Charter Spectrum Claims The Death Of Net Neutrality Will Magically Provide Better, Faster Broadband

Say That Again

from the nobody-believes-you dept

Large ISPs like Comcast, Charter, Verizon and AT&T this week uniformly proclaimed that the death of net neutrality is going to be a really wonderful thing for American consumers. Charter Spectrum, for example, took to the company’s policy blog to insist that the neutering of historically popular consumer protections on this front will somehow result in everybody getting better broadband. The ISP’s argument, as it has throughout this entire little dog and pony show, focused on the repeatedly debunked claim that the FCC’s pretty modest net neutrality rules demolished telecom industry investment:

“Without the regulatory overhang of these rules however, businesses like ours will have the certainty they need to make infrastructure investments over the long-term, helping more people get online and enabling even faster broadband. This includes bringing high speed broadband to more hard to serve areas, including rural communities.”

Which is something you might be inclined to actually believe if Charter’s own executives weren’t on record publicly stating that the rules had absolutely no meaningful impact on Charter’s bottom line:

“Title II, it didn’t really hurt us; it hasn’t hurt us,” Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said at an investor event in December 2016, according to a report by advocacy group Free Press. Publicly traded companies like Charter are required to give investors accurate financial information, including a description of risk factors involved in investing in the company.”

In fact, dozens of industry CEOs have publicly admitted to investors and media outlets that the whole “net neutrality hurt broadband investment” is completely baseless, something proven by anybody willing to spend five minutes with industry SEC filings and earnings reports. And while industry-hired economists tried to cherry pick very specific windows of investment to try and claim the exact opposite, the data here is pretty clear. In fact, an analysis by consumer groups (pdf) found that Charter’s overall CAPEX actually went up in the wake of the FCC’s 2015 net neutrality rule creation:

“Charter?s capital investments went up 15 percent after the FCC?s Open Internet vote (when we include the pre-merger investments made by Charter, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks). And not only are Charter?s investments up, they?re 12 percent higher than the estimates Charter gave to investors prior to closing that merger.

This being post-truth America however, facts don’t appear to carry quite the same weight as they used to, and it’s abundantly clear that some of the least-liked companies in America are confident in their belief that repetition forges reality. Apparently, said companies hope that if they repeat this nonsense often enough, people won’t notice the government sold them, and the health of the internet, down river without a second thought (and in some instances, that’s pretty clearly working).

Granted Charter then gets to the real point of the company’s blog post; to push for a new net neutrality law the company knows that in this political climate, they’ll be the ones writing:

“”Charter?s commitment to our customers is our top priority. We urge Congress to pass new legislation that preserves an open internet and ensures a regulatory framework made for the 21st century, so we can continue to improve and invest in our networks and provide more people access to a fast, reliable, and open internet.”

We’ve noted how ISPs are worried about losing the looming court case over net neutrality, as well as the dozens of states that are now imposing state-level net neutrality protections. As such, the hope is that they can push forth a loophole-filled net neutrality law in name only; one with so many loopholes as to effectively be useless, but which will pre-empt any tougher state or federal rules (including the restoration of the FCC’s 2015 rules). It’s a gambit that’s not really working, in large part because these companies have obliterated any last vestiges of public trust they may have had with this latest lobbying assault.

Filed Under: ajit pai, competition, fcc, investment, net neutrality
Companies: charter spectrum