landlords – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "landlords"

Two Decades Later And The FCC Is Still Trying To Crack Down On Anti-Competitive Deals Between Landlords And Broadband Monopolies

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

For decades, U.S. broadband providers have struck cozy deals with landlords effectively elbowing out competitors and allowing them to create building-by-building broadband monopolies. That stifled competition results in higher costs, slow speeds, and worse overall service. And while the FCC passed rules in 2007 trying to ban the practice, they were so full of loopholes as to be effectively useless.

Susan Crawford wrote pretty much the definitive story on this at Wired in 2016, noting that the original rules were so terrible, ISPs and landlords could easily tap dance around them by simply calling what they were doing… something else:

“…The Commission has been completely out-maneuvered by the incumbents. Sure, a landlord can’t enter into an exclusive agreement granting just one ISP the right to provide Internet access service to an MDU, but a landlord can refuse to sign agreements with anyone other than Big Company X, in exchange for payments labeled in any one of a zillion ways. Exclusivity by any other name still feels just as abusive.”

So after being nagged about this for fifteen years (!), the Biden FCC finally updated the rules in 2022. But the updated language still didn’t actually fix the problem, in part because the rule revisions only applied to cable and phone companies, not any of the numerous broadband-only fiber, fixed-wireless, or Wi-Fi ISPs that cut exclusivity deals directly with landlords to avoid having to compete.

Smaller ISPs in some states tell me that there are still state laws (like New York’s Public Service Law 228) that give bigger cable broadband providers an unfair advantage in accessing apartment complexes simply because they provide cable TV service.

And there are still loopholes in federal rules the broadband industry exploits to monopolize access, once again by simply calling exclusive access… something else. Such as the practice of “bulk billing,” or deals between landlords or development associations and (usually big) ISPs that force everybody to subscribe to access from a single provider (monopolization by another name).

Bulk billing usually involves your apartment building or development striking a (usually) exclusive deal with a broadband provider, often subsidized through your HOA or rental fees. It’s often presented as a way to save money, but it often doesn’t work out that way in practice. Broadband prices still rise, competition is muted, and escalating HOA fees usually offset any money that might be saved.

After a lot of consumer complaints, the FCC just announced plans to crack down on that as well:

“Everyone deserves to have a choice of broadband provider,” said FCC Chairwoman Rosenworcel. “That is why it is not right when your building or apartment complex chooses that service for you, saddling you with unwanted costs, and preventing you from signing up for the plan and provider you really want”

Landlords, who can net some nice extra cash striking such deals with the likes of Comcast or Charter or AT&T, are already whining about the proposal despite it not even having been voted on yet.

While there’s no doubt that big ISP lawyers are clever, they’re not that clever, and it raises the question as to why it has taken the FCC the better part of two decades to crack down on block by block monopolies that raise prices and mute competition.

And the answer, as usual, is that regulatory capture prevents the agency from being too pointed in its criticism of the culprits (you’ll notice that the dodgy ISPs are never specifically identified), or too aggressive in their oversight and enforcement, lest they upset politically influential telecom giants, or disrupt future commissioner employment opportunities.

Filed Under: broadband, building access, bulk billing, competition, fcc, landlords, monopoly

England Makes Gigabit Broadband A Requirement For All New Home Builds

from the if-you-build-it-they-will-come dept

Thu, Jan 12th 2023 05:29am - Karl Bode

England has taken a big step toward crushing the digital divide with new rules requiring that all new home builds must include gigabit (1000 Megabits per second, Mbps) broadband. Estimates suggest that around 12 percent of the 171,190 new homes constructed in England last year didn’t have gigabit broadband capabilities upon completion.

Amendments to Building Regulations 2010 require that all new builds have gigabit-capable connections, though there is a construction cost cap of £2,000 per home. According to the government’s new guidance, if a gigabit line can’t be found within that price range, the next-fastest speed available has to suffice.

I’m not sure this will be quite as transformative as headlines suggest. Readying a home for gigabit broadband isn’t the same thing as actually delivering gigabit broadband. It can often cost users tens of thousands of dollars (sometimes hundreds of thousands) to get ISPs to expand “last mile” access to your home. Still, mandating that new homes are gigabit ready is useful.

The new laws also make it easier for ISPs to gain access to homes or apartments for broadband installs should landlords prove unresponsive:

Previously, tenants living in the UK’s estimated 480,000 blocks of flats and apartments (also known as multi-dwelling units, or MDUs) would usually have had to wait for a landlord’s permission to have a broadband operator enter their building to install a faster connection. These access rights are essential for the delivery of broadband upgrades as operators are unable to deploy their services without first obtaining permission, either from the landowner or a court, to install their equipment.

