The FCC is stopping 9 companies from providing subsidized Internet to the poor
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
More specifically, are his 5 reasons for dissent on this [2]
Basically this program has NO budget so costs have spiraled "From 2008 to 2012, Lifeline spending grew from $821 million to over $2.1 billion, an increase of over 160%."
It also subsidizes way too many households instead of helping those most in need. "Roughly 42 million households are currently eligible for the Lifeline program. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, that is 34% of all households in the United States. Notwithstanding the decline in economic fortunes since 2009, that is too many. The federal government should not be subsidizing broadband service for one-third of our nation’s households. If we are going to expand the program to include broadband, Lifeline should target our neediest citizens. Yet the Commission proposes nothing of the sort."
[1]http://podcast.techfreedom.org/e/153-trump-picks-ajit-pai-fo... [2]https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-15-71A5.pd...
From the linked document: "The average annual household income of those eligible for Lifeline support is roughly $38,000. Numerous families with incomes at that level already subscribe to broadband."
At those incomes all your financial decisions are about food and housing, and hopefully getting clothing donations. Let alone trying to think about educating your kids to try and get them out.
This is a lifeline to people, and helps educate their children. We should be doing more as a society to help those at the bottom.
Which is exactly my point. In the 80s on 38k a year it meant that we could not afford many of the things that others had. New shoes/clothes etc. my parents luckily focused on education, and other quality of life things, rather than spending on frivolous things, like cable. I'd say cable was roughly equivalent to internet today. So that was a choice that they made to go without. And I say Internet would probably have been the same type of decisions.
So while 80k today may be equivalent to 40k from the 80s, I would say 80k for a family of 4 kids would be hard, 40k would be exponentially harder.
By the mid 1980s only about half of households had basic cable.[1] In Chicago, there were complaints about a price hike to $13/month.[2]
Housing costs are the problem. The move to dual-income households, the drop in interest rates, and the population boom caused certain real estate markets to appreciate at a level far above incomes and inflation. The coastal home my parents purchased in the early 1980s has appreciated 10x in value. A similar home in the mid-western state capital of their youth has appreciated 3x over the same period. This is why I called the scenario with 4 kids doable in some (most) parts of the country, but certainly not all.
[1] http://www.tvhistory.tv/Cable_Households_77-99.JPG [2] http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1985/12/30/page/15/articl...
http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-income...
The reason I posted that is because I find it very difficult to believe that any family of 1 or more children on an income of 40k a year today would have a comfortable life, and affording broadband Internet would be difficult.
~half of those households earn more
While many of the commonly seen distributions have median==average, income usually follows a more exponential distribution with the average exceeding the median due to a "heavy tail".
A. Program based (enrolled in Medi-cal, SSI, Food stamp program. (These programs are not easy to qualify for.)
B. Income based (1-2 household: can't make more than 25,900. That includes all income, including gifts. If you have 10 family members you can make $74,900.
I don't think it's "so lax".
They credit a little under $10 bucks a month. So it's a landline, or a lousy cell phone. You still end up paying the rest of the bill. It's not free. (The cell phone providers take the subsidy hoping/praying the customer will go over their credit. "Then we can bill the lousey service!"
I can't imagine a internet provider service for that less than $10 credit. (There must be a catch?)
People complain about the free phones some poor poeople get. It's a horrid cell phone. If you qualify, get the landline, and it's only for local calls.
These days government programs know a lot about households. The Internet has stopped a lot of the fraud. People are very poor, but so many Americans believe the poor are cheating in some way? Those days are kinda over. Big brother knows everything--yea! The Rebublicans stil believe the slackers are cheating the system. Sad.
Obviously this isn’t a widespread problem though, and should be dealt with on a case by case basis.
Many who make claims of poverty can be disengenuous. Income generally excludes non-cash payments from other government programs. You "make" 25,900 a year and get to keep claiming poverty after free healthcare, free housing, free food, free daycare, free internet, free bus transit, etc.
It is the way it calculated, but most of these "poor" live very good lives significantly in excess of their paper poverty. Sometimes far better lives than those making just enough to not qualify for government assistance at all.
This happens in my midwest suburb commonly. It is an unfortunate side effect, more for the middle class than for the poor.
When you are forced into the bottom tier of the medical system you're competing with every other patient with a complaint from constipation to gunshot wounds. These hospitals do not have unlimited resources and triage patients based on need.
