1. Monthly archive
  2. November 2018

November 2018

Why is AT&T ending discounts for low-income customers with landline phones?

I want to give your readers an update on the latest move by AT&T to push people off the traditional home phone service they have relied upon for decades. This past Sept, we began to field calls from worried landline customers, including seniors on fixed incomes, who were among an estimated 5,300 customers to receive a letter from AT&T with the blunt headline: “Your Lifeline discount ends November 20, 2018.” The letter referred to the federal Lifeline program, which offers a monthly credit of up to $11.75 for qualifying low-income customers.

Sponsor: 

Federal Communications Commission

Date: 
Thu, 12/06/2018 - 15:00 to Fri, 12/07/2018 - 22:00

At this meeting, the BDAC will continue considering and will vote on the Model Code for States, and it will hear a status report from the Disaster Response and Recovery Working Group.

This agenda may be modified at the discretion of the BDAC Chair and the Designated Federal Officer (DFO).


From Broad Goals to Antitrust Legislative Standards

The purposes of antitrust law can be broad; the mechanism of antitrust is legal. This is the core of Brandeis’s approach—to find enforceable legal standards that identify harmful industrial conduct in a manner that vindicates social and democratic values through the careful delineation of institutional roles. That job was made easier because Louis Brandeis subscribed to the view that these social and democratic values were all threatened by monopoly; thus by focusing on the practicalities of competition, antitrust statutes could advance broader societal interests as well.

Closing digital skills and broadband gaps key to push back against the divergent features of today’s digitally super-charged economy

 

Chairman Pai isn’t saying whether ISPs deliver the broadband speeds you pay for

Nearly two years have passed since the Federal Communications Commission reported on whether broadband customers are getting the Internet speeds they pay for. In 2011, the Obama-era FCC began measuring broadband speeds in nearly 7,000 consumer homes as part of the then-new Measuring Broadband America program. Each year from 2011 to 2016, the FCC released an annual report comparing the actual speeds customers received to the advertised speeds customers were promised by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, AT&T, and other large Internet service providers (ISPs).

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