Like here in the States, there’s an awful lot of shenanigans where ISPs work in concert with landlords to block access to competitors. It’s taken the FCC here in the States decades and numerous rule revisions to even try and tackle that problem. But it remains very much a work in progress, as deep-pocketed telecom monopolies and their lawyers often tap dance around the requirements.

While many landlords are annoying and difficult, telecom giants often like to over-state landlords’ role in the overall lack of quality broadband deployments. That was evident in New York City, where Verizon flaked on a 2008 agreement to wire the whole city with fiber, then repeatedly tried to exclusively blame landlords for the company’s own (well in character) failure to follow through on the agreement.

There are other policies that are common sensical that we just don’t do because it would (gasp) make it easier to drive competition into monopoly markets. Such as “dig once” requirements that all new highway builds come with fiber-ready conduit already installed. This sort of policy is a no brainer, yet in the U.S. meaningful mandates on this front always seem stuck just around the next corner.

Filed Under: dig once, digital divide, fiber, gigabit, high speed internet, landlords, telecom policy, uk

Tired Of Federal Apathy, Oakland Moves To Ban Anticompetitive Broadband Landlord Deals

from the this-stuff-can-be-fixed-if-you-care-enough dept

Fri, Oct 29th 2021 06:29am - Karl Bode

We’ve noted for years how corruption and apathy have resulted in the U.S. broadband sector being heavily monopolized, resulting in 83 million Americans having the choice of just one ISP. Tens of millions more Americans only have the choice of their local cable company or an apathetic local phone company that hasn’t meaningfully upgraded their aging DSL lines in twenty years. On top of that problem is another problem: ISPs routinely bribe or bully apartment, condo, and other real estate owners into providing them cozy exclusivity arrangements that block broadband competition on a block by block level as well.

While the FCC tried to ban such landlord/monopoly ISP shenanigans back in 2006, the rules were poorly crafted. As a result, this stuff still routinely happens, it’s just called…something else (Susan Crawford wrote the definitive piece on this for Wired a few years back).

For example ISPs will still strike deals with landlords banning any other ISP from advertising in the building. Sometimes landlords will still block competitor access to buildings entirely. Or they’ll charge building access fees that unfairly penalize smaller competitors that may not be able to afford them. Or, because the rules prohibit ISPs from blocking access to an ISP’s in building wiring, they’ll just lease these building lines to the landlord, who’ll then block access to competitors on behalf of the monopoly ISP (because technically the landlord now owns them). It’s just noxious, weedy bullshit, and it’s been going on for decades.

While the FCC has recently made a little noise about revisiting the subject, any policymaking there could take years to sluggishly materialize. Like most broadband reform, feckless federal leadership has driven reform to take place at a faster cadence on the local level. In Oakland, for example, the city council just voted to effectively eliminate all landlord/ISP anticompetitive shenanigans to encourage broadband competition:

“Oakland residents shared the stories of their personal experience; a broad coalition of advocates, civil society organizations, and local internet service providers (ISPs) lifted their voices; and now the Oakland City Council has unanimously passed Oakland?s Communications Service Provider Choice Ordinance. The newly minted law frees Oakland renters from being constrained to their landlord’s preferred ISP by prohibiting owners of multiple occupancy buildings from interfering with an occupant’s ability to receive service from the communications provider of their choice.”

The ordinance closely mirrors a similar law passed in San Francisco aimed at ending anticompetitive ISP/landlord schemes. The ordinance kills all kinds of payola nonsense that occurs on this front. If a competitor needs to access the building because a tenant has ordered service, landlords can’t block it (within reason, you still couldn’t install your own giant tower on the rooftop).

Again it wasn’t particularly hard to craft such effective provisions if the willpower is there. But the political influence telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast have on state and federal lawmakers means such willpower is pretty hard to come by. It’s an example of how government regulation in telecom isn’t inherently evil (a telecom industry propped up bogeyman that has informed conventional wisdom for a generation), especially if it’s actively encouraging competition in a heavily monopolized sector where cronyism and corruption are commonplace.

Filed Under: apartments, broadband, california, competition, landlord deals, landlords, oakland

ISPs Already Fighting FCC Plan To End Anti-Competitive Landlord Broadband Deals

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

Tue, Sep 21st 2021 06:33am - Karl Bode

Earlier this month we noted how the FCC announced it would be taking a closer look at the dodgy deals big ISPs make with landlords to hamstring broadband competition. While the FCC passed rules in 2008 outlawing strict exclusivity agreements, big ISPs have, for years, tap-danced around the loose wording of the restrictions, often by simply calling what they’re doing… something else. ISPs also still do stuff like charging door fees just to access the building (making it tougher on less wealthy, small ISPs), or striking deals that ban any competitors from even advertising in the building.

