telecom – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Our National Robocall Nightmare Is Getting Worse Under Donald Trump

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

According to the latest data on robocalls from the YouMail Robocall Index, the scale of the U.S. robocall problem has grown by another eleven percent year over year. U.S. consumers received just over 4.8 billion robocalls in May. We’ve normalized ceding our primary voice communications platforms to corporations, debt collectors, and scammers, and there’s every indication it’s going to get worse under Donald Trump.

While the federal government had been making some progress in getting wireless companies to belatedly adopt anti-spoofing technology, the Trump administration’s decision to lobotomize whatever was left of U.S. regulatory independence and consumer protection will indisputably leave regulators flat-footed in the ongoing battle to reclaim U.S. voice networks from scumbags.

The FCC still technically exists, but under Trump it’s become a weird and pointless grievance machine run by zealots. Its primary function during Trump’s term so far has been to harass companies for not being sexist or racist enough, or threaten media companies that dare do journalism critical of King Dingus.

Consumer groups like the National Consumer Law Center have repeatedly warned Congress that the key reason our robocall problem never gets fixed is because Congress and regulators routinely fixate on scammers and not on the “legit” companies like debt collectors that use the same tactics and routinely undermine reform and enforcement efforts.

YouGov’s latest study found that “just” 14 percent of May’s robocall total was from “scammers.”

Even before Trump, a corrupted court system had consistently limited the FCC’s authority to combat robocalls. Corrupt lawmakers and regulators, cowed into blind obedience by a massive, generational, cross-industry-lobbying campaign, like to keep the focus on scammers, when many “legit” companies, again, leverage the exact same tactics as scammers.

As a result, federal regulators refuse to hold large phone companies accountable for their lagging efforts to combat fraud and spam. Case in point: Truecaller’s U.S. Spam and Scam Report found that half of all major U.S. phone companies earned a D or F in their efforts to combat annoying robocalls and scams. Functional, developed countries (even many less developed ones) don’t have these problems.

So while the FCC is supposed to enforce robocall offenses and levy fines, terrible court rulings mean they aren’t allowed to collect fines. That’s left to the DOJ, which routinely just… doesn’t bother. As a result a comically small volume of the overall fines levied are ever actually collected. For example between 2015 and 2019 the FCC issued 208.4millioninrobocallfines,butcollectedjust∗∗208.4 million in robocall fines, but collected just 208.4millioninrobocallfines,butcollectedjust∗∗6,790.

And again, this is all before Trump 2.0. And before largely unregulated AI.

Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has been promising to take a hatchet to whatever is left of U.S. corporate oversight as part of his “delete, delete, delete” deregulatory initiative. Big telecoms and robocallers have been making it very clear they’re very excited about it. Debt collectors in particular are very eager to roll back already flimsy rules governing how badly they can harass people they already know can’t pay.

Like so many systemic U.S. problems, the robocall menace isn’t something that gets fixed without first embracing much broader corruption, campaign finance, lobbying, and legal reforms. That is, obviously and indisputably, not something that’s happening under Trump and his sycophantic regulators and telecom industry-coddling courts.

Filed Under: automation, corruption, cramming, fraud, phone calls, robocalls, scam, scammers, telecom

Ted Cruz’s Dumb Plan To Punish States That Regulate AI By Withholding Broadband Grants Falls Apart

from the failed-extortion-plan dept

Wed, Jul 2nd 2025 05:28am - Karl Bode

While the GOP budget bill continues to include no limit of corrupt garbage that will kill millions of Americans (the cuts to Medicaid and rural hospitals being particularly brutal), one key component of the GOP agenda didn’t quite make the cut. Ted Cruz had proposed withholding billions of dollars in federal broadband grants for states that attempt any oversight of AI.

The proposal was one of several cut to try and get the hugely unpopular GOP bill across the finish line. As it turns out, Cruz had a tough time getting enough support for his ignorant plan, and ultimately joined 98 other Senators in a 99-1 vote shooting down the amendment (Sen. Thom Tillis was the one dissenting vote):

“Facing overwhelming opposition from both Democrats and Republicans, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) accepted defeat and joined a 99-1 vote against his own plan to punish states that regulate artificial intelligence.”

