Trump’s FCC Will Let Big Telecom Destroy Small Houston ISPs As It Rebuilds After Harvey

As Texas starts to dry out from the damage of Hurricane Harvey, another perfect storm is forming. In a strange twist of timing, Big Telecom may walk away from the storm with an unfair advantage that could hurt smaller, local providers in Houston—and drive up costs for consumers in the process.

Across the country, Big Telecom has gradually been retiring old copper lines—used to delivery home phone as well as broadband—and replacing them with modern infrastructure, like fiber optic cables. When a natural disaster like Harvey wipes out the old wires, it's a good excuse for the provider to do a widespread upgrade. But because the Federla Communications Commission is currently rolling back regulations that require large ISPs—usually called the incumbent provider—to give access to infrastructure to small ISPs, these upgrades could leave smaller providers in the lurch.