Matthew Wood

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.

The US telecommunications market has significantly evolved since Congress last overhauled the Communications Act more than a quarter century ago. But the Federal Communication Commission’s universal service distribution policies – though periodically tweaked – are still rooted in a framework designed to support incumbent telephone companies. However, the Congress and the FCC now have before them an opportunity to reimagine and reinvent universal service policy for the future.

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.

On Thursday, December 7th, five internet service providers alleged to Chairman Pai that the current legal framework for Open Internet rules had curtailed their investment and harmed their operations. While the presentations are rife with vague statements and outright errors, there is one thing notably absent from all of them: dollar signs, deployment data, and any other quantifiable metric demonstrating the supposed impact of Title II.

Free Press delivered a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency’s new leadership to take serious strides toward closing the digital divide by making broadband more affordable. New FCC Chairman Ajit Pai recently claimed that closing the divide was going to be “one of his core priorities” during his tenure.

The Free Press letter commends Chairman Pai for this new focus, but strikes a note of caution given his prior track record as a commissioner. “No matter how laudable the new chairman’s sentiment may be, his proposals to close that divide could be ineffective — and even harmful,” Free Press warns. “The Commission must not subsidize build-out that is already occurring in the market, and yet not even address the primary structural barrier keeping tens of millions of people offline: affordability of the services already available to them.” ”Our research contains many similar findings that all point to the same conclusion: the root cause of the adoption gap is the lack of affordability, and that is an outcome created primarily by a market structure that produces too few affordable choices and suboptimal competition. The adoption gap is an affordability gap,” the Free Press letter reads. Pai’s preliminary plan focuses on giving significant tax breaks to the handful of ISPs that control the broadband-access marketplace. Pai proposes using taxpayer dollars to fund the construction of gigabit networks in below-average-income neighborhoods, despite the fact that most of these deployment projects are already underway. His plan does nothing to make these services affordable.