redlining – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "redlining"

If You Like Being Ripped Off By Comcast, You’ll LOVE Trump’s Likely New FCC Boss

from the get-ready-for-pain dept

Current FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has spent much of the last decade positioning himself to be Trump’s likely pick for the next boss of the FCC. He’s likely to get his wish; after spending a lot of time crying about TikTok to get on cable TV and kissing AT&T’s and Comcast’s asses, Carr’s widely considered the frontrunner to head the country’s top telecom and media regulator.

If you’ve tracked Carr’s policies, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that one of his top goals will be to dismantle the FCC’s already shaky consumer protection efforts.

That means the death of net neutrality, the end of the agency’s inquiry into shitty broadband usage caps, the end of broadband consumer privacy, the end of the FCC’s efforts to stop broadband “redlining” (read: racism in fiber deployment), the end of any good faith efforts to help the poor afford broadband, and an end to efforts to stop Comcast from ripping you off with shitty fees.

Carr’s policies are basically AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast’s policies, dressed up as original thought.

Carr is one of these guys who thinks that if you let giant, unpopular telecom behemoths do whatever they want; miracles and innovation start magically sprouting from the sidewalk. You’ve seen repeatedly how that turns out for the public (be they Republican or Democrat): higher prices, slower speeds, shitty customer service, and a variety of annoying problems like privacy abuses.

As a telecom beat reporter of 25 years now, I can say with absolute certainty that anybody claiming Carr has the slightest interest in a competitive broadband market and consumer welfare is lying to you. I’m writing this down now so that nobody acts surprised when this stuff comes to pass.

Consumer Protection Is Now Basically Illegal

Given the Trump Supreme Court and 5th Circuit have already primed the pump on letting companies basically declare all corporate oversight and consumer protection illegal (I’m really not exaggerating); I don’t suspect the initial assault on consumer rights will take up much of Carr’s time. He should have the agency’s consumer protection efforts fairly well lobotomized by next summer.

In telecom, I suspect no shortage of time will be spent rewarding Elon Musk with Starlink unearned subsidies where ever possible, even if taxpayer money is better spent on more reliable and affordable options not managed by a conspiratorial bigot.

I also expect Carr will follow through with his plan to impose a big new tax on tech services (read: you) to even further subsidize his friends at AT&T and Comcast (you can read more about that here). I also suspect Carr will find creative ways to undermine the exploding and hugely popular community broadband movement, and he’ll certainly rubber stamp shitty mergers (like the Verizon Frontier deal) resulting in more telecom consolidation and higher prices and worse service for everyone.

It’s after that where things should get truly interesting in terms of FCC policy under Carr.

Carr you might recall wrote an entire chapter of Project 2025. There he makes it clear that he’s hoping to leverage whatever authority the FCC has left to harass tech and media companies that try to rein in Trump’s authoritarianism, whether that’s broadcast journalists critical of Trump, or tech companies doing the absolute bare minimum to stop racists and fascists from being hateful assholes on the internet.

Carr isn’t quite as unhinged as many “thought leaders” in the Trump delusion extended infotainment universe, so I’m not entirely sure he’ll go along with Trump’s lust for pulling the broadcast licenses of critical media outlets. But Carr has proven to be such a sniveling sycophant, it would be hard to guarantee he’ll show any real backbone here — which is worrying in and of itself. Indeed, a week ago he did say he supported pulling NBC’s license for putting Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live, even though NBC absolutely followed the “equal time” rule, giving Donald Trump free ad space the next day (and even as, in other contexts, Carr has been critical of rules like the “equal time” rule).

Again Carr’s primary, most immediate goal will be in doing whatever AT&T and Comcast want: namely turning the FCC into the consumer protection and policy equivalent of a decorative seasonal gourd. That means making it easier for giant, shitty telecom monopolies to rip you and your family off. Despite all the rhetoric about “Trump populism,” none of what Carr has planned is at all popular.

Keep in mind that despite all of Carr’s bootheel licking it’s entirely possible Trump’s team picks somebody even worse as head of the FCC. In which case, all bets are off.