The result is someone like me who had an upper respiratory infection slowly getting worse and turning into pneumonia can sit for a day or two in the emergency room waiting for a shot.
I don't know if you're ever had a full blown case of pneumonia but as someone who did and still has scarring in their lungs it's no joke. You slowly drown from the buildup in your lungs and there's nothing you can do but hope the antibiotics outrace the infection before you can no longer breathe.
Does sitting around Ben Taub Hospital in a plastic chair for more than a day sound like "living a pretty good life" to you? I assure you, it is not.
I am not claiming free healthcare is of equal quality to any other healthcare, and I am sorry your experience was so shitty.
https://techpolicycorner.org/trumps-opportunities-on-tech-po...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/09/05...
These are the folks behind "don't break the net", which some folks may remember (http://dontbreakthe.net/)
and in case, you want to engage substantively, it's funny who benefits by shutting down lifeline:
Those "spiraling, out of control costs" are paid for by the universal service fund.
Where would that money otherwise go: https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service-fund
"High Cost Support Mechanism - provides support to certain qualifying telephone companies that serve high cost areas, thereby making phone service affordable for the residents of these regions. "
So - right into the hands of the telecom companies.
Which is precisely why they (and techfreedom!) lobbied to kill Lifeline. It cuts into the money they get from USF.
Where they take it to claim they need it to serve rural areas, while simultaneously, wait for it, lobbying states and others to pass laws banning those municipalities from serving themselves. Because then they'd be free of this crap. Meanwhile, strangely, rural broadband penetration and speed still sucks for real, and the telecoms (and again, techfreedom!) strongly oppose things like "defining broadband as 10mbps" or anything that would demonstrate this. Additionally, the dollars not going to subsidize lifeline go back to them double, because they also get the money from the higher telephone bills. Kind of a neat racket, if you can get it.
In case you want to argue that there are other programs that are getting the money anyway, the one i cited gets billions in funding given to phone companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund#Connect...
That's the one of the famous ones that has pretty much given phone companies billions and gotten us nothing actually in return.
Personally, i'm fine with that money all going to anyone but a telecom company, even if they aren't "low enough income" for you or whatever.
also the universal service fund is paid for by you and me. the rate we pay is calculated based on what they need to spend and not vice versa. so if we don't pay for 1/3rd of us households we will pay less tax and the fund will be smaller
You kind of answered your own question. There is such a thing as neutral on this, you just don't like to hear from them :) Actually, i'm pretty neutral, surprisingly, and i don't really care that much, so i'd fall into your latter category. I only commented because of how much bs the original comment was. Personally, i don't care mainly because neither side actually gives a crap about me. Only their bottom line. That isn't going to change anytime soon. It's certainly not going to change while the FCC is literally appointed by two parties.
"also the universal service fund is paid for by you and me. the rate we pay is calculated based on what they need to spend and not vice versa. so if we don't pay for 1/3rd of us households we will pay less tax and the fund will be smaller"
This isn't quite true due to how the forecasting is done, but sure, it's lose enough But we could also stop paying the billions to the telecoms and instead, pay for 1/3rd of the households, for the same price. :)
But you are also saying that 1/3rd of households fall into this category:
"Establishes a National Eligibility Verifier to verify eligible Lifeline subscribers. Eligibility will be based on participation in SNAP, Medicaid, SSI, Federal Public Housing Assistance, the Veterans *Pension benefit program, current Tribal qualifying programs, or those who can demonstrate income of less than 135 percent of the federal poverty guidelines."
If 34% of america falls into that category, then we pretty much better do something anyway!
You could say that about anything -- anyone who cares about something has an opinion on it.
What matters isn't a lack of interest, it's objectivity, which is what you apply to each side's argument to figure out who is wrong.
And notice that really all of the arguments against network neutrality take the form "if you don't let ISPs leverage their wire monopoly to monopolize over-the-top services too then they won't upgrade the wires."
And we know how to prevent that from happening. Keep network neutrality, and authorize a bond issue to fund municipal fiber in any location where the incumbent doesn't offer high speed service within a fixed amount of time.
That makes the truth or falsity of their argument irrelevant -- if it's false then they'll make the upgrades anyway, if it's true then we'll build municipal networks, and in either case the result is fast neutral networks.
Their way is to destroy over-the-top competition and then in many cases they still won't upgrade.
Ajit Pai is a decidedly anti-consumer, anti-competition commissioner. His job is to make sure ATT, Verizon, Comcast, et al make as much money as possible. Period.