States are poised to get more than $42.5 billion dollars in broadband deployment subsidies as part of the 2021 infrastructure bill. The Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD), a key component of the bill, had taken years of collaborative work between state and federal governments. In part because we needed to remap broadband access across every county in the United States.

A lot of this money is poised (as usual) to get dumped in the laps of telecom giants, which is a major reason Cruz’s gambit failed (AT&T drove heavy opposition by longtime AT&T ally Marsha Blackburn, who initially worked with Cruz on a “compromise” offering, before that collapsed entirely). But much of this money is also poised to go to really useful fiber upgrade proposals via efforts like regional cooperatives or community-owned broadband networks.

If the bill had passed states would have been faced with choosing between funding rural broadband, or avoiding oversight of increasingly reckless AI giants keen on ignoring what’s left of U.S. labor and environmental standards. They would have definitely taken the broadband money.

Cruz and the GOP have also been busy “helping” American broadband connectivity in other ways, like his recent successful effort to kill an FCC program that helped give poor rural schoolkids access to free Wi-Fi. As well as killing a program that made broadband more affordable for low-income Americans. And the illegal dismantling of the Digital Equity Act and its protections against broadband discrimination.

So while it’s nice Ted Cruz’s latest dumb effort failed, it’s hard to be celebratory. Republicans have been taking an absolute hatchet to every last federal effort to ensure our monopoly-dominated broadband networks are affordable. They’ve also effectively killed all federal consumer protection; policies that will reverberate in negative ways for decades to come.

The budget battle followed the fairly typical Republican playbook: make your initial offer so extremist and awful that any concessions are disguised to feel like a victory. But the final GOP budget bill remains a giant and unpopular piece of shit, and one of the most corrupt and disgusting attacks on vulnerable Americans in the history of modern politics.

Filed Under: ai, bead, broadband, high speed internet, infrastructure, moratorium, regulation, ted cruz, telecom, texas
Companies: at&t

Elon Musk’s Starlink Adds $750 Congestion Charge

from the unavoidable-slowdowns dept

Tue, Jul 1st 2025 05:27am - Karl Bode

Republicans are rewriting an infrastructure bill grant program to redirect billions of dollars to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband service. The claim is that this is necessary because Starlink is the perfect solution for the country’s rural broadband users and deserves this money. The reality is that Starlink continues to show that it lacks the capacity or affordability to actually accomplish the job.

Low-Earth Orbit satellite broadband services like Starlink have their uses, but will always be dealing with capacity constraints. That means higher prices, weird restrictions, and, as of November 2024, a $100 “congestion charge” for a service that’s already too expensive for many of the rural Americans who could most benefit.

It didn’t take long for that “congestion charge” to soar to 500insomeareas.Nowit’s[alreadyrisenashighas500 in some areas. Now it’s [already risen as high as 500insomeareas.Nowit’salreadyrisenashighas750 in states like Washington as Starlink is forced to try and deter users in some markets from using the increasingly congested network:

“The change can crank up the starting price simply to own the Starlink dish on a residential plan to $1,099.”

Other parts of the country see no congestion charge, but there’s no guarantee that they won’t see one down the line as the network subscribership grows. It’s also very likely the company will increasingly have to resort to doing things like throttling higher definition videos, or engaging in other network management tricks to try and keep the service semi-reliable.

You might recall that Republicans and Elon Musk threw a hissy fit a few years ago when the Biden FCC prioritized “future-proof” fiber and higher-capacity 5G services over Starlink in previous government subsidy programs, (correctly) expressing concerns that the service lacked the capacity to provide consistently reliable speeds on the taxpayer dime.

Ever since then Republicans and Musk have been working tirelessly to “correct” this oversight, to the point where they’re now rewriting a major $45 billion infrastructure bill broadband grant program to ensure Starlink gets a massive portion of taxpayer subsidies. Many right wingers, like c-tier comedian turned podcaster and fashy-apologist Joe Rogan, act as if Starlink is akin to magic.

