Starlink Has A Small Fraction Of The Customers It Originally Promised Investors

Broadband

from the whoops-a-daisy dept

To be clear: SpaceX’s Starlink service is a game changer for those out of range of broadband access. Getting several hundred megabits per second in the middle of nowhere is a decidedly good thing, assuming you can afford the $600 hardware and $110 a month subscription cost.

That said, a few telecom analysts had quietly noted for years that the project lacked the capacity to be truly disruptive at any scale. Starlink has also long been priced well out of range for many; a problem given that high broadband prices are the primary obstacle to adoption for huge swaths of underserved America. Then there’s the company’s notoriously terrible customer service and long waitlist.

With that as context, it’s not particularly surprising that Starlink has signed up significantly fewer customers that originally projected. A paywalled Wall Street Journal report (see this non-paywalled Ars Technica alternative) notes that a 2015 Starlink investor pitch claimed that by last year Starlink would have 20 million subscribers and generate nearly $12 billion in revenue and $7 billion in operating profit. 

Actual Starlink revenue for 2022 was $1.4 billion. And the company only has around 1.5 million users worldwide; a far cry from the 20 million originally predicted. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband is a sector riddled with failures, so the fact Starlink has reached this point is notable. But the Journal seemed surprised to learn that Starlink won’t change the world anytime soon:

“Starlink is bumping up against a reality articulated by many skeptics of satellite Internet,” the WSJ wrote. “The majority of the world’s population that the business could serve and that can afford high-speed broadband lives in cities. In those regions, Internet service is readily available, usually offers cheaper monthly costs than Starlink and doesn’t require specialized equipment.”

Unlike many of his other projects, Musk was actually fairly clear about the fact that Starlink wouldn’t have the capacity to be disruptive in populated cities. And he noted several times that the project might not be financially viable over the long haul (especially without subsidization, which we all know Musk hates — unless he’s the one being subsidized).

But even in more rural areas, 1.5 million isn’t much of an impact. The FCC (whose data is notoriously… optimistic) notes the U.S. alone has 20 million residents without any broadband access. Some 83 million Americans currently live under a monopoly. Starlink is a tiny drop in the bucket.

The laws of physics and limited capacity aren’t playing well with Musk’s continued decisions to quickly expand access to the service (RVs, airlines, luxury yachts). Over the last few years there have been increasing reports of significant service slowdowns as reality begins to inject itself into the equation. Speedtest provider Ookla has measured it, and found the service has slowed significantly in most countries.

While Starlink has certainly been useful in Ukraine, the flood of stories discussing Musk’s efforts to undermine Ukraine military efforts he personally disagrees with tend to overstate the size and importance of Starlink. Starlink’s customer service also doesn’t appear to be scaling very well, with users routinely noting it can be very difficult to get refunds or even a response email from the company.

So again… Starlink is useful for those out of range of traditional broadband who can afford it, but the idea that it was ever going to truly disrupt broadband access was mostly the byproduct of Musk fanboys and tech press outlets that weren’t fully paying attention. It’s never been something that was going to be disruptive at the kind of scale the company originally promised investors in pitch decks.

There are plenty of challenges on the horizon as well, including fewer government subsidies (a Trump attempt to give Musk’s Starlink a billion dollars for absolutely no reason has long-since fallen apart), a flood of LEO competitors (like Jeff Bezos) coming to market, and Musk’s ongoing erratic descent into tween 4chan memelord dipshittery all pose additional challenges for the service in the years ahead.

Filed Under: broadband, digital divide, elon musk, internet service, low earth satellite, starlink, telecom
Companies: spacex, starlink

A Banana Puts The Final Nail In The Coffin Of 5G Hype

Overhype

from the they're-putting-5g-in-bananas-now? dept

We’ve long noted how 5G wireless is more of an evolution than a revolution. Yes, it results in faster, better networks, but it’s not a technology that’s truly transformative.

