'DIGITAL DISCRIMINATION' : FCC Creating a A Task Force for EQUAL ACCESS by prohibiting deployment discrimination based on the income, racial or ethnic composition...

It's 2022 and the FCC has only just announced that it's going to take a look at the problem. Prompted by language in the recently passed infrastructure bill, the FCC has announced it's creating a task force to tackle "digital discrimination":

"Specifically, the Commission must adopt final rules to facilitate equal access to broadband service that prevents digital discrimination and promotes equal access to robust broadband internet access service by prohibiting deployment discrimination based on the income, racial or ethnic composition, and other agency determined relevant factors of a community.

Additionally, the cross-agency Task Force to Prevent Digital Discrimination will oversee the development of model policies and best practices states and local governments can adopt that ensure ISPs do not engage in digital discrimination." 

FCC To Take A Closer Look At Racial Discrimination In Broadband Deployment

Broadband

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

Mon, Feb 14th 2022 12:02pm — Karl Bode

"The regional monopolization of U.S. broadband comes with all manner of nasty side effects. The lack of competition at the heart of the country's monopoly and duopoly problem contributed to high prices, comically bad customer service, slow speeds, spotty coverage, annoying fees, and even privacy and net neutrality violations (since there's often no market penalty for bad behavior).

But it also results in "redlining," or when a regional monopoly simply refuses to upgrade minority neighborhoods because they deem it not profitable enough to serve.

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BLOGGER INSERT: 06 February 2022 (Press Release from the City of Mesa's newsroom)

PLAYING A RIFF: City of Mesa "Takes First Steps" to Bridge The Digital Divide?

Yep there's "a first time" for everything, if we want to understand any given infrastructure, we need to unfold both the political and ethical, as well as the social choices that were done throughout its development. When we talk about the work of an infrastructure, we should always talk about “relations’, not just components of a network

Mesa Takes First Steps to Bridge the Digital Divide

YOU CAN'T FIX A PROBLEM UNLESS YOU FIRST ACKNOWLEDGE THERE'S A PROBLEM

"In an increasingly virtual world, access to high-speed internet is a key to success for individuals, families and businesses," said Mesa Mayor John Giles. "I'm thrilled we're taking this step toward bridging the digital divide, ultimately creating greater access to education, career and social connection for all who call Mesa home."

Hmmm... Largely theatrical nonsense or what?

 

Mesa has widespread internet connectivity, and 75 percent of its residents have access to some form of landline broadband.

 

According to a 2021 City of Mesa household survey, 17 percent of participants didn't have internet, with affordability being the barrier preventing them from accessing the web.

The City already plans to deploy Wi-Fi and Mobile Broadband infrastructure to the 10 square miles of qualified census tract in west Mesa that showed the greatest need for connectivity at the height of the pandemic, per Mesa Public Schools surveys.

 

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The National Digital Inclusion Alliance has done some interesting work on this front, showing how companies like AT&T, despite billions in subsidies and tax breaks, routinely just avoids upgrading minority and low income neighborhoods to fiber. Not only that, the group has long showed how users in those neighborhoods also struggle to have their existing (older and slower) services repaired.

[...] The U.S. broadband monopoly problem has been obviously apparent for the last 20 years. 83 million currently live under a broadband monopoly, usually Comcast. You literally cannot find a single instance in the last five years where this problem was candidly acknowledged by regulators and lawmakers of either party, which kind of makes it hard to fix.

It's somehow gotten even worse during the (often justified) policy freak out surrounding "big tech." "Big telecom" has just almost completely fallen off the policy table, and even the idea of having some base levels of accountability for regional monopiles with 20 years of documented, anticompetitive behavior under their belts feels like a distant afterthought. You'll know things have changed when you see an FCC official clearly capable of acknowledging telecom monopolization and corruption are bad things. Until then we seem stuck in the age of half measures and incomplete solutions.

Filed Under: broadband, fcc, racial discrimination