The question for me then becomes (in telecom and elsewhere), will any of the folks who “voted for this” ever tether their coming pain (higher prices, worse service, more privacy and net neutrality violations) to their own choices? Or are Americans so saturated with propaganda, and U.S. journalism so profoundly broken, that the blame for the suffering to come is just endlessly shifted elsewhere.

Filed Under: brendan carr, broadband, consumer protection, donald trump, fcc, high speed internet, redlining, telecom, usage caps
Companies: at&t, comcast, spacex, starlink, verizon

The FCC Is Trying To Stop Discrimination In Broadband Deployment. Telecoms And Republicans Are Big Mad About It

from the gop-living-down-to-its-reputation dept

Fri, Nov 17th 2023 05:24am - Karl Bode

For decades, big ISPs like AT&T have refused to upgrade low income and poor communities to fiber, despite billions in subsidies, regulatory favors, and tax breaks that were supposed to accomplish precisely that. Groups like the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) have released studies on cities like Cleveland and Detroit, documenting how this discrimination lines up with 30s “redlining” efforts.

Section 60506 of the 2021 infrastructure bill dedicated $65 billion in new broadband subsidies. But it also tasked the FCC with creating rules that would prevent future broadband deployment discrimination. The FCC came in just under the wire for Congress’ November 15 deadline, finally unveiling its full rules yesterday.

I’ve spent much of the last few weeks talking to consumer groups, activists, and telecom policy experts about the rules.

The general consensus is that it’s a hugely welcome and long overdue improvement, even though the FCC stubbornly refuses to name and shame ISPs with long histories of clear discrimination (wouldn’t want to upset key domestic surveillance allies), the complaint process isn’t transparent, and many are worried that this FCC, with its sketchy track record on consumer protection, won’t consistently enforce them.

FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel had this to say about the new rules:

“These rules are strong. When you consider Congress explicitly directed us to “prevent” and “eliminate” digital discrimination of access, they had better be. But I would also argue that they are fair and reasonable.”

Again, these rules are a welcome and long overdue admission by the government that minority and low income Americans have been systematically discriminated against when it comes to broadband deployment, something that’s documentable and indisputably true, despite industry denials.

Late last year you’ll recall The Markup released a story showing that not only do big ISPs systematically discriminate in deployment, they charge low income and minority customers more money for slower service than less diverse, more affluent neighborhoods. It’s not really a debate.

One thing consumer groups are happy about: the rules govern both “disparate treatment” (spotty broadband deployment caused by active, provable discrimination) and “disparate impact” (spotty broadband deployment that falls along discriminatory lines regardless of intent). Telecom execs don’t often put discriminatory intent in emails to staff, so proving discriminatory intent isn’t always possible. Other agencies like the NTIA had advised the FCC adopt this broader approach.

“Strong rules are needed to identify and remedy unequal access to Internet service, no matter what the cause may be,” NTIA Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Alan Davidson wrote**.** “Rules that combat these inequities will bring lasting relief for vulnerable communities that historically have been left behind online.”

Giant incumbent telecom monopolies with decades of discrimination under their belt are unsurprisingly upset. Key trade groups have already threatened to sue over the rules, and seem particularly chaffed that the rules govern discrimination in broadband pricing. They insist the rules interfere with “the practical business choices and profit-related decisions that sustain a vibrant and dynamic free enterprise system.”

Here in reality, U.S. broadband is anything but a vibrant and dynamic free enterprise system. It’s a failed market, dominated by a handful of politically powerful regional mono/duopolies, who hoover up untold billions in taxpayer subsidies for networks they routinely fail to fully deploy. All protected by layers upon layers of state and federal corruption policymakers like to pretend doesn’t exist.

Enter the GOP, which was quick to hyperventilate about the rules at industry’s prompt. Senator Ted Cruz and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr were particularly incensed, and quickly got to work peppering the media with false claims that the rules were a dystopian Biden administration attempt to exert “government control over virtually all aspects of the Internet,” despite it being a congressional mandate.

Recall, Republicans largely voted against the infrastructure bill, despite the fact that they still take credit for the numerous broadband projects it’s funding among local constituents.

