from the dysfunction-junction dept

Americans pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for broadband due to consolidated monopoly power and feckless regulators. It’s a problem the U.S. government lacks the competence or political integrity to fix. So what we usually get are strange Band-Aids that treat the symptoms of the underlying problem (unchecked corporate power muting competition).

Case in point: during the peak of the pandemic, the FCC launched the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB program), giving lower income Americans a $50 ($75 for those in tribal lands) discount off of their broadband bill. Under the program, the government gave money to ISPs, which then doled out discounts to low income users if they qualified.

The EBB was rebranded the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) as part of the Infrastructure Bill (the payout was dropped to $30 a month). 22 million Americans are currently receiving the discount; but bumbling incompetence in Congress means the program is at risk of not being renewed, notes Gigi Sohn (whose FCC nomination was recently demolished by a telecom industry smear campaign):

“Congress is on the verge of letting the program run out of money if swift action is not taken to extend ACP funding,” Sohn said. “I urge Congress to meet the moment and invest at least $6 billion to keep this program funded through 2024, giving policymakers time to find ACP funding a permanent home,” Sohn’s statement said.

I’m of dual minds about the program.

On one hand, government is basically throwing millions of dollars at regional telecom monopolies and duopolies to temporarily lower prices that wouldn’t be high in the first place if these exact same companies hadn’t spent the last 30 years undermining all competition and lobbying government oversight into a pathetic and purposeless goo.

On the other hand, more than 22 million low income Americans (it’s projected to be closer to 25 million by April) are currently subscribed to the program. And ripping it out from underneath their feet doesn’t seem fair to those families. Especially in context of the billions of dollars we routinely throw at industry in exchange for half-completed networks or a giant bucket of layoffs.

Ideally, you’d have lawmakers and regulators with the courage to tackle the real cause of expensive U.S. broadband: monopoly power, unchecked corporate political influence (corruption), and a lack of meaningful competition. Breaking the monopoly logjam by supporting things like publicly-owned open access fiber networks would go a long way to driving competition to market.

We don’t have public officials like that (again, please see the coordinated industry smear campaign against Gigi Sohn to understand why), so instead we get programs like the ACP. Or efforts by the FCC to apply “nutrition labels” to broadband, which demand that big telecom monopolies are transparent about how they rip you off, but, again, do nothing about the underlying cause of high prices in the first place.

This kind of regulatory theater is often kind of silly. But in this case it resulted in a program that’s genuinely helping low-income Americans, even if it’s probably going about it the wrong way. The program is poised to run out of funding by April if Congress can’t get its act together. And despite bipartisan approval for renewal, it remains entirely unclear if that’s going to happen.

If it doesn’t, millions of Americans getting temporary relief from telecom monopolization in the form of monthly discounts will suddenly be thrown right back into the fire.

Filed Under: Affordable Connectivity Program, affordable internet, broadband, fcc, high speed internet, low income, telecom