But the technology has been criticized for harming astronomical research and the ozone layer. Starlink customer service is largely nonexistent. It’s too expensive for the folks most in need of reliable broadband access. The nature of satellite physics and capacity means slowdowns and annoying restrictions are inevitable, and making it scale to permanently meet real-world demand is expensive and not guaranteed.

These are all things Republican Elon Musk ass kissers either don’t know, or don’t care about as they work to reward their billionaire benefactor. It will be up to their constituents to figure it out later. But money redirected to Starlink is money redirected to cheaper and better broadband alternatives, including super cheap gigabit fiber access and community-owned and operated broadband networks.

So again, Starlink is a nice step up if you’re in the middle of nowhere, lack any other connectivity options, can afford it, and don’t care about its potential environmental impact. But it shouldn’t be taking priority in terms of taxpayer subsidies. Unless, of course, you only care about kissing Elon Musk’s ass and don’t actually care about the constituents you claim to serve.

Filed Under: broadband, congestion, elon musk, fcc, fiber, high speed internet, low earth orbit satellite, subsidies, taxpayers, telecom
Companies: spacex, starlink

Supremes Reject Radical Right Wing Effort To Destroy $8 Billion FCC Rural Broadband Subsidy Program

from the good-decisions,-bad-intentions dept

Fri, Jun 27th 2025 09:41am - Karl Bode

In a day full of terrible Supreme Court rulings there was one bit of good news: in their FCC v. Consumers’ Research ruling, the court rejected a bid by radical right wing Republicans to destroy a popular $8 billion FCC program that connects poor and rural schools and communities to the internet.

The plaintiff in this case, Consumers’ Research, isn’t really a consumers’ group. It’s a right wing political project designed to put a veneer of pleb-friendly populism on efforts to destroy corporate oversight. The organization (which maintains a part of their website tasked with tut-scolding “woke” companies) sued the FCC claiming that the Universal Service Fund (USF) was unconstitutional.

The USF applies a small surcharge on traditional phone lines to fund broadband expansion to rural unserved locations (of which the U.S. has a lot thanks to rampant telecom monopolization and the corruption that coddles it). The program has had some problems with subsidy fraud in decades’ past, but more recently it’s been cleaned up and proven hugely beneficial for rural communities.

Consumers’ Research claimed the FCC was illegally overstepping its authority by levying the fee. The Trump-stocked Fifth Circuit, pretty radically, agreed with them last summer.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 (with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissenting) in favor of the FCC. It’s a curious reversal of a broader (and very successful so far) Republican court trend attempting to destroy all remaining government oversight of corporate power and dismantle whatever’s left of regulatory independence. You know, for rural small town populism or whatever.

A Good Ruling, Driven By Less Ethical Motivations

Why did the right-wing Supreme Court buck its broader trend of boxing in regulatory autonomy? Largely because of the influence of telecom giants like AT&T. While the USF does genuinely fund a lot of useful broadband expansion, it also throws billions of dollars into the laps of telecom giants like AT&T, Verizon, Charter, T-Mobile, and Comcast.

These telecoms were opposed to destroying the USF for what should be obvious reasons. And there had been hints for several months that they had managed to convince several Supremes that the USF should be maintained. Though it speaks volumes that Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch thought nothing of destroying a hugely-popular program built over decades with broad bipartisan support.

But the remaining Republican majority rejected Consumers’ Research because the telecom industry has a plan underway to get much more taxpayer money in the next few years.

With traditional phone lines dying, the USF program risks running out of money. So there’s been a long-standing conversation about how to expand the contribution base so you can keep funding the program and keep connecting rural schools, libraries, and communities to the internet. This conversation, as is usually the case in the U.S. telecom policy, is being dominated by self-serving giants like AT&T.

AT&T and their friends have a proposal they’ve been planning for years: they want to have the FCC apply a new tax on streaming video services like Netflix to theoretically help fund broadband expansion.

On the surface, having tech companies help fund broadband expansion isn’t a terrible idea. The problem is that companies like AT&T have an extremely long history ripping off subsidy programs, overbilling schools, and pocketing money that was earmarked for rural communities. And Republicans have an even longer history of badly mismanaging subsidy programs and ignoring corporate subsidy fraud.