Knowing this, the wireless industry spent years coming up with all kinds of outlandish claims about how 5G can cure cancer or solve climate change in a bid to drum up interest and sales. My favorite type of this marketing involves taking something that doesn’t actually need 5G to work, and pretending that only 5G innovation made it possible. Then watching as a lazy press just regurgitates the claims.

Like when T-Mobile got a bunch of credulous press coverage for a robot that could give remote tattoos over 5G (which could have been done over 4G, or Wi-Fi, or even DSL). Or when a Korean coffee brand got oodles of free press for a “5G powered robot barista” (which could have been done over Wi-Fi). Or when the industry claimed that 5G and AR would revolutionize fashion by letting folks watch fashion shows in AR or VR (which could have been done… you get the point).

Mindless 5G medical hype has been a particularly healthy niche. Like when Verizon hyped “5G-powered” medical gear that not only didn’t actually require 5G to work, but wasn’t likely to be used by actual medical professionals who generally prefer fiber, Ethernet, and gigabit Wi-Fi due to the less reliable nature of cellular.

There’re just endless examples of this kind of marketing symbiosis between wireless carriers and a lazy, gullible tech press.

The latest and potentially greatest example of this art form involves the claim that 5G helped conduct a remote surgery on a banana between London and Los Angeles. A video purportedly showing the procedure has been making the rounds for a few years, often resulting in clickbait stories all over the internet about how this was only made possible by the low-latency, innovative potential of 5G!

More recently, The Verge’s Nilay Patel did some very basic due diligence and found that the entire thing was bullshit. So much bullshit, in fact, that played absolutely no role in what was shown:

“This video does not in any way show a robotic surgery being done over 5G. The video was first posted to TikTok during the pandemic by Dr. Kais Rona, who is a bariatric and robotic surgeon at Smart Dimensions Weight Loss in Southern California, and he’s been actively telling people that it’s not 5G ever since.”

Usually, a company like Verizon or Huawei will conduct an elaborate marketing scheme involving doing medical procedures over 5G to pretend that it’s the 5G making it all possible. Press outlets, some of them reputable, will then regurgitate the claims without noting that 5G isn’t actually making this possible, or that the procedure just as easily could have been done over Wi-Fi, or preferably, fiber optics and Ethernet.

This kind of media gullibility is helpful to a wireless industry keen on obscuring pesky facts like Americans pay some of the highest prices in the world for 5G that’s a half-cooked mess when compared to overseas deployments. It’s hard to find many stories about how U.S. wireless is expensive and mediocre due to monopolization, but you’ll find no shortage of “news” reports lauding 5G’s overstated or outright fraudulent innovation potential.

In this case the 5G bullshit didn’t even need the industry’s involvement. All that was required was a single fake claim on a posted video for the hype to resonate across AI-generated clickbait mills for all of eternity. A pump primed years earlier thanks to uncritical telecom trade mags, and lazy, underpaid reporters who can’t be bothered to ask basic questions or pick up the phone.

Filed Under: 5g, banana surgery, broadband, high speed internet, hype, marketing, surgery, wireless

5G Was An Over-Hyped Dud. Prepare For Nobody To Learn Absolutely Anything From The Experience

Wireless

from the it-only-gets-dumber-from-here dept

We’ve noted for several years how the “race to 5G” was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager to sell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it’s more of an evolution than a revolution.

But that’s not what telecom giants like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T promised. Both routinely promised that 5G would change the way we live and work, usher forth the smart cities of tomorrow, and even revolutionize the way we treat cancer. None of those things wound up being true (I enjoyed talking to one medical professional who basically laughed in my face about the cancer claim).

When 5G did arrive, it didn’t even live up to its basic promise, really. U.S. implementations were decidedly slower, spottier, and more expensive than many overseas networks, thanks to the usual industry consolidation and U.S. regulatory fecklessness. The end result: wireless carriers associated a promising but not world-changing technological improvement with hype and bluster in the mind of consumers.

