NTIA Urges FCC To Adopt Rules Banning Race, Class Discrimination In Broadband Deployment

Groups like the National Digital Inclusion Alliance have consistently released studies showing that telecom giants like AT&T, despite billions in subsidies and tax breaks, routinely avoid upgrading minority and low income neighborhoods to fiber. Not only that, the group has documented how users in those neighborhoods even struggle to have their existing (older and slower) DSL lines repaired.

Regional telecom monopolies have long vehemently denied that they engage in this kind of digital “redlining,” but the data speaks for itself, and has been routinely validated by third parties. In addition to discrimination in broadband deployment, big ISPs have also been caught charging lower-income and minority areas more money than residents of more affluent neighborhoods.

The nation’s top regulator, the FCC, has been completely asleep on the issue for decades. That changed (potentially) last year, when Congress pushed the FCC to investigate the problem as part of the infrastructure bill. The NTIA, which has been taking a bigger lead on telecom policy due to FCC incompetence, last week told the FCC we need hard rules preventing broadband discrimination:

“Strong rules are needed to remedy unequal access to Internet service, no matter what the cause may be,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Alan Davidson. “Rules that combat digital discrimination will bring lasting relief to vulnerable communities that historically have been left behind online.” 

Whether the FCC actually comes up with useful rules is one challenge. Whether they’ll actively and consistently enforce them is another. U.S. broadband maps are notoriously shitty by design, making it easy for big ISPs to fiddle with claims about who is or isn’t covered (and why). And the FCC has a comically terrible track record of standing up to monopolies (or even acknowledging they exist).

The primary cause for substandard U.S. broadband (regardless of where you live, how much money you make, or the color of your skin) is monopoly/duopoly power and the corruption that protects it. Either we’re serious in addressing those issues or we aren’t, and for the better part of the last generation our top policymakers have been not only useless, but actively harmful.