Team Biden Celebrates Broadband Accomplishments, Yet Is Leaving FCC Nominee Gigi Sohn Hanging Out To Dry
from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept
This week the Biden administration spent some time celebrating its accomplishments on broadband. The nation’s about to invest $42 billion in expanding broadband access (even though we still haven’t mapped broadband accurately). The administration also implemented the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which doles out a $30 discount on broadband for qualifying low income households.
In an announcement, team Biden celebrated the fact that it got the nation’s biggest telecom giants to reduce broadband prices $30 for low income Americans:
$30 off broadband access will go a long way in households where affording basic food needs is a challenge. Though it should be noted that several of these companies heralded by the Biden administration abused a previous version of this program to try and upsell struggling Americans to more expensive broadband plans (and faced NO penalty for it).
It should also be noted that the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) effectively takes a limited pool of taxpayer money from the infrastructure bill, gives it to regional monopolies that caused the problem (high prices) in the first place, then lauds those companies for temporarily lowering prices for low income Americans. If you step back a bit you’ll notice this is kind of a weird band aid.
When the press picks up this kind of framing, you’d hardly know that regional monopolies caused most of this problem in the first place by relentlessly crushing competition:
Biden gets credit for fixing a problem (spotty, expensive, monopolized access) this program isn’t actually fixing, and the telecom industry gets credit for heroically helping low income people (who wouldn’t be suffering if they hadn’t monopolized access and crushed competitors in the first place) by passing on taxpayer subsidies to them.
Here’s a fact: U.S. broadband is extremely expensive because of government-sanctioned telecom monopolization and limited competition. The GOP has rubber stamped telecom monopolization at every turn for 40 years. The DNC, which professes to be much better on this subject, is rarely willing to acknowledge these monopolies exist, much less that they’re documentably harmful (seriously, try to find a Democratic FCC official in the last 20 years that has clearly criticized monopolization).
Which is to say you wouldn’t need band-aid low income discount programs if the U.S. government was willing to tackle the actual problem: broadband monopolization and the state and federal corruption that protects it. We not only don’t tackle it, we don’t acknowledge it exists; often framing spotty, expensive Internet access through nebulous, causation-free references to an ambiguous “digital divide.”
One of the leading advocates for monopoly reform is Gigi Sohn, the Biden’s nominee for the empty FCC Democratic Commissioner slot. Sohn was nominated by the Biden team after an inexplicable nine month delay. Sohn has since spent the last 6 months mired in grotesque attacks by the telecom lobby and the obstructionist GOP, without a single word of support from the Biden administration or FCC staffers.
With the GOP’s opposition to Sohn in the bag, the telecom sector is trying to scuttle support for Sohn among Senate Democrats by, among other things, waging covert proxy attacks falsely claiming she’s bad for Hispanics, hates cops, and doesn’t care about rural America. Again, I’ve yet to see a single instance of support for Sohn from the Democratic FCC, Biden administration, or DNC. Not a peep.
The telecom industry’s goal is obvious: scuttle the Sohn nomination to keep the nation’s top telecom regulator mired in 2-2 partisan gridlock so it can’t implement popular telecom monopoly, media consolidation, or consumer protection reform. They’ll eventually support a replacement, centrist Democratic nominee with a general disinterest in genuine monopoly and consolidation reform.
Again, I don’t want to dump on low income broadband discount programs or the $42 billion broadband infrastructure investment because I believe they’re genuinely good things and laudable accomplishments.
But it’s indisputable that the real reason U.S. broadband sucks is due to unaccountable monopolies we’ve let run amok, building regional fiefdoms in which they’re free to deliver spotty, overpriced, unreliable broadband. If you’re unwilling to tackle (or again even address) that problem, and refuse to even defend the reformer you belatedly nominated to a major post — you’re not actually taking the problem seriously.
Filed Under: broadband, corruption, fcc, gigi sohn, high speed internet, monopolies, reform, telecom
Comments on “Team Biden Celebrates Broadband Accomplishments, Yet Is Leaving FCC Nominee Gigi Sohn Hanging Out To Dry”
biden is shit scared of recriminations by the industries and the Republicans! as soon as the power shifts, just as they did when Trump was elected, everything that had been done, everything that had been accomplished to the benefit of ‘the people’ was thrown straight out the window! i could never understand why the hell people vote republican when all that happens is changes are made that benefit companies and powerful individuals and screw the people! crazy!
Re:
They vote Republican because of cultism.
Re: RE: i could never understand why the hell people vote republican
Did you read the entire article? This issue isn’t caused just by the republicans, but it is also caused by the democrats because they won’t acknowledge the problem. Ok, so let’s say no one voted for any republicans or any political party except for democrats. Do you think they will solve this issue? I don’t think so.