In a bit of a retrospective, Washington Post tech columnist Shira Ovide looks back at the 5G hype and hopes that maybe, just maybe, somebody in industry will “learn their lesson” from the experience:

We and companies that make technology must acknowledge that not every new technology changes our lives — at least not in a way that makes for a compelling science fiction movie…5G was an incremental technical improvement that companies tried to tell us was a revolutionary leap. It wasn’t.

The sentiment of the piece is absolutely correct. Industry claims should be grounded in reality to ensure consumers, markets, investors, and the public have a realistic, fact-based understanding of a technology’s potential.

But in case you hadn’t noticed with NFT, crypto, AI, and every other technology hype cycle that rolls through, there’s no financial incentive for measured introspection of this type in the attention economy we’ve created. You don’t get the kind of headlines and attention companies and VC’s crave by explaining what a technology actually does, you increasingly get it by being monumentally full of shit.

That’s particularly true with a technology like 5G, that wasn’t a revolution so much as an evolution of existing tech. Not to say 5G doesn’t bring value, but faster, lower latency networks that are easier to maintain simply isn’t sexy, and to keep boosting marketing and investment returns in this increasingly unhinged attention economy, companies are routinely motivated to embrace the preposterous.

Filed Under: 5g, broadband, hype, networks, telecom, wireless

AT&T Shoves Long Neglected DSL Customers To Wireless, Insists That’s Good Enough

Wireless

from the half-assery dept

A few years ago AT&T, a company that tried to cheap out on upgrading its broadband lines to fiber, effectively stopped selling DSL. While that’s understandable given the dated copper-based tech, the problem is that thanks to concentrated telecom monopolization, many of these customers were left without any replacement options due to a lack of competition.

There are other issues at play too. AT&T has, for decades, received countless billions in tax cuts, subsidies, merger approvals, and regulatory favors (remember how killing net neutrality, broadbandprivacy rules, or approving a wave of doomed mergers were all supposed to unleash untold innovation, job creation, and network expansion? Yeah, AT&T doesn’t either).

They’ve also lobbied relentlessly to crush small telecom operators that dared to compete with it. And they’ve consistently been subsidized by the government to keep older copper lines (still heavily used by the nation’s elderly to call their grandkids or 911) in service. All the while, they’ve been found repeatedly guilty of “redlining” — or refusing to upgrade poor and minority neighborhoods to fiber despite untold billions in government assistance.

Three years after unceremoniously hanging up on them, and AT&T is finally shoving its long-neglected DSL customers to alternative options: namely, wireless technology that’s still not really a full symmetrical equivalent of fiber. Not all of these neglected customers get the option; only ones that live in areas where AT&T has adequately upgraded its wireless network:

AT&T is currently offering Internet Air to a limited set of copper-based customers in places where AT&T has wireless coverage and capacity to deliver a “high-quality” customer experience, a spokesperson told Fierce.

This is, of course, better than nothing. Especially at $55 a month (plus various, obnoxious fees). But it’s still not really the functional equivalent of the fiber networks AT&T repeatedly promised it would deliver all Americans in exchange for a rotating crop of massive subsidies and government favors. Like, say, the $42 billion Trump tax cut the company falsely claimed would create jobs.

This is a company that has absolutely adored hoovering up subsidies and then running off into the wilderness leaving network upgrades half completed, often with absolutely zero accountability. It’s also a company that’s repeatedly not only been caught ripping off its own customers, but repeatedly ripping off the government and the education system (despite being a trusted NSA ally).

As it stands, there are still “carrier of last resort” laws in some states (like California) that make it difficult for AT&T to disconnect older phone and DSL customers who depend on cheaper access to 911. AT&T lobbyists have been busy for years nibbling away at those requirements, effectively stating that less reliable, slower, patchy (and often throttled, something AT&T has a history of lying about) wireless connections are effectively “good enough.”

You’ll notice how the telecom trade magazine linked above mentions… absolutely none of this.