[1]http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/washington/fccs-pai-br...
It's horseshit.
But, my upside can be donated to a school.
This isn't a moral statement, just that you are unlikely to have upside. If you want to benefit schools, go ahead and donate, but becoming a stakeholder in a company that hates its customers and vice versa is unlikely to serve your stated goal, in my opinion.
Sounds like a very successful program that many in need are benefiting from. I'm glad the USF I pay every month is being put to good use.
"Notwithstanding the decline in economic fortunes since 2009, [34%] is too many."
Here's US GDP per capita. Notice a "decline in economic fortunes since 2009"?
World Bank: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-per-capita
St. Louis Fed: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA
A stronger case could be made for median income, but even there, we're better off than we were in 2009. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
Meanwhile the rest of the world gets free public health, close to free Internet access, open research and actual science, while we increase spending on an already ludicrous and nonsensical defense budget justified by imaginary threats.
> Meanwhile the rest of the world gets free public health
And the US system is more expensive to the US government.
http://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-does-uk-healthcare-spending-com...
(We need to be careful with this next infant mortality stat. The US has stricter reporting)
> While the USA outspent the UK on healthcare (£6,311 and £2,777 per person respectively) in 2014, average life expectancy at birth in the USA was 78.8, compared with 81.4 in the UK.
> Despite spending, by far, the largest amount on healthcare, the USA was among the 10 OECD countries with the lowest life expectancy.
Because we can debate HOW to do that effectively, if subsidies are effective or just increase costs overall, if we agree on the what. But if we don't agree that universal high speed broadband internet is a good thing, then talking about the How to do that is farcical at best.
This wouldn't get anywhere in the US in the current climate, but I think it's time for public broadband ISPs to start being created/funded at a national level.
My personal dream is to see something like this being undertaken through the auspices of the USPS. The handwringing over the USPS's relevance in the age of the internet, when there's such lack of competition in ISPs, seems short-sighted to me. I think the original founders would have supported broadband being offered publicly through federal programs, especially given that the internet was a publicly developed product; the Postal Clause in the US Constitution arguably was intended to address this issue, as there's no way constitutional authors could have anticipated the internet. So, when the constitution enables congress "to establish post offices and post roads," I think public ISPs are what they had in mind. It seems natural for me that the USPS would become a point of development for public ISPs.
I love seeing small private ISPs--there's some in our area--but, at least when I've seen them, they often seem to be holdovers from anomalous circumstances during the initial boom of the internet. They started when it was possible to compete, and have maintained a foothold by doing things well, but haven't been able to expand.
I do. Internet, day by day is becoming a channel to deliver more and more targeted ads. I think the free internet provision is driven by this need, and not out of a honest urge to "empower" the poor. So in other words, if you give free internet to poor who is uninitiated, you are paving way for their oppression and exploitation....
Also, the "how" is really important. Democrats always want to pay for these programs with highly distortionary targeted taxes and cross subsidies instead of general tax revenue. When you target an industry for extra taxes, you disincentivize it. That's why we tax cigarettes and propose to tax sugary drinks. Imagine putting a 16-18% additional tax (the current USF rate) on all cell phones to help pay for cell phones for poor people. That would make cell phones more expensive, reduce cell phone sales and industry revenue and make the industry less of a desirable place to invest.
And the distortionary effect hurts consumers too. For example, Baltimore requires any would-be fiber provider to subsidize access to poor neighborhoods (by mandating providers build into neighborhoods where only a few subscribers will share in the cost of the node). That tanks the economic case for fiber in Baltimore, and as a result nobody gets fiber. And Baltimore is broke, so municipal fiber isn't an option either.
I am not familiar enough with the history of paying for infrastructure by taxes to comment, except to say that sin taxes seem to be more likely to pass then a general tax increase. That said, I think relatively small fees and taxes assessed on items where demand is inelastic probably work fine to promote investment and growth, especially if they were provided directly to municipalities for high speed rollouts and state and federal restrictions were reduced on municipal broadband organisations.
Not sure about Baltimore either, though I wonder if it follows the pattern I've seen in a few other American cities where there is a large urban center surrounded by smaller wealthier townships/suburbs who's residents take advantage of the city as a resource by aren't part of the tax base. Maybe the Balitmore Broadband Coalition will comment though.
Issues are being hijacked by funded groups pushing specific corporate interests and agendas masquerading as operating in the public interest.