So what’s far more likely to happen is the USF gets dramatically expanded once the FCC has a working voting Republican majority, and steadily becomes a much larger and much worse-managed slush fund that dumps billions in additional money in telecom monopolies’ laps in exchange for fiber networks that are mysteriously somehow never fully deployed.

There’s an obvious a tension here between right wing and Libertarian zealots who want to destroy all federal governance, and right wing grifters who want to steal taxpayer money in new and creative ways. There’s also tension within telecom monopolies’ like AT&T’s interest to destroy all remaining FCC oversight, yet keep the FCC just functional enough to keep slathering it with billions in taxpayer dollars.

There are good faith people (including consumer groups) who support some sort of streaming tax expansion just to keep the USF alive. But in a government where the expansion will be literally written by AT&T lawyers and overseen by weird lackeys like Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr, I think assuming this will be done and enforced competently and ethically is delusional wishcasting.

Such a Netflix tax would generate untold billions in additional subsidies for telecoms, at the cost of much higher streaming prices for consumers. Which should help you understand why some members of the Republican Supreme Court suddenly and mysteriously grew an uncharacteristic conscience. Kill the USF, and you kill the opportunity to make telecom monopolies significantly wealthier in the years to come.

Filed Under: big tech tax, brendan carr, broadband, consumers' research, fcc, fiber, netflix tax, rural, slush fund, subsidy, supreme court, taxpayers, telecom, usf

Promises The ‘Trump Phone’ Would Be ‘Made In USA’ Lasted 1/100th Of A Scaramucci

from the fake-plastic-trees dept

Fri, Jun 27th 2025 05:22am - Karl Bode

Last week we noted how the Trump administration had cooked up a half-assed wireless phone company. Even calling it a phone company is generous: It’s basically a licensing agreement and a lazy coat of paint on another, half-assed MVNO effort (Patriot Mobile), which in turn just resells T-Mobile service.

A cornerstone of the supposed company was a new $500 Trump T1 phone. To pitch the phone, the press release had a badly photoshopped rendition of what the so-far-nonexistent phone would look like (curiously missing a camera flash), peppered with claims the phone would be “proudly designed and built in the United States.”

As we noted at the time, it would likely be just weeks before people realized the “made in America” claims weren’t true. And it sounds like we didn’t even have to wait that long. The Verge noticed that all of the “made in America” claims have been stripped from the Trump website, replaced with far-more vague language about how the phone is ambiguously infused with American sentiment:

“The T1’s new tagline is “Premium Performance. Proudly American.” Its website says the device is “designed with American values in mind” and there are “American hands behind every device.” Under Key Features, the first thing listed is “American-Proud Design.” None of this indicates, well, anything. It certainly doesn’t say the device is made in the USA, or even designed in the USA. There are just… some hands. In America.”

Trump Mobile folks are still trying to claim the phone will be made in America. At least until press reports in another month or two indicating that’s clearly not true. Again. The Verge notes that the screen size has gotten smaller in the website description, and they eliminated listing RAM specifications for some reason.

Trump operates at a fourth-grade reading level and genuinely believes his ignorant tariff plan will somehow magically force all manufacturing back to the United States. But as countless journalists and analysts have dissected, it would be literally impossible to manufacture an affordable phone in the United States without resorting to slave labor and ignoring all labor and environmental law.

Which is to say the weird Trump zealots might actually believe (or have been told) this is a real thing that they’re capable of, but it’s simply never happening. Still, the Trump boys have been pouring it on thick, with Eric Trump going on TV to claim that not only will the Trump phone be made in the USA, but all company support would be USA based as well:

“You’re not calling up call centers in Bangladesh − do it right out of St. Louis, Missouri, and you’re going to have phones that are made right here in the United States of America,” [Eric said]. He added Trump Mobile is “going to revolutionize cell phones, mobile calling” as it will fully operate in the U.S.

“I really believe we’re gonna have one of the great kind of tech platforms as part of the Trump Organization of any company in the world,” he added.

