NTIA Urges FCC To Adopt Rules Banning Race, Class Discrimination In Broadband Deployment
from the 'wrong'-side-of-the-tracks dept
Groups like the National Digital Inclusion Alliance have consistently released studies showing that telecom giants like AT&T, despite billions in subsidies and tax breaks, routinely avoid upgrading minority and low income neighborhoods to fiber. Not only that, the group has documented how users in those neighborhoods even struggle to have their existing (older and slower) DSL lines repaired.
Regional telecom monopolies have long vehemently denied that they engage in this kind of digital “redlining,” but the data speaks for itself, and has been routinely validated by third parties. In addition to discrimination in broadband deployment, big ISPs have also been caught charging lower-income and minority areas more money than residents of more affluent neighborhoods.
The nation’s top regulator, the FCC, has been completely asleep on the issue for decades. That changed (potentially) last year, when Congress pushed the FCC to investigate the problem as part of the infrastructure bill. The NTIA, which has been taking a bigger lead on telecom policy due to FCC incompetence, last week told the FCC we need hard rules preventing broadband discrimination:
“Strong rules are needed to remedy unequal access to Internet service, no matter what the cause may be,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Alan Davidson. “Rules that combat digital discrimination will bring lasting relief to vulnerable communities that historically have been left behind online.”
Whether the FCC actually comes up with useful rules is one challenge. Whether they’ll actively and consistently enforce them is another. U.S. broadband maps are notoriously shitty by design, making it easy for big ISPs to fiddle with claims about who is or isn’t covered (and why). And the FCC has a comically terrible track record of standing up to monopolies (or even acknowledging they exist).
The primary cause for substandard U.S. broadband (regardless of where you live, how much money you make, or the color of your skin) is monopoly/duopoly power and the corruption that protects it. Either we’re serious in addressing those issues or we aren’t, and for the better part of the last generation our top policymakers have been not only useless, but actively harmful.
Filed Under: broadband, digital discrimination, fcc, high speed internet, ntia, redlining, telecom
Comments on “NTIA Urges FCC To Adopt Rules Banning Race, Class Discrimination In Broadband Deployment”
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Racist DSL Lines
You can make a case that police officers are racially profiling as they drive around on patrol. But something tells me that telecom companies don’t even see their customers, much less track their race so that they can nefariously discriminate against them.
It turns out that if poor people living in lower class neighborhoods don’t pay their bills, or dip out on the contract, then the telecom will lose money and will need to charge higher prices.
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Why would charging people more than everyone else get them to pay their bill on time? And why is that the right course of action? Maybe if their fees were lower like everyone else they’d get paid.
And why is the government paying them for infrastructure improvements if they aren’t improving things. And why should low income customer pay extra for broken service?
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It doesn’t get them to pay the bill on time. It is designed to maintain profitability. It’s the same concept as how banks charge higher interest rates for people with bad credit, and how insurance companies charge those who live in an area prone to natural disasters more money for a policy.
Economy of scale. A company might make the same amount of profit by serving 5 people with good credit at a low price, versus serving 10 people but charging higher prices to those with bad credit. The larger company serving more customers will then enjoy numerous advantages because of its large size, such as negotiating power with suppliers, marketing, and expandability, to name a few. These types of companies then tend to stay in business even longer. Corporate Darwinism. Perhaps that’s not what you consider a “right” reason, but that’s how corporations stay in business nowadays: by serving more product, even to folks with less money.
Because corporations are usually only held accountable by competition, and politicians (currently) increase their chances of reelection by claiming to have spent tax dollars on a compassionate cause.
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A feeble excuse when they have been subsidized to serve such areas.
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its not a feeble excuse, its literally “fiduciary duty to shareholders”, the “make them give money to black people” is an illegal grift.
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I have to agree. The DSL lines are just objects and have no opinion as to who amongst the humans is superior as it knows Skynet is and that is all it cares about.
That being said, these “service providers” will focus on the more populated areas because that is where they make more money. Less populated areas are not and tend to cost more to maintain. This would still be discriminatory, or racist, against a specific group of people.
There are companies and municipalities trying to upgrade and offer their own service but sadly, the phone companies or “service providers” own the poles, that the government paid for, that sit on the land, owned but the government, for which they don’t want “non-service providers” touching.
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Nearby me, it looks like there’s something of a sweet spot. They want populated areas with the most customers per length of line deployed, but also they want customers who are fixed into service for a long period of time with minimal installations or repairs. Some neighborhoods have dense population, but made up of apartments where residents are constantly moving in and out.
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The biden administration loves “equity”, which is the new buzzword for “affirmative action”, which the supreme court has said is unconstitutional.
Moreover the supreme court has said that disparate impact claims have to show something more than a disparity, to survive a motion to dismiss.
So in reality this is just going to end up being tossed out by the courts eventually.
first amendment?
I am not advocating for economic or racial discrimination, but I’d like to know what the legal framework is that allows X or Meta to choose who they do business with (i.e. they can choose who to ban), but not a telecoms provider?
Could X or Meta be sanctioned for banning based upon ‘they live in poor neighbourhood, therefore their value to advertisers is nil’? (which is a proxy for race in the US, and if not, then for “poor people that aren’t valuable enough” as far as telecoms providers are concerned)
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Telecoms providers are classified as “common carriers” which means they are required to provide service to everyone. ISPs are not currently classified as common carriers (though hopefully that will change with the new FCC) which is why we’re still fighting for things like net neutrality. Websites, regardless of how popular they are, are businesses. Businesses have the constitutional right to decide who they want to do business with.
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IANAL, but that might violate Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Also worth noting that even if Xitter or Meta wanted to ban poor people from using their service, their best tool for doing so (IP address geolocation) is terrible at doing what it’s supposed to do.
https://www.techdirt.com/2016/04/15/how-bad-are-geolocation-tools-really-really-bad/
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It has a lot to do with common carriers transporting messages, but NOT displaying them to the public, and the other being a notice board that anybody can look at.
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They have been paid by the government, and allowed to collect fees, since ancient days of telephone, to extend service to rural and otherwise underserved locales. Paid. Paid to do it. Hundreds of times over. That’s why. And then they whine and cry when anyone else says, “Fine, we’ll do it”.
Platforms on the internet aren’t the same thing, and it isn’t a first amendment issue.
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I think it’s unfortunate that lesbian-focused websites and dating apps can ban heterosexual transwomen from using their services, even if they’re willing to pay. Female lesbians should not be able to discriminate against transwomen. They should have to take that “girl dick.”
Why are you racist?
All that liberals ever want to do is categorize people by race and then treat them differently over it.