Affordability/Cost/Price

Let’s stop ignoring the obvious: broadband internet access service is a public utility and needs to be regulated as one.

There are many challenges to broadband connectivity in rural and unserved areas of Texas, and currently Texas is one of six states that does not have a statewide broadband plan. In studying the progress of broadband development in unserved areas, the Council found that over 300,000 locations in Texas are unserved. As of July 2020, an estimated 926,859 Texans do not have access to broadband at home. The Council found that Texas’ rural population represents approximately 90 percent of all Texans without broadband access. The Council also studied barriers to broadband development in Texas.

Top Senate Democrats are calling on electric, gas, water and telecommunications giants to voluntarily halt all utility shutoffs for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. The request - sent in a letter to 21 of the largest utility companies including AT&T and Verizon - illustrates the country’s lingering economic needs even as Washington fails to coalesce around a new coronavirus relief package, which congressional Democrats say should include a disconnection ban and other aid to help fa

The new fervor for tech antitrust has so far overlooked an equally obvious target: US broadband providers. “If you want to talk about a history of using gatekeeper power to harm competitors, there are few better examples,” says Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate Gigi Sohn. Sohn and other critics of the four companies that dominate US broadband—Verizon, Comcast, Charter Communications, and AT&T—argue that antitrust intervention has been needed for years to lower prices and widen internet access.

For all that has changed since the Benton Institute released Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s, this goal remains paramount. In October 2019, we said that connecting our entire nation through High-Performance Broadband would bring remarkable economic, social, cultural, and personal benefits. We said that open, affordable, robust broadband is the key to all of us reaching for—and achieving—the American Dream.

In October 2019, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society issued Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s. The agenda was comprehensive, constructed upon achievements in communities and insights from experts across the nation. The report outlined the key building blocks of broadband policy—deployment, competition, community anchor institutions, and digital equity (including affordability and adoption).

The pandemic has widened long-existing inequities like the digital divide — the term used to refer to the fact that many people across the country lack access to affordable broadband due to a cycle of profit-driven discrimination. Congress cannot stand idly by while millions of people across the country are unable to connect with loved ones, work from home, engage in distance learning, take advantage of telehealth or otherwise fully participate in society because they lack affordable broadband access.

The internet has grown into a utility, and internet access should be regulated as such. The position of the US government — not to mention phone and cable companies — is that the internet is a free-market service, full stop. It’s not a utility. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai says the internet industry merits only what he calls “light-touch” regulation, which is to say hardly any regulation at all. “The FCC’s light-touch approach is working,” Chairman Pai declared in 2019.

ACA Connects and EducationSuperHighway announced they are partnering in support of the “K-12 Bridge to Broadband” initiative to connect students with online learning.

AT&T has stopped making connections to users subscribing to its DSL Internet as of Oct 1st. It looks like the most conservative number of those affected by the decision will be about 80,000 households that have no other option. Analysis using the Federal Communication Commission’s Form 477 data shows that the Deep South will be hit the hardest, with 13,200 households in Georgia, 11,700 in Florida, and 9,700 in Mississippi. South Carolina and Texas have just under 8,000 households affected.