Someday wireless will be a symmetrical replacement for fiber, but it absolutely isn’t yet, despite endless telecom giant pretense to the contrary. Shoving these long-neglected DSL customers at wireless (if they’re lucky) after being paid untold billions to upgrade them to fiber is something countless captured state and federal telecom policymakers would very much love to memory hole.

Filed Under: 5g, broadband, carrier of last resort, digital divide, dsl, fiber, high speed internet, subsidies, telecom, wireless
Companies: at&t

Canada Follows U.S. Lead On Mindless Consolidation With Rogers, Shaw Merger Approval

Wireless

from the learning-nothing-from-experience dept

In both Canada and the U.S., there’s no shortage of evidence that consolidation in telecom and media hasn’t been great for telecom and media — or employers, competition, or consumers.

That’s not really stopping regulators in either country, who continue to approve massive harmful megadeals with only the pretense of meaningful review. Canada’s just approved the massive $16-$25 billion merger between two of its biggest telecom, wireless, and media behemoths: Shaw and Rogers.

The review took two years, with regulators particularly concerned about how the merger would impact wireless competition. Not so concerned that they’d be willing to block the merger, however. The deal was approved, but Shaw was required to offload its wireless arm, Freedom Mobile, to Videotron:

That final approval came from Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, which approved the transfer of Shaw’s spectrum licenses to Videotron. These license transfers are necessary because as part of the deal, Shaw was required to divest its Freedom Mobile wireless business. Shaw is selling Freedom Mobile to Videotron, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Quebecor.

Canadian regulators followed the lead of U.S. regulators, who recently approved the Sprint T-Mobile merger without actually reading studies on the deal’s impact. They then tried to pretend the consolidation wouldn’t be harmful by trying to create a new replacement competitor out of Dish Network, a process that’s…looking more and more doomed by the month.

The problem with megadeal conditions in both countries is several fold. One, regulators are comically captured, so accountability for when companies break their promises are fleeting at best. And two, the consolidation created by such deals further offsets an already muted incentive to meaningfully compete on price, expand access to broadband, or generally, you know, try.

Antitrust oversight now routinely fails to function in the U.S. and Canada. Softball mainstream media coverage provides cover for deal shortcomings, with any real criticism relegated to underfunded fringe outlets, while mainstream outlets push stories featuring quotes from industry officials claiming the deal will be an “exciting new chapter” and create a “rising star” in media and telecom.

The 5,000 to 10,000 lost jobs become an afterthought.  The fact that Canadians already pay some of the highest prices in the world for wireless data (directly due to past consolidation) becomes an afterthought. Data showing looming price hikes become footnotes. And the regulators who approve such deals soon enter the revolving door, and the entire approval process gets memory holed.

Filed Under: canada, competition, consolidation, megamergers, regulatory capture, telecom

Congress Lets The FCC’s Spectrum Auction Authority Lapse For No Good Reason

Wireless

from the bang-up-job dept

Last week, Congress failed to shake off corruption and buckled to a telecom industry’ smear campaign to scuttle the nomination of Gigi Sohn to the FCC. This week, the government body shifted from corruption to ordinary incompetence, after it failed to renew the FCC’s Spectrum Auction authority for no coherent reason.

The FCC is in charge of managing our scarce wireless spectrum troves on behalf of its technical and rightful owner, the American public. For the last thirty years, like clockwork, Congress has renewed the agency’s authority to manage and auction this important resource. Until last week when Congress just… couldn’t be bothered to get around to it:

“Yesterday, for the first time since the agency gained this authority 30 years ago, Congress failed to extend it when the Senate refused to act. The House did its work – we unanimously passed a bipartisan bill introduced by me and Chair Rodgers last month to extend the spectrum auction authority to May 19th. Our legislation would have prevented this lapse in authority.”