Again, I’m not particularly sure this FCC will consistently enforce the rules (assuming they survive industry legal challenge) or bring any meaningful penalties against big companies, since that’s never been the agency’s strong suit. And the FCC’s failure to name and shape specific ISPs or address very clear past discrimination is a bit feckless. Also, with FCC leadership shifting every election, it’s extremely unlikely that a Trump-run FCC would ever bother to enforce the rules.

At the same time, absolutely any effort to hold big telecom accountable for shitty behavior is treated by the GOP as if it’s some kind of dystopian hellscape of government overreach (though this is the same GOP that wants to abuse FCC authority to bully social media companies that moderate, however sloppily, the party’s race-baiting political propaganda).

Still, simply having the U.S. government overtly acknowledge a generation of discrimination in broadband deployment remains a big deal. It at least attempts to begin to rebalance the scales after generations of redlining and government apathy, something predatory regional monopolies and their loyal puppies in Congress clearly aren’t too keen on.

Filed Under: broadband, corruption, digital discrimination, digital divide, discrimination, gop, high speed internet, infrastructure bill, ndia, racism, redlining

FCC Commish Brendan Carr Takes A Break From Crying About TikTok To Lie About His Agency’s Plan To Combat Racism In Broadband Deployment

from the hysterical-and-useless dept

Tue, Nov 14th 2023 05:24am - Karl Bode

GOP FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr can routinely be found hyperventilating about TikTok, a company he doesn’t actually regulate. At the same time, Carr routinely turns a blind eye to the endless sleazy behavior in the sector he actually regulates: telecom. He doesn’t much care about predatory pricing, privacy violations, or the way companies like AT&T rip off federal subsidy programs.

In fact, when his fellow commissioners try to do absolutely anything about the broken and uncompetitive broadband market, Carr is first in line to protect AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Charter from criticism or reform. Usually in the most misleading way possible; such as when he and his Trump BFFs tried to frame killing popular net neutrality rules as “restoring internet freedom.”

He’s back at it again. We’ve discussed how Congress demanded that the FCC try to do something about well-documented discrimination in broadband deployment as part of the infrastructure bill. Data clearly shows that telecom giants consistently refuse to upgrade poor and minority neighborhoods to fiber, despite untold billions in state and federal subsidies. It’s taken decades to admit it’s even a problem.

The FCC and Congress understandably want to address this before $42 billion in infrastructure subsidies heads to states. (Please note: this is an historic amount of broadband subsidies that the GOP voted against, yet simultaneously takes credit for among local constituents.)

Enter Carr, who has published an incoherent missive to the FCC website trying to claim that the FCC’s efforts are some kind of secret cabal to take over the internet. Again, what the FCC is doing is the bare minimum and mandated by Congress, but Carr lies repeatedly in a bid to frame it as some extreme, rogue action by Biden personally:

“President Biden’s plan hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the country. Never before, in the roughly 40-year history of the public Internet, has the FCC (or any federal agency for that matter) claimed this degree of control over it.”

This is, of course, fucking gibberish. The FCC’s plan to try and combat racism in broadband deployment is fairly basic. It doesn’t even call out big ISPs with a history of “redlining” (like AT&T) by name. This is an agency that can barely even acknowledge that regional monopolies cause harm, much less implement any kind of meaningful reform. The FCC is about as radical as Mr. Rogers in his prime.

And yet it’s GOP mantra to treat absolutely any effort to hold the telecom industry accountable as extreme and somehow unhinged. Similarly, it’s GOP mantra to pretend that the broken and heavily monopolized U.S. telecom industry is somehow the pinnacle of free market innovation, when even the dimmest among us know that’s simply not true. Here’s Carr:

“…the Biden Administration is going hard left. It is now blaming the private sector and free market capitalism itself for the Administration’s own policy shortfalls. The problem, the Administration has apparently concluded, is that the FCC has never gone full command and control when it comes to regulating the Internet.”

Keep in mind, this is the same guy who wants to use the FCC to badger social media companies for (badly and barely) moderating hate speech and political propaganda, despite having absolutely no authority in this arena. Like so many people in Trumpland, Carr has no honest intellectual center. Everything is performance designed to agitate an increasingly uninformed and misinformed party base.