This is really all just lazy performance art for very dim people.

In many ways a lazily branded mobile phone MVNO hyping a so-far-nonexistent phone pretending to be American made is a perfect encapsulation of the “Trump experience.” Just complete pointless artifice from start to finish, with a singular function: hollow grift in the golden age of corruption.

Filed Under: broadband, bullshit, china, donald trump, eric trump, made in america, t1, tariffs, telecom, trade war, wireless
Companies: trump mobile

Salt Typhoon Hack Keeps Getting Worse, Telecoms Tell Employees To Stop Looking For Evidence Of Intrusion

from the if-you-ignore-the-problem-it-goes-away dept

Fri, Jun 20th 2025 05:31am - Karl Bode

Late last year, eight major U.S. telecoms were the victim of a massive intrusion by Chinese hackers who managed to spy on public U.S. officials for more than a year. The “Salt Typhoon” hack was so severe, the intruders spent a year rooting around the ISP networks even after discovery. AT&T and Verizon, two of the compromised companies, apparently didn’t think it was worth informing subscribers this happened.

Like most hacks, the scale of the intrusion was significantly worse than originally stated. Last week, insiders told NextGov that Comcast and data center giant Digital Realty were also caught up in the hack and had their systems compromised. The same insiders stated that government officials still aren’t really sure that they have a full grasp on the attack’s impact:

“Various agencies across the U.S. government are in possession of lists of confirmed or potential victims, but it’s not clear if the tallies are consistent with each other, adding to confusion about who may have been accessed, targeted or marked for investigation, one of the people said.”

But it’s this little bit in the report that I thought was of particular note:

“Inside two major U.S. telecom operators, incident response staff have been instructed by outside counsel not to look for signs of Salt Typhoon, said one of the people, declining to name the firms because the matter is sensitive.”

So big telecoms are so afraid of liability and government oversight they’ve just stopped looking for evidence of intrusion in one of the worst hacks the U.S. has ever seen. That’s sure to fix the problem.

The U.S. business press covering the hack refuse to talk about it, but a major catalyst for the hack was the steady and mindless deregulation of the U.S. telecom sector. Libertarians and right wingers, “free market” think tanks in tow, spent the better part of the last thirty years insisting that gutting all meaningful state and federal oversight would result in vast, near-Utopian outcomes.

Instead, freed of both pesky competition and competent oversight, major U.S. telecoms saw zero incentive to compete on price, shore up spotty access, improve quality, or even consistently, adequately invest in privacy and security standards. The results are everywhere you look, from sloppy handling of consumer location data, to companies like T-Mobile being hacked eight times in five years.

And this was all before the Trump 2.0 authoritarians came to town. Now, we’re disemboweling our telecom and cybersecurity regulators at a much faster rate, stocking our regulators with weird, incompetent, and unqualified zealots, and building a court system in which it’s genuinely impossible for telecom giants to see any sort of real-world accountability for fraud or incompetence.

Again, the second Trump administration is utterly indistinguishable from a foreign attack. Because it’s dressed up in so much domestic religious and pseudo-populist propaganda and bullshit, it’s in many ways worse.

Filed Under: broadband, china, deregulation, hacked, national security, privacy, salt typhoon, security, spying, surveillance, telecom

Verizon ‘AI’ ‘Personal Shopper’ Assistant Ripping Customers Off With Weird Unwanted Charges

from the I'm-sorry-I-can't-do-that,-Dave dept

Wed, Jun 18th 2025 01:36pm - Karl Bode

One recurring theme of our head-first rushed adoption of “AI” is that half-cooked automation routinely reflects the often shitty natures of the companies or individuals installing it.

Health insurance companies with a history of being crooks implement Medicare rejection AI with a 90% error rate. Incompetent media company executives implement half-cooked “AI” that plagiarizes, undercuts labor, and makes constant mistakes. Weird anti-science zealots who are routinely full of shit wind up issuing government reports full of absolute anti-science bullshit. Curious!