Unlike the Sohn scrum, which was basically just Congress being too fucking corrupt to function in the public interest, nobody, anywhere (including industry), actually wanted the FCC’s spectrum auction authority to lapse. Yet it did thanks to what appears to be dumb, pointless wrangling:

Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., the sponsor of legislation that would extend the FCC authority until Sept. 30, and co-sponsor Mazie K. Hirono, D-Hawaii, sought unanimous consent to pass their legislation Thursday, but Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., objected.

Welch supported an extension through May 19, the date included in a bill the House passed last month, spokeswoman Emily Becker said. She said the longer extension would have been a disincentive to a swift agreement on behalf of consumers, saying the public interest would be better served if Congress and stakeholders arrived at an agreement as quickly as possible.

So, as it currently stands, the FCC still lacks a voting majority to do much of anything meaningful or controversial because Congress buckled to a bad faith industry smear campaign against a popular reformer. Now the FCC lacks the authority to manage wireless spectrum because a dumb, pointless dispute by a handful of Senators.

Consumer groups were quick to note that this is a bit of a pattern when it comes to federal telecom oversight and regulatory competency lately. Government continues to throw billions of dollars at a “digital divide” lawmakers claim is a top priority, yet lawmakers can’t seem to do basic things to ensure the nation’s top telecom and media regulator has the staff or authority needed to do its job.

Filed Under: congress, digital divide, fcc, high speed internet, spectrum, telecom, wireless

Wireless Carriers Find That Nobody Cares About 5G Despite Years Of Hype

Overhype

from the hype-overdose dept

We’ve noted for a long time how the “race to 5G” was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager to sell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it’s more of an evolution than a revolution.

But that’s not what telecom giants like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T promised. Both routinely promised that 5G would change the way we live and work, usher forth the smart cities of tomorrow, and even revolutionize the way we treat cancer. None of those things wound up being true, and consumers have very much noticed.

Analysts indicate that consumer interest in 5G has all but slowed to a trickle, as there’s still no real mind-blowing use cases that demonstrate its superiority to 4G:

“The hype for 5G has dwindled, and demand has shifted to more practical aspects of smartphones such as battery life, storage, processor speed, and camera quality,” says ​​Chiew Le Xuan, an analyst at Canalys. “Everyone is feeling the pinch and the practical uses of 5G have yet to be seen.” He argues that, in the vast majority of cases, 4G speeds are sufficient for everyday use.

The problem is compounded here in the states by the fact that U.S. 5G, due in part to a dearth of middle-band spectrum, is significantly slower than most overseas variants. That made it particularly difficult for companies like Verizon that tried to justify charging customers more for 5G. Especially now that many consumers are facing higher costs for many goods and services.

The one instance where 5G services have proven more popular is fixed 5G wireless, which is making some modest competitive inroads against the nation’s cable monopolies (83 million Americans currently live under a fixed-line broadband monopoly). But in terms of being a revolutionary technology that quickly drove smart cars and smarter cities to market, years of marketing hype have come up empty.

That’s, again, not to say that 5G doesn’t have benefits, but the benefits that existed were dramatically overstated by carriers looking to generate hype. That, in turn, has associated the standard in the minds of many consumers with hype and bluster, something that could have been avoided with just a little bit of marketing humility.

Filed Under: 5g, high speed internet, telecom, wireless
Companies: at&t, t-mobile, verizon

5G Hype Simply Didn’t Deliver

Overhype

from the stop-overhyping-everything dept

We’ve noted for several years how the “race to 5G” was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager to sell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it’s more of an evolution than a revolution.

But that’s not what telecom giants like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T promised. Both routinely promised that 5G would change the way we live and work, usher forth the smart cities of tomorrow, and even revolutionize the way we treat cancer. None of those things wound up being true.

Two big claims by the wireless industry was that 5G was going to revolutionize self-driving vehicle automation and be a key player in the “metaverse” (Facebook’s idiotic term for all future interactive online technologies that involve virtual spaces). But again, that didn’t happen either:

Specifically, metaverse proponent Meta (formerly Facebook) lost more than $700 billion in value during 2022, with shares tumbling further this week on news that CEO Mark Zuckerberg will continue investing in metaverse services into 2023. Separately, Tesla, Ford and General Motors have all notched notable setbacks in their pursuit of autonomous cars, a concept that has received an estimated $100 billion in research and development so far. One autonomous driving pioneer recently bemoaned the fact that the technology “has delivered so little.”