To be clear: the GOP operates in absolute political lockstep with a long line of shitty telecom monopolies to ensure nothing ever changes. Absolutely any effort to try and hold these companies accountable is framed in the most unhinged terms possible by the GOP. It’s facts-optional chum for party loyalists who’ve been conditioned to root against their best self interests for generations.

At the same time, Democrats talk a lot about broadband and the “digital divide,” but lack the backbone and integrity to actually stand up to industry. The Democratic power structure doesn’t like actual telecom reformers either, as documented by their abject failure to support popular FCC nominee Gigi Sohn as she faced down a relentless and homophobic industry smear campaign, alone.

But you can say one thing for Democrats, at least they occasionally try to do right by U.S. consumers. At least they operate in a wheelhouse tangentially related to factual reality where telecom policy is concerned. Carr is off in absolute fucking fantasyland, spinning entire yarns based on fluff and nonsense with an eye on further befuddling rubes.

Here’s the kind of stuff the Biden FCC is actually trying to do: it’s trying to raise the standard definition of broadband so we don’t waste subsidies on slow broadband. It’s trying to mandate that ISPs are clear with consumers about the cost of the connections. And of course it wants to restore the hugely popular net neutrality rules Carr and friends stripped away during the fraud-riddled Trump repeal of the rules.

To be clear: I’m not sure this Biden FCC will do any of these things particularly well. This is an agency that’s terrified of offending large corporations. The vast majority of these efforts likely won’t be enforced in any consistent way. This is an agency that can’t even consistently acknowledge that regional telecom monopolies exist and cause harm in public facing statements, much less field productive solutions.

Still, what Democratic FCC commissioners are attempting is at least tangentially rooted in reality and some fleeting desire for good faith reform.

Gentlemen like Carr, in contrast, exist as a sort of regulatory simulacrum; he’s there to give the illusion of regulatory oversight, but like so much of the GOP his only real function is obstructionism. The goal is to protect telecom monopoly power at any cost, while framing any effort to do anything differently as somehow dystopian. Often, with the help of a lazy and uncritical press.

It’s equal parts pathetic and stunning that the GOP has convinced huge swaths of the U.S. public to root against their own best interests and in favor of letting shitty companies like Comcast run politically amok, but here we are.

Filed Under: brendan carr, broadband, digital discrimination, digital divide, fcc, high speed internet, redlining, telecom

NTIA Urges FCC To Adopt Rules Banning Race, Class Discrimination In Broadband Deployment

from the 'wrong'-side-of-the-tracks dept

Mon, Oct 16th 2023 05:25am - Karl Bode

Groups like the National Digital Inclusion Alliance have consistently released studies showing that telecom giants like AT&T, despite billions in subsidies and tax breaks, routinely avoid upgrading minority and low income neighborhoods to fiber. Not only that, the group has documented how users in those neighborhoods even struggle to have their existing (older and slower) DSL lines repaired.

Regional telecom monopolies have long vehemently denied that they engage in this kind of digital “redlining,” but the data speaks for itself, and has been routinely validated by third parties. In addition to discrimination in broadband deployment, big ISPs have also been caught charging lower-income and minority areas more money than residents of more affluent neighborhoods.

The nation’s top regulator, the FCC, has been completely asleep on the issue for decades. That changed (potentially) last year, when Congress pushed the FCC to investigate the problem as part of the infrastructure bill. The NTIA, which has been taking a bigger lead on telecom policy due to FCC incompetence, last week told the FCC we need hard rules preventing broadband discrimination:

“Strong rules are needed to remedy unequal access to Internet service, no matter what the cause may be,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Alan Davidson. “Rules that combat digital discrimination will bring lasting relief to vulnerable communities that historically have been left behind online.”

Whether the FCC actually comes up with useful rules is one challenge. Whether they’ll actively and consistently enforce them is another. U.S. broadband maps are notoriously shitty by design, making it easy for big ISPs to fiddle with claims about who is or isn’t covered (and why). And the FCC has a comically terrible track record of standing up to monopolies (or even acknowledging they exist).