From the article “The DNC, which professes to be much better on this subject, is rarely willing to acknowledge these monopolies exist, much less that they’re documentably harmful (seriously, try to find a Democratic FCC official in the last 20 years that has clearly criticized monopolization).”
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Ghost of Free-To-File
Recently, we’ve seen how tax filing software was supposed to allow certain qualified taxpayers to file for free, but then the software pulls a bait and switch, and charges for filing. This scheme creates an opportunity for corporations to take another bite out of the apple. Sign up now for internet service and get $30 off, IF you qualify. Ooops, you don’t qualify and have to pay full price.
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Heck, even better example is the subsidies that were supposed to help families during the pandemic lock-down to get internet access for their kids to do school remotely.
“Oh, to qualify for that subsidy, you have to switch to this more expensive plan so that you are only saving $5.”
Another Handout
Yet another handout of tax dollars to large telcoms. As with past handouts, expect nothing to change in the way of service. Some $$ goes to campaign contributions, the rest to company profits.
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“Oh, to qualify for that subsidy, you have to switch to this more expensive plan so that you are paying $5 more.”
FTFY. 😉
I’ll believe it in 6 months when someone suggests an audit to see how its going and its not all just been used to screw people once again.
Ya, right.
I’ll believe all this, when I see it. Call me skeptical.
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I would, except that’s not sceptical. It’s realistic.
While dealing with shitty AT&T ADSL, I have the following.
a) An AT&T monopoly feed by the Republicans or b) Ignored by the Democrats because I’m not poor enough.
While I agree with the statement,
“Again, I don’t want to dump on low income broadband discount programs or the $42 billion broadband infrastructure investment because I believe they’re genuinely good things and laudable accomplishments.”
Maybe when they pass by with the “Icables” to hook up the low income they can spare some time to hook me up too. Sigh.
Excuse to raise Broadband fees
You know that the broadband companies will complain that the government handout wasn’t enough to cover the cost of giving discounts to low income families and lobby to increase fees. In the end, we’ll all pay more for internet and it will totally negate the $30 discount.
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FTFY
The people who get the $30 internet still get the $30 internet. The rest of us were always going to pay for it, whether through higher bills from those same ISPs, or through taxes.
Government officials do not acknowledge such a problem exists because the capitalist forces at the root of the problem also happen to be the government. The US is not a democracy, it is a capitalist dictatorship. None of those government officials work for the people; they are on the payroll of massive corporations, and so only work for them.
Complementing this post, Ars just pushed out an article on this same subject:
link
IF'
we could get back to the olden days and Force competition, it would be great.
But the monopolies hold a BIG hand.
After the killing off of Millions of Chickens, and the price of EGGS going up like crazy.
They get a Loss on taxes, they get a loss in re-investment, and WE get to pay for it the next 6 months, before they can have enough chicken eggs to fill the shelves.
This isnt the way its supposed to happen for Corps/farms. They get Paid for Loss, so Prices DONT increase Abruptly.
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They take advantage of the system. They created the system. And for some odd reason, our gov is Thinking the corps can Fix anything.
To solve a problem you first need to admit it exists
It should also be noted that the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) effectively takes a limited pool of taxpayer money from the infrastructure bill, gives it to regional monopolies that caused the problem (high prices) in the first place, then lauds those companies for temporarily lowering prices for low income Americans. If you step back a bit you’ll notice this is kind of a weird band aid.
‘Here’s a bunch of money, we would really like it if you used it to gouge a selection of your customers slightly less than you currently are’, what could possibly go wrong?
The goal of more broadband coverage and more affordable prices may be a good one but so long as the elephant in the room that is ‘rampant monopolization and anti-competitive laws are the reason for the problems’ isn’t even admitted to exist any efforts are going to be hamstrung from the start as the companies that are the cause of the problems step in and claim the lion’s share of any funding because who knows the broadband industry better than them after all?
Definition of Monopoly
Uhh, mono means one. I think you mean an oligopoly.
Leaving FCC Nominee Gigi Sohn Hanging Out To Dry
Good. Sohn does not deserve to be on the FCC. Sohn is a far-left extremist that would attempt to regulate broadband Internet to death while pushing her socialist views.
Let Sohn hang until the reset of midterms.
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Even if that were true, she wouldn’t have to. AT&T et al. are already de-regulating broadband to death. You don’t have to be ignorant to be a Republican, but it clearly helps.
Re: Re: Leaving FCC Nominee Gigi Sohn Hanging Out To Dry
Nice try, but I am not a Republican. I am a centrist.
I wouldn’t call Republicans ignorant. More that they lack empathy and compassion.
Likewise I wouldn’t call Democrats ignorant. More that they lack common sense and logic.
Both parties are being ruined by extremists that have taken over. Trying to nominate an extremist like Sohn to the FCC is a great example of the polarization that is killing both parties.
How about not nominating someone who’s goal is to kill the industry that they are supposed to help regulate?