Of course, the Zuckerverse and full self driving falling on their faces weren’t 5G’s fault. But again, 5G was supposed to be a driving force for these evolutions, yet simply didn’t deliver on any of the promises we were subjected to over the last half a decade. It didn’t even fully deliver (yet) on its most basic of promises: affordable next-generation connectivity.

US 5G performance was significantly worse than most overseas deployments due to a dearth of middle-band spectrum. Less talked about (because it’s a preferred outcome for the industry and the policymakers who love them) is the fact U.S. wireless data prices continue to be some of the highest in the developed world, something that only tends to increase with market consolidation.

Getting excited about innovative new technologies is one thing, but the massive chasm that continues to grow between marketing hype and reality in America is something else altogether. Unrealistic claims may drive stock valuations and Elon Musk’s ego on Twitter, but it eventually puts a bad taste in the mouth of actual consumers, and in 5G’s case associated the wireless standard with hype and bluster.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, wireless

Dish’s ‘New 5G Network’ Remains Kind Of A Mess

Wireless

from the good-luck-with-that dept

You might recall that the Trump administration “fix” to the competition and layoff problems created by the Sprint T-Mobile merger (which consolidated four major wireless players into three major players) was to have Dish build a new 5G network. But the effort has been a sloppy mess from the start, and three months into its commercial launch, there’s not a whole lot of indication it’s gotten much better.

The Verge has been putting the Dish network through its paces, and continues to come away disappointed, noting that the network still only supports one phone, coverage is spotty at best, and the company couldn’t even be bothered to build a working customer support portal:

Perhaps the biggest missing piece for Project Genesis is any sort of account management system. Because of some launch-day issues that have since been resolved, I had to sign up with a service address that isn’t actually my home address. To change it, I had to contact support because there’s currently no web portal or screen in the app that lets you see or change those details.

As we noted a few times, the proposal was never likely to succeed.

One, because Dish had no track record in this space outside of a parade of empty promises. Two, because the remaining three providers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) and Wall Street want less price competition and would be incentivized at every step to ensure it fails. And three, because an incompetent and feckless FCC (displaying various degrees of said incompetence and fecklessness under both parties) would not likely dole out more than wrist slaps should Dish miss major build out milestones.

Under FCC and DOJ merger rules, Dish’s semi-functional 5G network has to cover 70% of the population by next June and 75% of the U.S. by 2025. And then of course it needs to attract consumers and remain financially viable, which will be hard to do without phone selection or working customer service.

Despite bubbly banter from telecom trade mags, Dish hasn’t shown the competency to pull this off. At any point. And the FCC (be it under Trump or Biden) hasn’t shown it’s competent enough to hold Dish’s feet to the fire. At any point. Dish also continues to bleed money from its sagging satellite TV and existing wireless business (which was supposed to cushion the huge costs of building out this giant 5G network).

I still tend to think Dish drags the feckless FCC along for a few years before the company sells whatever it has built and its huge spectrum holdings to somebody like Verizon. At which point the FCC (maybe?) doles out a few wrist slaps for missing key milestones (which will be blamed on COVID, inflation, or antifa), and Dish CEO Charlie Ergen wanders off into the sunset of retirement.

And I’m still not entirely sure that wasn’t the whole goal from the start. Kind of a dumb stage play that extends Dish’s publicly traded life span a few years while spectrum assets appreciate, but primarily provides flimsy justification for approving mindless industry consolidation.