The primary cause for substandard U.S. broadband (regardless of where you live, how much money you make, or the color of your skin) is monopoly/duopoly power and the corruption that protects it. Either we’re serious in addressing those issues or we aren’t, and for the better part of the last generation our top policymakers have been not only useless, but actively harmful.

Filed Under: broadband, digital discrimination, fcc, high speed internet, ntia, redlining, telecom

Activists Say California Is Backtracking On Plan For Statewide Affordable Broadband

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

Mon, Sep 25th 2023 05:20am - Karl Bode

While the California legislature often screws up tech policy, they’ve generally been pretty good on broadband. At least in relation to most U.S. states. California was among the first in the country to pass a net neutrality law after the telecom industry got Trumpists to dismantle federal rules.

The state also unveiled a major broadband plan a few years ago that, among other things, aims to spend $3.5 billion to create a massive, open access “middle mile” fiber network in a bid to boost competition. It’s part of a broader quest to make broadband both more affordable and more competitive (see our Copia report from last year discussing the potential impact of open access fiber).

The open access network is designed to dramatically drive down market entry costs for all ISPs in the state, but it was generally a broadside against incumbent regional monopolies like AT&T. AT&T, unsurprisingly, first worked to undermine the bill during crafting, and has whined about it ever since.

Facing a budget deficit as well as “inflation and rising construction costs,” state leaders announced earlier this year they’d be making some notable cuts to the program. As usual, the folks most impacted by the cuts wound up being low income, minority, and otherwise marginalized populations, who’ve already routinely found themselves “redlined” by giant telecom monopolies disinterested in upgrading them.

But folks in impacted neighborhoods like East Oakland and South Central Los Angeles were quick to express their annoyance at the cuts. And with the help of tech activism orgs like the EFF, have managed to get Governor Newsom to reverse course:

“Inflation and rising construction costs still constrain the state’s allotted $3.87 billion for these expansions, said Liana Bailey-Crimmins, director of the California Department of Technology. However the state is still determined to universalize broadband service in California.”

Activists I’ve spoken to aren’t sure that the state will follow through and fully restore funding to these already neglected areas. Many, like Patrick Messac, director for #OaklandUndivided, an internet advocacy nonprofit, noted that the decision to prioritize cuts to long-marginalized neighborhoods speaks to a deeper problem in both policymaking and data collection:

“I’m still concerned that the state isn’t doing anything to address the underlying issue, which is the discriminatory” data that the state used to identify which regions to scale back from, Messac said.

And the promised funding, which Messac said he is still not sure will come, leaves him unsettled.

“So many promises have been broken to Black and brown communities” — the communities Messac said would be disproportionately harmed by the state’s prior decision to scale back on broadband expansions — “that it makes it difficult to celebrate this moment.”

The FCC is engaged in a proceeding that’s supposed to take aim at the way big telecom monopolies intentionally screw over poor and minority neighborhoods, but like so much the generally feckless FCC does, it’s wholly unclear if the inquiry will result in meaningful action.

What California originally promised — investment in a core open access fiber network in a bid to drive competition to market and reduce costs — is precisely the sort of thing federal telecom regulators refuse to do. For decades the FCC has played a form of regulatory theater wherein they talk a lot about the “digital divide,” while proposing superficial fixes for the symptoms of monopoly power, but generally lack the backbone to assault monopoly power straight on.

New York City had considered something similar — a major open access fiber network that all competitors could compete over — but the Adams administration effectively gutted that project in the middle of project planning after repeated complaints by Comcast and Verizon.

Fixing expensive, spotty, and sluggish U.S. broadband access requires a frontal assault on monopoly power. But so far only a few states (like Washington and California) have genuinely had the backbone to even think about trying. A growing parade of long-frustrated towns, from Chattanooga to Palo Alto, have even decided to build their own community-owned networks.

Federal policymakers have repeatedly had the opportunity to assault monopoly power by cracking down on monopoly fraud, supporting open access fiber networks, and embracing community broadband.

But instead of doing that, federal regulators have generally just thrown billions in subsidies at the very same monopolies directly responsible for patchy, expensive U.S. broadband in the first place. That lack of leadership has driven a few states, like California, to take aim at the problem themselves.