Over in telecom, Verizon has implemented automation in its customer support systems, and, once again, it directly reflects Verizon’s long history of terrible customer service, weird upcharges, and just generally being curiously terrible at math. The company’s new “Personal Shopper” AI assistant is ruffling customer feathers because it routinely adds unwanted features and constantly tries to rip customers off.

Reddit is full of posts like this one where users trying to make basic changes to their account using the tool routinely find themselves suddenly paying an arm and a leg for all sorts of services they neither wanted nor asked for:

“I went to the Verizon store to add a line and get a watch. I’m looking at my Verizon account and just noticed that the person assisting me added the 100GB of hot spot add on, Netflix & IMAX and insurance which I never asked for. All I wanted was the watch. I expected my bill to be 170−170-170−180 but it’s $261 with all these add ons that I never asked for.”

Introduced last holiday season, Verizon insisted the new AI assistant would bring more joy and less stress to the experience with the telecom. But it’s clear that, in traditional Verizon fashion, the AI is being shaped to reflect Verizon’s endless efforts to upsell customers to more expensive plans, add-ons, and services. Even Verizon reps say they’re annoyed with the system, which makes their jobs harder:

“Anyone else who works for Verizon having issues with “Personal Shopper”?

I’m indirect and tried to place an order for an iPad yesterday, something that normally would take me like 5 minutes ended up being like 30 because I’m constantly fighting personal shopper wanting to add perks. Makes omni absolutely dog shit to use now.”

So automation that’s supposed to make customers’ and reps’ lives easier is actually making both experiences worse, and driving annoyed customers over to other wireless providers. Ironic that technology that’s supposed to revolutionize things seems to be simply supercharging many companies’ worst habits, adding new layers of annoyance and complexity.

Maybe Verizon should have spent less time kissing Trump’s ass to gain merger approval and more time fine tuning their AI assistants.

Filed Under: 5g, ai, assistant, customer service, telecom, wireless
Companies: verizon

The Trump Org Sort Of Launches A New Half-Assed Wireless Phone Company, Trump Mobile

from the lazy-garbage-for-rubes dept

Tue, Jun 17th 2025 05:26am - Karl Bode

Never one to miss an opportunity to exploit the presidency for a quick and tacky buck, the Trump administration is getting into the cell phone business.

Well, sort of: the Trump administration is launching a lazy new MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) that piggybacks on existing wireless networks with an added perk: a fake-gold $500 “T1” phone celebrating everyone’s favorite reality TV star turned incoherent authoritarian zealot.

The phone image appears to be a lazy Photoshop of a phone without a flash, suggesting this device is probably nowhere close to actually existing yet:

The new Trump Mobile service launches in September, and will offer a $47.45-per-month plan that includes unlimited talk, text and data, as well as roadside assistance and a “Telehealth and Pharmacy Benefit.” The Trump org claims the phone was “made in the USA,” which pretty much guarantees stories around six to eight months from now revealing the phones were all made in China (from [Trump family press appearances](http://Eric Trump: "Eventually all the phones can be built in the USA." %28so Trump phones are not actually being built in the USA lol ... %29) there are already indications this is probably a lie).

The Verge notices that the press release for the gambit has a bunch of lazy errors, including RAM that’s described as storage, and the promise of a “5000mAh long life camera”; terminology that actually refers to battery capacity. The Trump Mobile terms of use say the network is really just a rebranding of another MAGA-friendly MVNO, Liberty Mobile, which runs on the (also Trump friendly) T-Mobile network.

These MVNOs have become a dime a dozen. Such networks (increasingly owned by celebrities), usually spend a few years pretending to be a serious pro-consumer venture, offering lower-cost cell phone plans with limited device options and a bunch of weird network restrictions and caveats buried in the fine print.

Once (if) the brand becomes valuable, it’s usually sold off to one of the major three carriers, who then steadily make the service shittier and shittier before sunsetting the brand. Wash, rinse, repeat.

There have been a lot of these half-assed MAGA MVNOs. Like Patriot Mobile, which you might recall was supposed to be a MAGA-friendly wireless phone service that claimed to be sticking it to AT&T — because AT&T briefly refused to carry right wing propaganda channel OAN (despite AT&T coming up with the idea for OAN and funding its creation!). Which network did the service run on? AT&T.