2 issues need to be addressed urgently. And study, paper or public statements in the media from such groups should explicitly mention details on their formation, their employees, day-to-day organizational funding and all other funding. Anyone being paid to say something should declare they are being paid to say that.
Names like 'techfreedom', 'netfreedom' and other 'orwellian' names cannot be used unless they are a verified public service organization with a verifiable source of public or community funds with no corporate funding. Anything claiming to represent the public interest should do exactly that and cannot be a deceptive hijack of their interests. If funding dries up there will be no shills.
It doesn't appear to be subsidized by Lifeline.
Instead, they check if you are already on the SNAP supplemental food program. If so, you get internet access for either $5 (up to 3mb/sec) or $10 (up to 10mb/sec) a month.
I would think that those prices would make it affordable well below the $38k/year figure.
Of course, not everyone has access to this one ISP. I wonder if others have similar non-Lifeline subsidized programs.
This what happens on the cable tv side. Content is king.
It'll probably end up like most people's cable bill: a large block of charges that are mostly not understood by most people.
Also keep in mind that most services don't actually want to charge the ISPs for access to their content, they just want access. Facebook doesn't want to charge your ISP to reach you reliably, nor does Netflix, they just want to be able to do it.
Given that ISPs aren't charities, yes - the cost will be passed on. And the first time a major ISP agents in a dispute about the charges and access is blocked, everyone will know - look at the various ESPN/cable/directv disputes over the years.
That is the future without net neutrality. The large ISPs will charge content providers. It will start slowly and only affect the largest services (like Netflix) but when they need to juice the quarterly numbers they'll start working their way down the list. Because we don't have competition in this country they will just start severely degrading traffic from anyone they want to make pay.
Pai has made no proposal for actual broadband competition. In fact he thinks we already have "robust" competition among ISPs: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/washington/fccs-pai-br...
Comcast, Verizon and others have recently tried to turn this on its head by witholding peering upgrades to Netflix, who wasn't even charging them a dime for all this data that their customers requested! This is not net neutrality, and performance degradations like this made Comcast uncompetitive in my neck of the woods since I have Fiber available by rare happenstance. That being said, my fiber provider (Centurylink) has even worse peering with Comcast, such that loading xfinity.net is a chore on gigabit fiber, let alone the Xfinity Go app. These performance issues caused me to cancel my TV service with them and get a different provider that worked better on my kids tablets, and so long as providers play games to throttle eachother, stories like this will be common.
A better way is the NIT (negative income tax) which simply gives money to the poor and lets them decide how to spend it.
If Congress wants there to be a broadband subsidy for the poor, it needs to specifically authorize one. The current law simply does not provide for it, and the FCC needs to obey the law.
Rather than assuming motives you should assess the actual cost/benefit.
Good idea; when's it coming?
Legal Authority
38. The principles listed in section 254 of the Act make clear that deployment of, and access to, telecommunications and information services are important components of a robust and successful federal universal service program, including the directive to address low-income needs.86 In section 254[2], Congress expressly recognized the importance of ensuring that low-income consumers “have access to telecommunications and information services, including . . . advanced telecommunications and information services” and that universal service is an “evolving level of telecommunications service.”87
...
41. Our approach is also supported by section 254(c)(1)(A). Under that provision, the Commission considers whether a given supported service is “essential to education, public health, or public safety.”97 We explain above the importance of BIAS to education and healthcare, among other things, along with the need for discounts in order to enable low-income consumers to realize those benefits.98 We therefore conclude that BIAS is essential for education and public health for low-income Americans.
42. Section 254(c)(1)(B) directs the Commission to consider whether the service at issue has “through the operation of market choices by customers, been subscribed to by a substantial majority of residential customers.”99
footnote 92. ... Even before that, however, during the time the Commission had classified BIAS as generally an information service, it recognized the possibility of broadband Internet access transmission being offered on a common carrier basis as a telecommunications service. See, e.g., Appropriate Regulatory Treatment For Broadband Access to the Internet Over Wireless Networks, Declaratory Ruling, 22 FCC Rcd 5901, 5913-14, para. 33 (2007);[3]
[1] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-16-38A1.pd...
[2] 47 U.S. Code § 254 - Universal service https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/254
[3] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-30A1.pd...
> (j) Lifeline assistance Nothing in this section shall affect the collection, distribution, or administration of the Lifeline Assistance Program provided for by the Commission under regulations set forth in section 69.117 of title 47, Code of Federal Regulations, and other related sections of such title.
