S Derek Turner

Free Press explains that the Federal Communications Commission's Title II authority allows it to safeguard Net Neutrality and hold companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon accountable to internet users across the United States. Title II is not just a legal framework that protects Net Neutrality. The ability to access quality broadband service no matter where one may live, or no matter one’s racial or ethnic identity, still matters. The ability to subscribe to broadband at an affordable price still matters.

When Congress created the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program (BEAD) and $14.25 billion Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), it also enacted Section 60506 of that law, which directs the Federal Communications Commission to “prevent[ ] digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin.” Congress enacted this non-discrimination statute based on mounting evidence that low-income people and people of color are more likely to live in monopoly broadband area

Free Press called on the Federal Communications Commission to reinvent its Universal Service Fund (USF) policies so that millions more people can afford the costs of connectivity in the United States. Free Press urged the FCC and Congress to redraft policies crafted in the late 1990s, and last overhauled more than a decade ago, to reflect the sector’s many changes. Free Press wrote, “the good intentions that fueled that effort are no longer a reliable blueprint in a fundamentally changed marketplace.

Today’s USTelecom update is just more of the same grossly misleading and inaccurate analysis of broadband prices first seen in a prior report released last year. This new report, like the earlier versions, falsely asserts that the broadband prices internet users pay are declining.

The facts on pricing and profits for the US broadband industry, the varying ways to measure prices, the important differences between these methods, and how certain methods can be used to obfuscate the reality of what is happening in the market and at the kitchen table. Government and industry data note the strength and weaknesses in each form and highlight how the ISP industry and its apologists use this kind of data to mislead. Some of our findings include:

AT&T is promising to spend an additional billion dollars in 2018 if Congress slashes its tax bill for the next 10 years or more, and the company isn’t making any promises beyond that. This extra billion in investment would cost the rest of us at least $50 billion over the next decade. That’s a literal steal for AT&T and its shareholders. Put another way: For the $50 billion this corporate tax break would cost us for AT&T alone, the government could pay to have fiber-to-the-home built to every single AT&T-covered household that doesn’t yet have it.

In this report, we demonstrate that communities of color find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide for home-Internet access – both in terms of adoption and deployment – in a manner that income differences alone don’t explain. Once we control for other economic and demographic factors that contribute to this divide, the data illustrate persistent broadband adoption and deployment gaps for people of different races and ethnicities. We find that several personal and household characteristics are associated with home-Internet adoption, including race and ethnicity, along with family income, educational attainment, and use of the Internet at work or school. There are however large differences in some of these factors depending on a person’s race or ethnicity.

We conclude that public policies aimed at closing the digital divide must focus on correcting failures endemic to the home-Internet market, such as supra-competitive pricing, provider cross-subsidization, and the lack of a functioning resale/wholesale market. Confronting these market failures would increase the ability of people in marginalized communities to access advanced telecommunications services and purchase those services in an equitable manner.

[Commentary] AT&T just announced that it is buying DirecTV, the nation’s top satellite-TV company, for a total transaction value of $67.1 billion (that’s $48.5 billion in cash and equity, plus $18.6 billion in debt).

For this kingly sum AT&T gets a satellite-only company with declining profits and no physical assets located here on planet Earth. This is by far the dumbest, most wasteful deal ever. (Well, at least since Comcast announced its plans to buy Time Warner Cable.)

These two takeovers are a perfect illustration of everything that’s wrong with America’s telecommunications market. Case in point: For the total price of these two mega-deals, $67 billion, AT&T and Comcast could collectively deploy super-fast gigabit-fiber broadband service to every single home in America.