There’s occasionally an exception, but generally these kinds of MVNOs are a silly pump-and-dump gambit that helps prop up the idea that U.S. telecom is more competitive than it is, which of course makes it perfect for the Trump administration.

This one seems particularly lazy. Scratch at the surface, and Trump Mobile winds up being little more than a brand and a license agreement, according to the Trump Mobile website fine print:

“Trump Mobile, its products and services are not designed, developed, manufactured, distributed or sold by The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals.”

From Trump high tops to Trump bibles, there’s no shortage of low-quality Trump cack attempting to exploit the presidency for a quick and lazy buck (the admin made $8 million in such agreements in 2024). But in between destroying the rule of law and teeing up race riots, Trump’s underlings have been busy significantly ramping up such deals in 2025, including a looming new line of Trump home goods.

In many ways Trump continues to be the perfect reflection of this country’s obsession with artifice. We built a giant golem out of trash, garbage and the shallowest, tackiest bullshit imaginable, and it’s now eating us alive. With any luck the entire violent experiment will be available for pennies on the shelves of your local Good Will before too long.

Filed Under: competition, mobile, telecom, wireless
Companies: liberty mobile, t-mobile, trump mobile, trump organization

The Trump Admin’s Dish Network Con Reaches Its Ultimate Conclusion: Failure, Bankruptcy, And Rich New Spectrum Holdings For Elon Musk

from the one-big-giant-head-fake dept

Mon, Jun 16th 2025 05:26am - Karl Bode

Back in 2019, the Trump DOJ and FCC cobbled together a dumb plan to try and hide the problems created by their rubber stamping of the competition-eroding T-Mobile and Sprint merger: they’d pretend they were helping satellite TV company Dish Network create a new 5G wireless network out of vibes and twine. As we noted back in 2019, the entire gambit was doomed to failure for a long list of reasons.

Dish never had any real experience building wireless networks. The Trump administration had no real interest in fostering competition (its “antitrust enforcer” at the time used his personal phone to help the companies dodge regulatory scrutiny). Multiple companies always wanted the spectrum Dish was collecting, and nobody in wireless really wanted to have to seriously compete on price.

Dish CEO Charlie Ergen, who had long been hoarding valuable spectrum, needed to pretend to the government he was serious about using it, and not just waiting for its value to appreciate so he could cash out later. The entire plan always seemed like a decorative con.

Fast forward to 2025 and the Dish 5G network is a joke nobody really uses, and Dish owner Echostar is now preparing for bankruptcy, precisely as we predicted all along.

Elon Musk’s Starlink wants a lot of the spectrum Dish is using in the 2GHz band. Verizon and AT&T would likely enjoy owning some of Dish’s other spectrum assets. So Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr is suddenly pretending to care about holding corporations accountable, and has launched a new inquiry into whether Dish is stringing regulators along (which I’d argue the Trump FCC knew was the plan all along).

Echostar has been missing millions of dollars of interest payments on its notes. Once it’s threatened by bankruptcy, it likely will find itself in a vulnerable position with the Trump FCC:

“A looming potential bankruptcy proceeding may force EchoStar back to the negotiation table with the FCC.”

And that “negotiation” most likely ends with the FCC forcing Dish to sell its spectrum assets to Elon Musk, Verizon, and AT&T. Outlets like the Wall Street Journal will of course cover this unskeptically as if the FCC is doing a serious investigation and this is all very serious business.

But it’s all been the greasiest of cons. A half-assed network was built as cover for industry consolidation and spectrum hoarding. When it inevitably failed, it gets stripped for parts with the help of captured regulators in dutiful sway to a billionaire. Dish CEO Charlie Ergen sells his rich hoard of spectrum and heads off into retirement, while the company’s employees get shitcanned.

The wireless industry consolidates further, competition erodes, consumer prices continue to rise, and captured regulators and U.S. business leaders all ignore all of the problems they helped create, and we all forget about the half-decade-worth of fictions they leveraged to pull the wool over the press’ and public’s eyes. I’d still argue that all of this was very likely the plan from the start.

