NDIA and Common Sense Media Highlight Community Perspectives on Digital Discrimination

In the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Congress recognized that digital discrimination is a real and present problem for many people and charged the Federal Communications Commission with developing rules to prevent and eliminate it. NDIA and Common Sense Media submitted comments in response to the FCC’s recent Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the forthcoming digital discrimination rules. Examples of discriminatory practices to look out for: Pricing, Performance, Customer service, Network maintenance, Contract terms and conditions, and Marketing. We urged the FCC to develop comprehensive rules to capture all forms of digital discrimination that deny a person equal access to broadband service and to prioritize the following in its rules:

• Digital Discrimination can be intentional or unintentional. A service provider’s unintentional practices can leave individuals and communities without equal broadband access need to find evidence that a service provider intended to discriminate to take action to stop it. 
• Consumers and their lived experiences should be what drive the rulemaking process. The FCC should consistently consult with consumers and those who serve them, like digital inclusion practitioners and digital navigators, to fully understand their experiences and how the rules and processes developed can best serve them. 
• The FCC should revise the consumer complaint system. The FCC should make this process easier for individuals to navigate, and organizations should be able to easily submit complaints on behalf of communities impacted by digital discrimination and should also proactively analyze the data they collect through the complaint system to look for patterns of discrimination. This information should also be available to the public.
• The FCC should leverage data to uncover patterns of digital discrimination. The FCC should evaluate data from the Broadband Data Collection (BDC), the Broadband Data Act mapping process, along with data from other sources, (e.g., the Census Bureau) to look for patterns of digital discrimination.
• The FCC should conduct outreach to ensure the public understands their rights. Once the digital discrimination rules are adopted, the Commission should conduct outreach, awareness, and education campaigns across the country to ensure communities, digital inclusion practitioners, advocates, and consumers fully understand the rules, their importance, and how to navigate the complaint process. The FCC Commission should create a “Consumer Bill of Rights,” stating the rules in plain language and launch a “Know Your Rights” campaign complete with marketing and user-friendly educational materials.