duopolies – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Why Isn’t Taxpayer-Funded U.S. Broadband Mapping Data Owned By The Public?

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

We’ve noted for decades how, despite all the political lip service paid toward “bridging the digital divide,” the U.S. doesn’t truly know where broadband is or isn’t available. The FCC’s past broadband maps, which cost $350 million to develop, have long been accused of all but hallucinating competitors, making up available speeds, and excluding a key metric of competitiveness: price.

You only need to spend a few minutes plugging your address into the FCC’s old map to notice how the agency comically overstates broadband competition and available speeds. After being mandated by Congress in 2020 by the Broadband DATA Act, the FCC struck a new, $44 million contract with a company named Costquest to develop a new map.

While an improvement, the new map still has problems with over-stating coverage and available speeds (try it for yourself). And the FCC still refuses to collect and share pricing data, which industry opposes because it would only work to further highlight monopolization, consolidation, and muted competition.

But there’s another problem. As broadband industry consultant Doug Dawson notes, the public doesn’t even own the finalized broadband mapping data. Costquest does:

“…the FCC gave CostQuest the ability to own the rights to the mapping fabric, which is the database that shows the location of every home and business in the country that is a potential broadband customer. This is a big deal because it means that CostQuest, a private company, controls the portal for data needed by the public to understand who has or doesn’t have broadband.”

In addition to the 44.9milliontheFCCpaidCostquesttocreatethemaps,Costquestreceivedanother∗∗44.9 million the FCC paid Costquest to create the maps, Costquest received another 44.9milliontheFCCpaidCostquesttocreatethemaps,Costquestreceivedanother∗∗49.9 million from the NTIA to provide the databases and maps for the $42 billion broadband subsidy and grant program (included in the 2021 infrastructure bill). Third parties (like states trying to shore up access to affordable broadband) have to pay Costquest even more money to access the data.

So it’s all been incredibly profitable for Costquest. But taxpayers are closing in on paying nearly half a billion dollars for broadband maps that not only still aren’t fully accurate, but which they can’t transparently access and don’t own despite paying for.

That’s fairly insane any way you slice it, and as Dawson notes, it’s a detriment to the cash-strapped folks who could be helping expand access to affordable broadband (and helping fact-check the data):

“Our industry is full of data geeks who could work wonders if they had free access to the mapping fabric database. There are citizen broadband committees and retired folks in every community who are willing to sift through the mapping data to understand broadband trends and to identify locations where ISPs have exaggerated coverage claims. But citizens willing to do this research are not going to pay the fees to get access to the data – and shouldn’t have to.”

For decades, feckless and corrupt state and federal regulators turned a blind eye as regional telecom monopolies dominated the market and crushed all competition underfoot, resulting in spotty access, high prices, and terrible customer service. Usually under the pretense that “deregulation” (read: very little real consumer protection oversight) had resulted in immense innovation.

Not only did government not address (or often even acknowledge) that problem, they’re still proving somewhat incapable when it comes to transparently mapping its impact.

The $42 billion in subsidies flowing to many states to shore up access is a good thing, but its impact will most assuredly be corrupted by feckless bureaucrats who can’t stand up to industry giants, aren’t keen on the idea of data transparency, and will lack the courage necessary to ensure giant monopolies with a history of fraud (like Comcast and AT&T) don’t pocket most of the funds.

Filed Under: BEAD grants, broadband, broadband mapping, competition, duopolies, fcc, gigabit fiber, high speed internet, mapping, subsidies, telecom
Companies: costquest

New York Mayor Adams Prioritizes Crypto Hype Over Affordable Broadband

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Wed, Jun 8th 2022 06:21am - Karl Bode

During the crypto, NFT, and “web3” era there’s been no limit of hype regarding the (largely money making) potential of the ever-evolving internet. Less cared about during the metaverse hype era has been foundational but less sexy policy issues like anti-monopolization, or affordable and even broadband coverage.

That’s once again evident by the news that freshly elected New York City Mayor Eric Adams has “paused” the city’s major new affordable broadband plan. I wrote about the massive, long-researched plan in 2020 for Protocol, noting how it hoped to spend about $2.1 billion to ensure broad, competitive access to fiber and wireless networks, boosting competition, expanding access, and lowering consumer costs.

I’d been hearing for the last year that the plan was facing efforts to water it down thanks to the relentless lobbying of regional incumbents like Verizon, who weren’t keen on this whole “significantly more competition” thing. Monopolist lobbying absolutely played a role in scuttling this plan, leaving a bunch of eager competitors standing around with a dumb look on their faces:

“At a City Council technology committee hearing in mid-May, the city’s new Chief Technology Officer Matthew Fraser said the program is being re-evaluated.

