Cable lobby and Ted Cruz are disappointed as FCC bans digital discrimination::FCC will investigate ISP practices that discriminate by income level or race.

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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    1 year ago

    if they are going to fight regulation this bad, maybe we just need to declare it a utility and strip the profit motive from these profits-over-humanity asssssssholes

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Maybe? It is a damn utility. Just another key national resource trapped behind the claws of capitalist scum, just like medical and the like

      • Toribor@corndog.social
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        1 year ago

        I gave old people the benefit of the doubt before. If you’re not of working age you may have missed the internet transitioning from a novelty to an essential way of life over the last 20 years. But post-Covid it should be clear to everyone how essential it is.

        My mom retired from teaching but her last year was spent teaching kids remotely. In a rural area it’s tough to get an internet connection that can handle a video call, and for poor families it’s a luxury they can’t afford. Students without a good internet connection fell way behind. Is it even possible to find a job these days without using the internet? At least one that pays above poverty wages?

        It definitely should be a utility. It’s yet another way the government allows private companies to extract wealth for an essential service while ISP’s spend their profits lobbying the government to ban municipal community owned fiber.

        • ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Is Internet access in the US this bad? I come from a very rural area in Germany and we got upgraded from 100KBit/s to 100MBit/s about a decade ago. Not that 100MBit/s is anything to write home about.

          • Pickle_Jr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            It truly, truly, truly depends where you live.

            In my neck of the woods, I can get 1.5 gigs for $85usd a month. In the same state, in my “small” home town (population 10k), you’d be lucky to find 30mbs for less than $135 a month.

          • Toribor@corndog.social
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            1 year ago

            If you live in town, even in a very rural area you typically going to have at least one, maybe two options for decent internet even if the cost might be absurd compared to areas with more competition. The further you stray out of town though, your options might disappear entirely leaving you with options like satellite internet or mobile hotspots.

            When my mom was teaching through Covid she had at least 2 or 3 students in class (class size varying between 15-25 students) that either had no internet at home or their internet was not sufficient to handle a video call.

            • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Actually in cities, due to government-instituted monopolies on infrastructure, it can sometimes be worse. Until recently, in my city there was only one option for wired broadband.

      • Infynis@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        I think there was some effort, back in like 2010, to try to get the government to go into the market like a business, and just out compete the actual cable companies. Obviously, nothing ever came of that on a national level, but there are some local governments doing it. My grandpa is the township commissioner for a little township in northern Michigan, and he’s been working on getting it for his township for a while. I think they just started rolling it out recently

    • thisisawayoflife@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Been trying for twenty years. The Internet is still pretty fly by night for most people. Flash in the pan, nobody will ever use it for anything important.

  • Neeen@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    “(this decision) is not compatible with the fundamental concept of free market capitalism” Sounds to me like they’re admitting that free market capitalism is bad for the people.

  • db2@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    I’d say “fuck Ted Cruz” but that’s something nobody should ever do.

  • JakenVeina@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Brendan Carr complained that the order empowers the FCC “to regulate each and every ISP’s network infrastructure deployment, network reliability, network upgrades, network maintenance, customer premise equipment, installation, speeds, capacity, latency, data caps, throttling, pricing, promotional rates, late fees, opportunity for equipment rental, installation time, contract renewal terms, service termination fees,” and more.

    Awesome!

    Of course, given this statement, the one thing we can be sure of about these new rules is that they do not do this.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    “Under these rules, the FCC can protect consumers by directly addressing companies’ policies and practices if they differentially impact consumers’ access to broadband Internet access service or are intended to do so, and by applying these protections to ensure communities see equitable broadband deployment, network upgrades, and maintenance,” an FCC announcement today said.

    ISPs, including Comcast, Charter, AT&T, and Verizon, recently held a flurry of meetings with FCC officials and commissioners in which they argued that the rules are too broad and exceed the authority granted by Congress.

    ISPs urged the commission to drop the plan’s proposal to require that prices charged to consumers be non-discriminatory.

    But while the final order is not yet public, it apparently will include the pricing rules and other requirements that ISPs and Republicans oppose.

    Carr previously referred to the rules as “President Biden’s plan to give the administrative state effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the US,” claiming it “is motivated by an ideology of government control that is not compatible with the fundamental precepts of free market capitalism.”

    In 2021, Congress required the Federal Communications Commission to issue rules “preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin” within two years.


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