Telcos Lobby to Eliminate Consumer Protection
September 12, 2024
Now this sounds like a promising plan for the telcos. We learn from TechDirt, “Big Telecom Asks the Corrupt Supreme Court to Declare All State and Federal Broadband Consumer Protection Illegal. They Might Get their Wish.” Companies lie AT&T and Comcast have been persuading right-leaning courts, including SCOTUS, to side with them against net neutrality rules and broadband protections generally. To make matters worse, the FCC’s consumer-protection authority was hollowed out during the Trump administration.
Fortunately, states have the authority to step in and act when the federal government does not. But that could soon change. Writer Karl Bode explains:
“For every state whose legislature telecoms have completely captured (Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee), there’s several that have, often imperfectly, tried to protect broadband consumers, either in the form of (California, Oregon, Washington, Maine), crackdowns on lies about speeds or prices (Arizona, Indiana, Michigan), or requiring affordable low income broadband (New York). In 2021 at the peak of COVID problems, New York passed a law mandating that heavily taxpayer subsidized telecoms provide a relatively slow (25 Mbps), $15 broadband tier only for low-income families that qualified. ISPs have sued (unsuccessfully so far) to kill the law, which was upheld last April by the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, reversing a 2021 District Court ruling. … Telecoms like AT&T are frightened of states doing their jobs to protect consumers and market competition from their bad behavior. So a group of telecom trade groups this week petitioned the Supreme Court with a very specific ask. They want the court to first destroy FCC broadband consumer protection oversight and net neutrality, then kill New York’s effort, in that precise order, in two different cases.”
The companies argue that, if we want consumer broadband protections, it is up to Congress to pass specific legislation that provides them. The same Congress they reportedly lobby with about $320,000 daily. This is why we cannot have nice things. Bode believes the telcos are likely to get their way. He also warns the Chevron decision means other industries are sure to follow suit, meaning an end to consumer protections in every sphere: Banking, food safety, pollution, worker safeguards… the list goes on. Is this what it means to make the nation great?
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2024
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