Filed Under: 5g, antitrust, competition, doj, fcc, megamergers, telecom
Companies: dish

FCC Does The Bare Minimum: Asks Wireless Carriers To Be Honest About Location Data

Privacy

from the base-levels-of-transparency dept

It took fifteen years filled with constant scandal, but the FCC finally recently announced that it would be “cracking down on” wireless carrier abuse of consumer location data, thanks to pressure from our new post-Roe reality. This “crackdown” involves politely asking the nation’s top wireless carriers to disclose what kind of location data they were collecting, and who they’ve been sharing and selling it to.

Wireless carriers have now shared their responses with the FCC, all of which have been posted to the agency’s website:

“Today, I’m publishing the responses I received from mobile carriers on how they handle geolocation data to help shed light on this issue for consumers. Additionally, I have asked the Enforcement Bureau to launch a new investigation into mobile carriers’ compliance with FCC rules that require carriers to fully disclose to consumers how they are using and sharing geolocation data,” said Chairwoman Rosenworcel.

So basically the FCC is asking an industry with a history of lying about this stuff to be transparent about what they’re collecting and selling, and if they’re very clearly breaking fairly flimsy agency rules, they might face penalties. Someday. If those enforcements can survive an agency that’s been intentionally vote gridlocked by the telecom industry.

Consumer groups applauded the move, but were quick to note that carriers responses — and behaviors — were all over the map:

“These letters show that, despite the constant invocation of carriers of ‘industry standards’ and ‘best practices,’ carrier geolocation data practices are all over the map. The only ‘industry standard’ appears to be that there is no standard at all for how long carriers retain data, how they protect it or how hard they make it for their customers to invoke their rights,” Harold Feld, senior vice president for the digital rights group Public Knowledge, said in reaction to the commission’s release of the companies’ responses Thursday.

While there are some wireless carriers who claim to never collect or sell user location data, others (notably Verizon and AT&T) utilize familiar legalese to suggest the collection and sale of this data is tightly controlled, anonymous, and secure, despite the fact that, again, fifteen years of scandals have shown that’s very much never been the case.

Activists, for years, have warned about the obvious threat of over-collection and sharing of sensitive consumer wireless location data, be it gleaned from your mobile phone or apps. Now, post-Roe, it’s all but guaranteed this and other data (search histories, app usage) are going to be used by states (and vigilantes, since this data is often easy to purchase) targeting abortion seekers and those who help them.

It’s all a bit of an enforcement nightmare. Most companies claim that collecting this data isn’t a big deal because it’s “anonymized,” despite the fact that studies keep showing that word means nothing. Telecom giants often claim they don’t “sell” this kind of data, but that’s often found to be a lie (they just call the practice of bundling and transferring and selling it to others something else entirely).

Telecom giants also routinely claim to have working opt out tools, but that’s often found to be a dubious claim as well, with opt out systems that either don’t work, only temporarily opt you out of surveillance, or only opt you out of seeing targeted advertising but not the underlying creation of profiles based on a broad combination of location, browsing, and other data.

That’s before you get to the fact that industry has worked tirelessly to try and ensure the FCC lacks the authority to do much of anything even if you could clearly prove they’re breaking the law or FCC rules.

For one, we don’t really have functional privacy laws for the modern Internet era, so there’s often no law to break. And the FCC has increasingly seen its authority on consumer protection and privacy stripped away by captured lawmakers as part of a multi-decade campaign to lobotomize telecom sector oversight. The agency also remains in a 2-2 commissioner voting gridlock specifically thanks to the lobbying of these same companies in pursuit of a zero-accountability environment.

Even if an intentionally underfunded, understaffed, and underpowered U.S. regulator can bring enforcement action and survive a legal campaign against a company like AT&T with unlimited resources, the penalties often wind up being a tiny fraction of the revenue gleaned from any abuse.

So while asking some questions and only just starting to consider holding companies accountable if they’re breaking the rules is a good start, it’s a comically belated one. And it may not mean a whole lot if boxed-in and/or captured regulators don’t meaningfully follow through.

Filed Under: browsing data, fcc, ftc, location data, surveillance, wireless