Pandemic Spurs Deregulatory DC

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s monthly drip drip drip of process deregulation has become a flood, at least temporarily, as rules for how broadband subsidy money is spent, how spectrum can be used -- and who can use it -- are being modified and waived right and left. The avowed goal is to keep America connected at a time when broadband is a literal lifeline for a homebound populace. That flood is a pedal to the metal version of the chairman’s aim of clearing out the regulatory “underbrush.” But loosening the rules on how money is spent — many meant to keep tabs on that outflow to prevent waste, fraud and abuse — is not part of the usual game plan for a conservative Republican chairman. Some see leveraging the crisis to try and secure long-held positions and actions as a sort of public-interest opportunism. But it is undeniable that access to broadband, particularly in rural areas already isolated by geographical distance, has taken on a new urgency. It was also not lost on net neutrality activists that the handful of issues a court had with the FCC’s deregulation of ISPs was that the agency had not sufficiently gauged the impact on public safety and the Lifeline program that subsidizes broadband to low-income households. The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, which advocates for expanding the Lifeline program, is calling on the FCC to automatically enroll those 10 million jobless in Lifeline’s broadband subsidy, and to boost subsidies from $9.95 per month to $50.