What makes it relevant to the discussion, then?
With Chevron deference (soon?) gone, perhaps courts will actually adjudicate whether this interpretation is within the framework of the law.
As the owner of a small ISP, I'd like to figure out a way to provide to service to everyone regardless of their income. Internet access is critical at this point for even the most basic societal functions.
No, it isn't. I'm at a tipping point of canceling my Comcast cable/internet because I don't think it's worth $80/month. 90% of what I do online at home is for entertainment. And I would guess that is the same for most households that don't have a tech worker. (I am a tech worker, but I've finally trained myself to not take work home).
Really the only reason I keep it is because I don't want to deal with griping from the kids.
I should also mention that not everywhere has access to a public library that is free to use. I lived next to one of those districts - the next township (and town) over didn't have one. Since they didn't pay taxes into the library, they had to pay a yearly fee. Only pre-school children were exempt.
Phone books used to be the primary source of that information, but they are getting thinner and thinner as the years go on. Not to mention it's only updated once a year.
In the 2016 Lifeline Modernization Order, the Commission established a framework for the Bureau to designate providers as LBPs, eligible to receive Lifeline reimbursement for qualifying broadband Internet access service (BIAS) provided to eligible low-income consumers.
Obviously it was explicitly tailored to telephones when it was passed over 30 years ago. That doesn't mean that reworking the program under the existing law is automatically a bad idea.
Making it easier for everyone to access the Internet should definitely be a priority though. I'm especially thinking about educational benefits for kids in poor families.
I'm sure everyone stopped and took the time to read up on strange corners of telecom law just in case this came up, so we could have a vigorous intellectual discussion.
I feel like i'm allowed to find that a little odd.
But yeah, you are right, it could be that they just decided, this second, this is the place they wanted to jump in first.
First, its an ad hominem attack on credibility which while sometimes useful does not refute the central points that Pai made. "If there's something wrong with the senator's argument, you should say what it is; and if there isn't, what difference does it make that he's a senator?"[1]
Second, I have no clue who funds them or why.
Third, they really do have a great podcast about the intersection of technology and policy (Uber, AirBnb, self driving cars). Specifically the one on bringing back supersonic airplanes is really cool. [2]
[1]http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html [2]http://podcast.techfreedom.org/e/139-make-america-boom-again...
First, your messaging on this is confused. Since how is it both ad-hominem and "sometimes useful". By definition, ad-hominem is not useful. So it's one or the other.
Second, I believe i directly refuted each one, actually. We should in fact, be subsidizing 1/3rd of the households broadband if that's what it takes to get broadband for the categories of people i listed. Especially when Pai's alternative is "encourage investment", aka give AT&T or whoever another 100 million to do nothing with. He doesn't actually give a real plan, just a magic thought that we'll somehow "encourage investment", ignoring that literally none of these companies want to be investing.
Heck, they even say that in their investor filings, which he apparently doesn't bother to read. Nowhere do they say "hey, we really want to provide rural broadband, but are held back by regulation". Instead, they said "We don't think rural broadband is worth it for us, but we want to make sure no one else gets a foothold, so we are going to do what we can stop them from doing it any other way than paying us high prices".
Don't worry though, i'm sure magically, his "investment encouragement" will change the literal written down plans and presentations of the large telecoms.
Also, it doesn't seem to apply to municipalities, since he's strongly against any of these rural communities being self-supporting by starting their own rural networks. How strange that is. you think he'd be all for it, since it means the government doesn't subsidize them anymore. That's what he said he wants! Apparently people investing is not okay, but companies, that's awesome!
It's also strange techfreedom don't seem supportive of this, for an organization dedicated to "tech freedom", it apparently doesn't mean for people.
Meanwhile, Pai lives in a mythical world where they are desperately trying to provide large scale broadband at low prices, and sadly stymied at every turn simply that doesn't exist.
But really, he's not an idiot. He knows this already. He's not even really that malicious. He just wants something he can do that is business friendly so he can declare victory and go be a million dollar telecom lobbyist like all the others. I just wish he didn't play the game along the way. Because that's what would make me really respect him.
But hey, you can classify my argument however you want, because i already knew i wasn't going to convince you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#Non-fallacious_reas...
Any actionable claims?
It's also a breach of HN's civility rule to insinuate astroturfing by commenters you disagree with—that trope is far more often (probably a hundred times more often) a below-the-belt rhetorical move than it is an accurate assessment of others' behavior. Though the latter does happen.