HIGH PRICES + SUB-STANDARD SERVICE: Americans pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for sluggish, slow broadband with historically abysmal customer service | Karl Bode in TechDirt

The goal throughout is obvious: AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Charter, CenturyLink and other telecom giants want to be free to rip you off with high prices and substandard service. 

They want to be free of all meaningful competition. And they want local, state, and federal governments absolutely powerless to do anything about it. If there are any rules, they want to write them to their personal benefit.
It’s a campaign they’ve been winning for decades.

With HR 3557, Broadband Monopolies Are Pushing A Bill That Would Crush Your Town’s Ability To Stand Up To Them 

Broadband

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

Fri, Aug 18th 2023 05:27am - Karl Bode

For thirty-plus years, giant telecom monopolies have worked tirelessly to crush all broadband competition. 

At the same time, they’ve lobbied state and federal governments so extensively, that the vast majority of politicians are feckless cardboard cutouts with little real interest in market or consumer health.

The result has been fairly obvious: Americans pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for sluggish, slow broadband with historically abysmal customer service.

Telecom lobbyists love to insist that often-shitty U.S. broadband is the envy of the modern world (it isn’t). They also love to argue that the only reason U.S. broadband isn’t even more awesome is because of “too much government regulation,” unnecessary red tape, and “bureaucracy.”

In this way they get to have their cake (enjoy unchecked monopoly power free from competition or regulatory oversight) and eat it too (demonize any government effort to do anything about monopoly power as the antithesis of progress). It’s an endless cycle where your broadband monopoly gets more powerful and the government gets weaker. Often under the pretense of “deregulation” and “reform.”

It’s a pretty successful con. . .

. . . [    ] To be clear: some of the telecom bills winding through Congress are actually helpful. One would renew the FCC’s authority to conduct spectrum auctions, bizarrely lapsed due to a recent bout of government incompetence. Another would make broadband grants tax exempt (a boon to telecoms big and small).

But as Dawson quite correctly notes, legislation like HR 3557 is seeded in there in the hopes it worms its way into a broader bill under the pretense of a broader telecom reform package. I’d be genuinely surprised if the bill itself wasn’t written by an AT&T or Comcast lawyer (probably using ALEC as a proxy):

“This bill is going for a home run to eliminate local regulations these big companies don’t like. I’ve written recently about regulatory capture, and this is an ultimate example of changing the laws to get what the big monopoly providers want…This bill is the ultimate example of the biggest companies in telecom flexing their power and influence to bypass some of the last vestiges of regulation.”

As the federal government becomes (quite intentionally) more dysfunctional, feckless, and corrupt, most meaningful telecom policy fights have shifted to the state or local level. In town after town, locals now find themselves fighting block by block against monopoly power, with less and less meaningful support from the feckless and captured federal government. Now, industry is eyeing the killing blow.

Filed Under: american broadband deployment act, broadband, community broadband, corruption, fcc, hr 3557, local government, monopoly, municipal broadband, pre-emption, regulatory reform, telecom