Obviously the broadband industry loves these sorts of deals, as they effectively give them a building-by-building monopoly over broadband access. As such they’re already trying to apply pressure on the FCC while claiming such arrangements are secretly a really good thing:

“Comcast, Charter, Cox, and NCTA?The Internet & Television Association (the cable industry’s primary lobbying group) met with FCC staff to discuss the topic on September 2, according to an ex parte filing submitted last week by NCTA. During the meeting, NCTA “described the benefits of continuing to allow providers to enter into exclusive wiring agreements with MTE owners. Exclusive wiring agreements do not deny new entrants access to MTEs. Rather, exclusive wiring agreements are pro-competitive and help ensure that state-of-the-art wiring will be deployed in MTEs to the benefit of consumers,” the filing said.”

Granted this is the same industry that has a severe allergy to acknowledging that the U.S. broadband market has any flaws whatsoever, so of course Comcast’s policy and lobbying arm thinks anti-competitive building deals are covertly a great thing. While the FCC’s original rules tried to open up competitor access to in-building ISP wiring (often the property of a cable giant like Comcast), ISPs simply tap-danced around the restrictions by deeding ownership of those wires to a landlord in exchange for exclusive access to the wires. Because they’re no longer technically owned by the ISP, exclusivity deals no longer violate the FCC rules.

It’s all a very stupid affair, and highlights not only the lengths ISPs are willing to go to to hamstring competition, but the perpetual failure of U.S. telecom regulators to maintain baseline levels of competency. Not only were the original rules terribly written and constructed, ISPs have been exploiting that initial failure for more than a decade with absolutely no meaningful penalty. And while FCC does occasionally admit there’s a problem here, the net result is usually little more than a few meetings.

This time the FCC is opening up the public commenting system for input from the public and ISPs that are harmed by these practices. But again, there’s no guarantee the process actually survives ISP lobbying and ends with meaningful improvements to the rules. And because the Biden camp still hasn’t appointed a permanent boss, the agency still lacks the voting majority necessary to implement actual reform anytime soon anyway.

Filed Under: apartment buildings, broadband, competition, fcc, isps, landlords
Companies: charter, comcast, cox, ncta

FCC Will Take A Closer Look At ISP/Landlord Broadband Monopolies

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

Wed, Sep 15th 2021 06:20am - Karl Bode

One of the tricks dominant broadband providers use to limit competition is exclusive broadband arrangements with landlords. Often an ISP will strike an exclusive deal with the owner of a building, apartment complex, or development that effectively locks in a block by block monopoly. And while the FCC passed rules in 2007 to purportedly stop this from happening, they contained too many loopholes to be of use. Susan Crawford wrote an excellent story at Wired about this a few years back, noting that the rules are so terrible ISPs and landlords can tap dance around them by simply calling what they’re doing… something else:

“…The Commission has been completely out-maneuvered by the incumbents. Sure, a landlord can?t enter into an exclusive agreement granting just one ISP the right to provide Internet access service to an MDU, but a landlord can refuse to sign agreements with anyone other than Big Company X, in exchange for payments labeled in any one of a zillion ways. Exclusivity by any other name still feels just as abusive.”

She was also quick to note that while the FCC rules technically prohibited exclusive building broadband deals (which they again failed to actually do), ISPs also took to striking deals with landlords banning any other ISP from being able to advertise in the building:

“Here?s another colorful workaround exploited by the incumbents. Even though exclusive agreements are a no-no, marketing exclusivity is apparently permitted. So AT&T and Comcast and others will sign deals with buildings that require that only their flyers are displayed in the leasing office. No one else is allowed to distribute any competing material ? and no events (think wine and cheese party for tenants) can be held by any competing provider on the premises.”

I bring it up because Axios, this week, reported that the FCC would finally be taking another serious look at this problem. More specifically, they’ll be seeking public comment from consumers and landlords about the impact this problem has on them, as part of the Biden camp’s broader bid to tackle monopolization. Of course “looking into” the problem and fielding comments is not synonymous with actually fixing the problem, which has been going on for decades thanks to bipartisan regulatory apathy.

