Big loss for ISPs as Supreme Court won't hear challenge to $15 broadband law
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The right answer to helping poor people is direct subsidies for whatever qualifying service they choose. Yes, helping people costs money. The right answer to income testing is reconciliation on the post-annual income tax form. Yes, government actions require government staff to administer.
Other places have cheaper internet driven by market forces. The low income plans very likely arent loss generating.
The high prices for internet are likely a result of lack of competition, so perhaps the issue is companies can already charge what they want with impunity.
> Never mind the privacy issues of citizens having to spill their annual income to private companies for the means testing, or the bureaucratic runaround of somehow having to prove income levels ahead of time.
Do you have any links to the actual process? I was curious but couldnt find any. Either way, might not be an issue considering you need internet. Might be the difference between having employment and proper education or not.
> The right answer to helping poor people is direct subsidies for whatever qualifying service they choose.
This just means giving money to ISPs for the same result.
If you really think more government action is needed then why not ask gov to address ISP monopolies or introduce municipal providers.
Municipal providers? yes, please. I am on municipal fiber, and it is fantastic. Fixed monthly price, little downtime, fantastic local tech support (not that I've ever had to call them). I've been in conversations with friends where they're going around the table complaining about various aspects of their dinosaur ISPs and I'm just sitting there twiddling my thumbs. Internet access is now just a solved problem for me. Municipal Internet is a great example of government taking on a new mandate and directly providing service across the board to everyone. (I responded to this point first so you can hopefully see that I am arguing in good faith here, not just shilling FUD for dinosaur ISPs)
Creating more competition in general is much less straightforward to discuss or implement. However the law we're talking about is quite similar in spirit to the "franchise agreements" that required cable companies to build out entire cities/towns (despite some areas being a loss) in an exchange for a guaranteed monopoly. It's exactly the type of thing that hurts competition.
> Other places have cheaper internet driven by market forces. The low income plans very likely arent loss generating.
I agree that Internet access can be provided much cheaper than it generally is in the US. However the high price market failures in the US seems to be from construction costs, extra layers of middle management, and bureaucracy rather than straight profit going to owners. On the balance sheet of ISPs, those low income plans will indeed be losses (wrongly or rightly).
> Do you have any links to the actual process? I was curious but couldnt find any. Either way, might not be an issue considering you need internet. Might be the difference between having employment and proper education or not.
I was speaking about the general shape of these public-private "synergies". Given how much of the responsibility has been placed on the companies here, it's a reasonable assumption.
How does a strong coercive incentive to give private information to companies make it into a non-issue? Especially in a country with little data protection regulation, and little appetite for it? I would say the strong incentive makes it more of an issue. And people needing help but not actually getting it because they don't want to spend lots of time jumping through paperwork hoops is a well known problem.
> This just means giving money to ISPs for the same result.
No, it means keeping the power of choice with the ISP subscriber so they can weigh their own needs across everything the market offers. I wouldn't be surprised if when building out new last-mile connections to serve $15 plans is unprofitable, ISPs will respond by offering a special plan that involves a 5G router to meet their legal requirements.
It also means spending public money more effectively - on things the consumer market is already providing, rather than creating a new bespoke offering that meets the desires/constraints of government.