All very serious business and extremely innovative stuff in a very serious country full of savvy and very serious deal-makers.

Filed Under: competition, consolidation, elon musk, fcc, spectrum, telecom, wireless
Companies: at&t, dish, echostar, spacex, starlink, verizon

Unqualified Right Wing Zealot Gavin Wax Poised To Be Nominated To Trump’s FCC

from the weirdos-and-zealots dept

Mon, Jun 9th 2025 01:10pm - Karl Bode

Last week, Republican FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington abruptly announced that he would be stepping down from the FCC. Simington gave all of two-days notice of his departure, which was odd not only because of the short notice, but because it delays Trump Republicans from getting a voting majority allowing them to actually do anything real.

In his wake, right wing media outlets like Fox News are suggesting that Simington may be replaced by Gavin Wax, a far right wing MAGA cheerleader. Wax has absolutely no serious qualifications for the role, but right wing outlets like Fox News are already busy pretending otherwise:

“Gavin Wax is being seriously considered by the White House to fill the vacancy that will be left by Commissioner Simington’s departure,” a source close to the FCC told Fox News Digital. “He’s seen as a strong conservative voice on tech and media policy, with close ties to key figures in both the policy and political arenas.”

Wax, an unabashed Trump earlobe nibbler, was promoted as Simington’s Chief of Staff a few months ago. If confirmed by the Senate, the 31-year-old Wax would be the youngest FCC Commissioner to ever serve. Wax has no meaningful experience in media and telecom policy outside of occasionally whining about media companies that don’t kiss Donald Trump’s ass:

“Once President Trump is back in office,” Wax said at the 2023 NYYRC annual dinner, according to Politico, “we won’t be playing nice anymore. It will be a time for retribution. All those responsible for destroying our once-great country will be held to account after baseless years of investigations and government lies and media lies against this man.”

Wax has been criticized by the Southern Poverty Law Center for, among other things, overseeing a private right wing Facebook chat from 2014-2017 where members “frequently used racial slurs, made jokes about the Holocaust and discussed topics like ‘race realism.'”

Wax is clearly being considered to help FCC boss Brendan Carr’s campaign to launch bogus investigations into media and telecom companies the administration either deems not suitably racist enough, or for the cardinal sin of occasionally doing journalism loosely critical of Trump.

In recent months, Wax has been co-writing ignorant op-eds with the softer-spoken Simington calling for the DOGE-like obliteration of whatever is left of the FCC’s consumer protection and corporate oversight capabilities, and the elimination of any government programs that help minority communities or the poor (such as helping poor rural schoolkids get online to do homework).

We’ve noted how the Trump administration’s effort to lobotomize regulatory independence will ultimately leave the FCC without any authority to do much of anything real, outside of grievance-fueled tirades and fake investigations by the kind of people who get angry that Star Wars now has more black people.

Simington himself was never qualified for his role. Wax is somehow worse; a radical MAGA zealot with a long history of dodgy bedfellows (including white supremacists), who has less-than-zero qualifications to be making important choices about absolutely any of this. In other words: perfect for the Trump administration and it’s bizarre (and often illegal) war on equity and corporate oversight.

The selection of Wax is particularly insulting to actual adults, given the 2023 railroading of the FCC nomination of popular consumer advocate Gigi Sohn in 2023. Sohn’s nomination to the agency was scuttled after a joint GOP and telecom/media industry homophobic smear campaign falsely accused her of being a “radical extremist” who “hated police.”

That attack, if you recall, was aided by key Democrats like Joe Manchin and Mark Kelly, and successfully left the Biden FCC without a voting majority for the better part of two years. It’s worth highlighting the speed at which unqualified zealots and rank corporatists get confirmed to the agency, compared to the blockades and slowdowns seen for those, like Sohn, who actually represent the public interest.

Whether Wax can survive the Senate nomination process and get the needed 51 one vote majority remains an open question, but the very fact he has a very good chance is an embarrassing joke.

Filed Under: brendan carr, broadband, consumer protection, donald trump, fcc, gavin wax, journalism, media, meritocracy, nathan simington, policy, racism, telecom