This is where Biden’s failure to appoint a permanent FCC boss and third Democratic Commissioner enters the picture. Without a voting majority the agency can’t pass any reform that’s even remotely controversial, and the telecom industry will lobby hard to, as usual, keep this broken status quo intact. Interim boss Jessica Rosenworcel’s term ends at the end of this year, and if the Biden foot dragging on this front continues, the FCC could see a 2-1 GOP majority in the new year. And guys like Commissioner Brendan Carr pretty rarely can be bothered to stand up to dominant broadband monopolies on any substance of note.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fcc, landlords, monopolies

FCC Takes A Break From Not Caring About Consumers To Hassle Some Landlords Over Pirate Radio

from the odd-priorities dept

Mon, Jan 4th 2021 06:32am - Karl Bode

It’s been pretty clear for a while now that the Trump/Ajit Pai FCC simply doesn’t give a shit about consumer protection, healthy markets, high prices, or competition. It’s why they’ve effectively dismantled the FCC’s authority and ceded US telecom policy-making to AT&T and Comcast lobbyists. All in the repeatedly disproven belief that gutting oversight of a bunch of politically powerful natural monopolies somehow results in free market magic. Of course the end result of thirty-years of this kind of policy thinking is Comcast, which pretty much speaks for itself.

Instead of doing one of its core jobs of protecting markets and consumers, the Pai FCC has spent an inordinate amount of time hyperventilating over pirate radio broadcasts. Every few months or so the FCC will crow about how it has cracked down on some piddly pirate radio broadcaster that (usually) is causing minimal harm (and can’t pay the resulting fine anyway). Often, some of these broadcasts are catered to very narrow and underserved minority communities, and taking them offline isn’t worth the time and enforcement cost unless it’s causing significant, major harm to a legit regional broadcaster or public safety.

But recently the FCC took things to the next level, by using recently expanded authority under the PIRATE Act to target property owners and landlords who host those engaging in pirate radio broadcasts:

“The bureau issued an announcement that it is exercising the FCC?s new authority under the recently enacted PIRATE Act, which gave the commission a significant new hammer in its anti-pirate toolkit: ?Parties that knowingly facilitate illegal broadcasting on their property are liable for fines of up to $2 million,? it stated.

Enforcement Bureau Chief Rosemary Harold said, ?It is unacceptable ? and plainly illegal under the new law ? for landlords and property managers to simply opt to ignore pirate radio operations. Once they are aware of these unauthorized broadcasts, they must take steps to stop it from continuing in their buildings or at other sites they own or control.”

There is, of course, a whole slew of secondary liability issues that crop up from the FCC cracking down hard on landlords that not only may not really understand they’re hosting a pirate radio broadcast, especially given the “real” threat these often tiny pirate broadcasts pose. Some of the fines are upwards of $2 million; and landlords could wind up paying significantly more in penalties than the actual pirate broadcasters, who usually can’t afford to pay the fines anyway. That’s assuming FCC lawyers can show the landlord “knowingly tolerated” the broadcasts, which seems like a bit of an uphill climb.

It’s also a bit odd to see the FCC aggressively flex here, given its complete and total apathy to its broader mission: protecting consumers, small competitors, and the market from giant regional monopolies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon. Yes, pirate radio broadcasts can certainly cause harm, especially if they’re interfering with public safety broadcasts. But the scale of the actual harm is usually a far cry from the harm caused by letting natural telecom monopolies with thirty years of anticompetitive behavior under their belts literally dictate state and federal internet and telecom policy. It’s odd to fixate on the smaller problem of pirate radio while being utterly apathetic to stuff like… rampant broadband monopolization.

Yes, these pirate broadcasters are breaking the law. Yes, they should just shift to streaming and avoid the legal hassle, risk, and potential harm they can cause. Yes, the FCC should investigate and punish pirate broadcasters when they’re causing clear, significant, provable harm. But recall, this is also an FCC that’s been totally apathetic to the way unchecked media consolidation has been harming marginalized minority voices for decades, so turning around and over-reacting to what are often creative (albeit illegal and potentially unwise) alternative solutions to navigate the US media landscape shows a lack of foresight and broader thinking.

Such high profile actions do, however, generate headlines that imply the Trump FCC hasn’t been utterly negligent when it comes to doing its broader job of protecting the public at large because a bunch of giant monopolies told them to.

Filed Under: ajit pai, fcc, harm, landlords, pirate radio, secondary liability

Audit Reveals Verizon Tried To Corner NYC Broadband Market By Striking Exclusive Landlord Deals

from the you-knew-I-was-a-snake-when-you-picked-me-up dept

Wed, Jul 1st 2015 10:38am - Karl Bode

As we recently noted, New York City only just woke up to the fact that the lucrative 2008 Verizon franchise deal the city thought would bring fiber broadband to 100% of all five boroughs, has only resulted in Verizon cherry picking about half of the city’s residents. Of course as we pointed out, if the city had actually bothered to read the closed-door agreement struck with former Mayor Mike Bloomberg (or listened to a few local reporters at the time), leaders could have noticed at any time that it contains oodles of loopholes allowing Verizon to wiggle over, under and around most of the obligations contained therein.

