective zero-rating is unquestionably bad for the long term opportunities and inclusion for the people it is designed to serve. It pre-selects what?s available, directing people to where others want them to go. It is bad for economic inclusion. It is bad for the ability of new entrepreneurs to grow onto the global scale. It is bad for the long term health of the Internet. Zero-rating as practiced today is ?selective zero-rating for a few apps and websites; exclusion for the rest of the Internet.”

The correct answer is that all data is transmitted at the same price, whether that price is “zero” or anything else. This way, consumers pick the content they choose to access based on the quality of that content, not the financial power and business partnerships of the provider. This way, new entrepreneurs can still reach any and all users on the Internet, even if they are a few people working in a co-working space with no ability to subsidize data charges.”

In other words, if Facebook really wants to help the poor, it can do so by using Internet.org to fund access to the “real Internet,” not some bastardized version of the Internet that lets Facebook and select ISP partners play god. The conversation in India mirrors the conversation we’ve been having about systems like AT&T’s Sponsored Data here in the States; opposition to zero rating is simply about getting massive gatekeepers out of the way and ensuring equal access to the purest version of the ‘Net possible.

Filed Under: broadband access, developing nations, internet access, net neutrality, zero rating
Companies: facebook, mozilla

EFF Changes Position On Net Neutrality: Recognizes FCC Must Act, But Narrowly

from the makes-sense dept

For years, the EFF has pushed back against the FCC’s attempts to preserve net neutrality, reasonably worrying that it might open the door to the FCC further meddling in the internet where it had no real mandate. We here at Techdirt have been similarly concerned. As we’ve noted, net neutrality itself is important, but we were wary of FCC attempts to regulate it creating serious unintended consequences. However, over the past few years, the growth in power of the key broadband internet access providers, and their ability to degrade the internet for profit, has made it quite clear that other options aren’t working.

Thus, the EFF has — quite significantly — announced that it has changed its position on the FCC’s role in net neutrality, starting with Title II reclassification, combined with a strong forbearance, which effectively blocks the FCC from claiming too much power to regulate other aspects of the internet:

We want to be very, very clear: the FCC?s regulatory role should be narrow and firmly bounded. Network neutrality rules should be limited to specific prohibitions?such as blocking, discrimination among applications and prohibiting special access fees?potentially combined with a renewed ?open access? requirement that would foster local competition, and no more.

Luckily, the FCC has a way to bind itself and thereby limit its own regulatory reach. It?s called ?forbearance.? While forbearance doesn?t set the limits on the regulatory agency in stone as Congress could, it does require the FCC to make a public commitment that is difficult to reverse. If it ever wants to change course, it has to engage in a contentious and tedious public process of notice and comment. We?ll have more to say about these very basic regulations in our comments on the FCC?s proposed rules, which we will also unpack in upcoming posts.

To get to a place where it can actually enforce neutrality rules and do nothing further, however, the FCC first needs to do one important thing: reverse its 2002 decision to treat broadband as an ?information service? rather than a ?telecommunications service.? This is what?s known as Title II reclassification.

Part of the problem with the net neutrality fight is that there’s a lot of nuance and technicalities involved. Many — especially in the telco world — point to the fact that Title II reclassification would grant the FCC much greater ability to regulate all parts of the internet, but they ignore the fact that basically everyone pushing for reclassification is doing so with the forbearance process in mind. And, yes, the whole forbearance process opens up a whole new avenue for potential game playing and abuse, but as the EFF is recognizing, this seems like the only real near-term solution to the current situation in which the big broadband companies are looking to hold the rest of the internet hostage.

It’s worth noting that this is, in no way, an “ideal” solution. There’s a tremendous amount of details and nuances involved in all of these decisions — almost none of which you’ll read about in the press (and, of course, good luck finding anything about net neutrality on TV news). The reality is that this is what we’re left with after a decade or more of failed broadband policy, which has brought us to the situation today where the broadband access providers have basically set themselves up as being able to set up toll booths to doublecharge, not because of any innovation or improved service on their part, but solely by nature of themselves getting so big that they can make life difficult for internet services.

There’s one other key point in the EFF’s “change of heart,” which is the response to anyone who claims Title II grants too much power to the FCC (leaving aside the question of forbearance). And that’s that under the appeals court ruling back in February, it was made clear that the FCC already has tremendously broad powers to regulate other aspects of the internet under Section 706. As some noted after that ruling came out, while many people were talking about how the court rejected net neutrality, they may have missed how much the court broadened the FCC’s powers under Section 706. The end result is that we should be equally worried about the FCC abusing 706, where its powers are dangerous and also ineffective at protecting net neutrality, while focusing on putting in place a better regime under Title II with a strong forbearance plan:

Some have said that reclassification would give the FCC too much power to regulate the Internet. That very concern is why forbearance is so important. Nor is it the case that the FCC has very limited power now?the D.C. Circuit affirmed that the FCC has broad powers to ?promote competition? which could be just as vulnerable to misuse by a future FCC as any regulatory authority granted via a ?common carrier? reclassification. More important than the potential breadth of power, however, is the fact that the powers that the FCC has now don?t match the real goal: protecting the neutral Internet we expect and need to flourish. Reclassification, combined as it must be with a commitment to forbear from imposing aspects of Title II that were originally drafted for 20th century telephone services and that don’t make sense for the Internet, can give the FCC the right tool for the job without giving it regulatory tools it doesn?t need and may dangerously misapply.

In other words, while there are dangers of giving the FCC too much power under Title II, those can be dealt with via forbearance, while at the same time actually allowing it to protect net neutrality. Under the current system, we have the worst of both worlds. Section 706 has now been interpreted such that the FCC has powers that are too broad in regulating a variety of aspects of the internet… but without the power to actually protect net neutrality!

Given that reality, it does seem that the best path forward has to be reclassification under Title II, with clear forbearance that limits the FCC’s powers under Title II to just the situations where it can prevent net neutrality abuses.

Filed Under: broadband access, competition, discrimination, fcc, forbearance, net neutrality, open internet, reclassification, title ii
Companies: at&t, comcast, eff, verizon

The Cost Of Not Being Online

from the and-it's-probably-rising dept

Most of the time when we see studies about the “cost” related to being online, it’s about how much it costs in various places to get connected. However, a study over in the UK is looking at the cost of not being online, noting that not having access to the internet can cost a family an average of £70 per month (about $100) in lost savings on household goods and services. So, while some families may complain about the cost of an internet connection, they may not realize how that cost can quickly be made up elsewhere in savings from being online — especially during an economic downturn like we’re experiencing now.

Filed Under: broadband access