And the next phase of the project — a $157 million effort that would build out public broadband infrastructure — is yet to launch. That’s despite the city drawing up contracts with internet service providers, according to officials at the Office of Technology and Innovation.

“Eleven service providers, many minority-owned, are ready and waiting to lay the necessary fiber optic cables for major broadband expansion,” said Danny Fuchs, managing partner at HR&A Advisors, which worked on the Internet Master Plan.

Despite being one of the wealthiest cities in America, New York suffers from all of the same problems as the rest of America when it comes to broadband. Namely, the market has been carved up and dominated by a handful of giant regional monopolists and duopolists, resulting in crap customer service, spotty availability, inconsistent speeds, and high prices.

Bipartisan federal, state, and local corruption ensures nothing really dramatically changes.

As a result, much like the broader country, NYC policymakers have taken to throwing subsidies, tax breaks, and endless regulatory favors at companies like Verizon in exchange for uniform broadband availability that somehow, mysteriously, never seems to arrive. The city sued Verizon in 2017, claiming it failed to live up to a cozy deal struck with the Bloomberg administration in 2008 that promised uniform fiber to all five boroughs by 2014. It’s now 2022, and huge availability and affordability gaps remain.

So New York City tried to do something new. Namely, a big investment in a centralized, fairly open fiber network that invited multiple competitors, something the planners hoped would expand access to 1.2 million additional households and save every New Yorker around $40 a month. The plan took years of collaborative planning to develop, and backers are pissed it’s being tossed in the trash:

Greta Byrum said the plan was “years in the making” and included exhaustive research on New Yorkers’ internet habits as well as detailed economic and technical calculations.

“A lot of careful thought and time and effort — and funding, frankly — has gone into the project,” she said. “I don’t know why we would go back to the drawing board before we try and do something designed with equity at its center.”

That this was scuttled by lobbyists and corruption is being obfuscated by a lot of blame-game finger pointing and pretense that the plan is only “on hold” or “being reconsidered.” The tell in this case is that city leaders are now parroting the telecom industry’s argument that you shouldn’t fund any broadband projects that are “duplicative.” As in, you shouldn’t fund any projects that would pose a competitive threat to existing, dominant providers:

At the May budget hearing, Fraser said the plan was “under review” to ensure it didn’t call for new broadband infrastructure in places where it was already present. He chalked the delay up to the “fractured nature” of the city’s technology agencies prior to the reorganization.

There’s an absolutely historic amount of money being thrown at broadband right now thanks to COVID home schooling anger, COVID relief, and the infrastructure bill. Failing to stop this momentum on the federal level, monopoly lobbyists are working overtime on the state and local level to ensure this unprecedented flood of new taxpayer money goes to them, and not competitors and new-market entrants.

They’re doing this by convincing policymakers that all new money should go exclusively toward their bottomless quest to deliver access to completely unserved locations. But our broadband maps dramatically overstate broadband availability due to… corruption. And most of our state and city systems to ensure monopolies are actually using this money to improve access are also broken due to… corruption.

Big ISPs like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast want this broken, profitable mess to continue in perpetuity. They want us to continue throwing money at their empty promises to finally finish a job they were already paid to finish a decade ago. They most assuredly don’t want any of the billions in new broadband funding going to things like open access fiber networks or widespread competition (a core focus of the NYC plan).

U.S. state and federal telecom policy is so broken that doing absolutely anything other than gutting regulatory oversight while throwing countless billions at coddled telecom monopolies is considered extreme and radical.

The dominant U.S. telecom policy paradigm involves literally doing everything regional monopolies want (approving mergers, gutting consumer protection laws, doling out tax cuts, slathering them with subsidies), then coughing loudly and walking away with a wave of your hand when some under-funded academic or research group points out (with decades of hard data) this approach isn’t working.

Adams is of course the same mayor who has gone to comical lengths to hype and support crypto, so it’s very on brand for 2022 for broadband affordability to be relegated to the backseat as an irrelevant afterthought under the din of crypto hype. After all, the “free market” will fix any remaining issues with U.S. broadband, despite the fact this hasn’t worked at any point during the last thirty years.

Having covered this sector for most of that time, I’d wager that New York City’s broadband plan re-emerges sometime in the next few years as a faint shadow of its former self. This new version will have been ghost written by Verizon lobbyists with an eye on giving Verizon millions in additional funds to complete fiber builds a decade overdue, with healthy competition a distant afterthought.

In the interim, cryptocurrency scams and web3 bluster will continue to take media and policymaker priority over foundational issues like broadband affordability and monopoly reform.

Filed Under: 5g, broadband, competition, digital divide, duopolies, eric adams, high speed internet, monopolies, new york city, regulatory capture