While most people know by now that taking subsidies and tax breaks for fiber that never gets delivered is Verizon’s MO in Pennsylvania and New Jersey (ok, well everywhere), the city only just appears to be realizing the scope of Verizon’s shenanigans. In addition to discovering that Verizon failed its build out obligations, analysis of the NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications’ audit (pdf) indicates that Verizon also tried to cajole landlords into exclusivity deals that may violate FCC rules:

“[T]wo of the interviewees? statements supported the first property manager?s statement that Verizon was not completing NSIs because they wanted exclusive agreements for certain buildings before completion of the NSI,” according to the audit report. “For example, one property manager from a well-known firm complained that Verizon would not complete the NSI at a building on Sutton Place unless 100 percent of the apartment dwellers committed to Verizon FiOS. This property manager also said only two of the eleven multiple dwelling properties he managed had Verizon FiOS and that installations took anywhere from six months to two years.”

So yeah, in addition to pretending that homes “passed” with fiber were “served,” Verizon actually refused to wire a lot of properties unless everybody in the building could be forced to only exclusively use Verizon services. This is something the FCC banned in a 2007 order (pdf) that’s subsequently been held up during court challenges by cable providers. Verizon has long denied that it does this; in fact the telco has consistently tried to claim that landlords are solely to blame for the company’s uneven deployment. This go-round, Verizon is blaming the city’s findings on “miscommunication” (when it hasn’t tried to dismiss the findings entirely as the unsubstantiated rabble rousing of labor unions).

But that’s not all. In the week after the city’s audit was made public, a number of competitors have come forward to complain that Verizon’s been blocking access to key city infrastructure as well. In other words, Verizon’s refusing to serve millions of people, but making it impossible for anyone else to do so either. If you’ve followed the municipal broadband debate, that’s effectively the same logic the mega-ISPs have displayed on a national level, and this kind of behavior by incumbent ISPs (especially if you watched the ILEC/CLEC wars of the late 90s and early aughts) is a major contributor to the nation’s utterly mediocre rankings in most broadband metrics.

Having watched telco lawyers get away with this stuff for the better part of fifteen years, it’s clear to me few municipal leaders are actually reading the franchise agreements that they sign, and fewer still seem familiar with the laundry list of childhood fables warning them about just these kinds of business transactions.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, exclusive deals, landlords, nyc
Companies: verizon

NY's Attorney General Demands All Data On NYC AirBNB Rentals

from the chilling-effects dept

What is it with states attorneys general and their attacks on innovation? The latest news is that NY’s AG, Eric Schneiderman, is demanding data from AirBnB on all 15,000 users in NYC who have rented out their place. This comes after a ruling back in May saying that an apartment owner renting out his place was guilty of running an illegal hotel (that was just overturned). Of course, the very day that original ruling happened, I’d been trying to rent a place in NYC on AirBnB — and I even had a guy who had agreed to rent me the place pull back, saying that because of the legal issues he was removing his apartment from the site. I’m about to go to NYC again, and have another AirBnB place lined up — but am now nervous that this one, too, will disappear.

The NY AG’s office claims that they’re only going after a small number of “bad” AirBnB users, mainly “landlords doing long-term illegal rentals,” but if that’s the case, why does it need information on 15,000 users. If anything, that’s going to create massive chilling effects. Services like AirBnB provide tremendous amount of value on both sides of the equation — homeowners are able to make extra cash (sometimes significant amounts) while travelers are able to rent out nice places at lower rates than hotels. It’s a good deal that’s pretty efficient across the board. The NY AG’s office claims that this leaves out neighbors who may be impacted, but it seems like there are much better ways to deal with neighbor problems than having to go trolling through all of AirBnB’s records.

Filed Under: attorney general, eric schneiderman, landlords, ny, nyc, rentals
Companies: airbnb

from the loopholes dept

For many years, cable/telco/satellite companies would do “exclusive” deals with apartment buildings and other developers, which would limit what services could be offered in those buildings. Back in 2007, the FCC stepped in to say such deals were illegal. But, of course, there are always loopholes. Broadband Reports highlights how a bunch of buildings are using loopholes like telling you can chose any cable company you like… but if you choose a different one they have to pay an extra $40 for water and trash. And… the FCC says these kinds of deals are legal, for now, though it may move against them soon. But, in the meantime, your landlord can effectively force you to choose a cable/telco/broadband provider.

Filed Under: cable, exclusive deals, landlords, telco