But for every California, there are at least a dozen states whose broadband policy approach genuinely involves simply doing whatever AT&T and Comcast wants. And even in California, unsurprisingly, keeping incumbent telecom monopolies from undermining the occasional quest to do the right thing on affordable broadband access is a full time job.

Filed Under: broadband, california, digital divide, fcc, high speed internet, redlining

After FCC Debacle, Gigi Sohn Shifts Focus To Challenging Comcast, AT&T With Community-Built Broadband Networks

from the pass-go,-and-absolutely-collect-$200 dept

Wed, Jul 26th 2023 05:24am - Karl Bode

Last March, popular telecom and media reformer Gigi Sohn’s appointment to the FCC fell apart, after telecom and media giants (with the GOP’s help) waged a year long lobbying and propaganda campaign falsely framing her as a radical (The Verge has a good new interview with Sohn on what happened, in case you missed it).

The campaign was highly illustrative of not just the level of corruption in Congress and the regulatory nominee confirmation process, but how terrified companies like Comcast, AT&T, and News Corporation are of regulators who actually pursue policies of interest to the public (like say lower broadband prices, net neutrality, privacy protections, or media consolidation limits).

Sohn has since shifted focus to an arena I’d argue has more of a real-world impact than the majority of what the FCC is doing: community owned and operated broadband networks. Sohn’s now the head of an organization dubbed the American Association for Public Broadband, which advocates for locally-owned and operated alternatives to the lumbering, regional telecom monopolies we long ago normalized.

Frustrated by decades of monopoly dysfunction, towns and cities all over the country have decided to build their own networks, whether it’s municipal, built on the back of city-owned power utilities, or via cooperatives. There’s a lot of very cool stuff happening in this space that was supercharged by the peak COVID frustration with unreliable broadband and home schooling.

After being railroaded by telecom monopolies, Sohn’s now working to ensure that billions in historic new broadband subsidies (made possible by COVID relief and the infrastructure bill) will be spent on direct competitive challenges to their power. Organizations custom built by locals, which see broadband as a utility, and are simply interested in connecting everyone and breaking even:

These municipal network models would be essential in closing the digital divide because they are motivated by different incentives than private companies to “go to places that incumbent won’t,” Sohn argued.

“They are not interested in return on investment,” she added. “They are interested in making sure everybody is connected.”

Politicians and regulators talk a lot about how they want to “bridge the digital divide.” But most of them lack the political courage to correctly identify why that divide still exists in 2023: regional telecom monopolies, protected by corrupt state and federal politicians, that have worked tirelessly over thirty years to consolidate power, crush all meaningful competition, and jack up the cost of service.

The result is obvious everywhere you look: half-completed networks, high prices, comically terrible customer service, slow speeds, plenty of fraud, and massive gaps in the kind of low income, minority, and rural markets Wall Street doesn’t have the patience or interest to serve.

Enter community broadband networks; smaller, locally owned and operated efforts focused on treating broadband like an essential utility. Data keeps showing these networks offer cheaper, better service than regional monopolies, and, given they’re run by locals, they’re more accountable to locals (see our recent Copia report). Sohn’s goal: to double the number of such networks within the next five years.

The parallels to America’s electrification efforts 100 years ago are everywhere. Especially as it relates to cooperatives expanding broadband to areas lazy and greedy incumbents won’t. With federal regulators and lawmakers largely corrupted (and their power increasingly being curtailed by a rightward lurching Supreme Court), the real fight in broadband access has shifted to the local level, where armies of pissed off residents are challenging monopoly power with creative new deployments, block by block.

As a reformer Sohn could have done a lot of good work at the FCC. But I’d argue that the grass roots, local, bipartisan efforts to build better, faster, and cheaper community-owned broadband networks is where all the real action currently is anyway. And there’s no greater revenge to be taken upon monopolies like AT&T and Comcast than driving popular competition right into their backyards.

Filed Under: broadband, community broadband, digital divide, fcc, fiber, gigi sohn, high speed internet, monopolies, net neutrality, redlining, telecom