Just days before Donald Trump’s helicopter shrank in the air, we got a promising early hint that the wild joyride of telecom companies under Trump’s FCC is coming to an end. Last week Charter Communications, the company behind Spectrum, withdrew his petition to impose data caps: in fact, his attempt to limit customers’ internet use to force them to spend more money. The FCC announced yesterday That Charter had withdrawn its petition, which it had filed in June, just a few months after the pandemic.
The Democrat-led FCC under Obama initially banned Charter Communications from enforcing data caps until 2023 as a condition of the 2016 merger with Time Warner Cable. The idea was to prevent the company from having a profit advantage about- the contest. Trump-appointed FCC chairman and telecom stooge Ajit Pai said it was ‘about the micromanagement of the internet economy by the government’. Preventing a broadband company from rising prices isn’t micromanagement, but that’s the kind of jargon Pai uses across the board for the basic functions of the regulatory body he oversees.
In his petition, Charter stated that everyone now streams everything, and data caps don’t hurt competitors like Comcast, AT&T, Cox and Altice, ergo “the market works”. Advocacy groups like Stop the Cap! argued that consumers hate data caps, citing the “shock of the bills” of Time Warner’s fines imposed for accidentally exceedingages. Charter argued that consumers actually love data caps because they provide a “cost-effective alternative” to unlimited plans.
In an emailed statement to Gizmodo, Charter explained that the timing was solely related to the pandemic. “In light of the ongoing severity of the global pandemic and its impact on our customers, we want to provide them with the assurance that they will continue to benefit from unrestricted broadband access and the associated financial security it provides in these difficult times,” said, “and have therefore withdrawn our petition.”
This is a reversal from the Charter’s earlier position that the pandemic should not affect a decision to impose the data caps, namely because The Charter has waived allowances and higher wages for frontline workers. An FCC filing literally contained the headline, “Charter has provided significant assistance to subscribers during the COVID-19 pandemic, which does not justify continuation of the terms.”
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It is almost certain that the Charter would have had a better chance of getting data caps under Chairman Pai, who summarized himself early in his tenure as Chairman with a casual crack about himself as a “Verizon doll” and then him lived up to the legend.
Daddy recently told The Wall Street Journal said the Republican-led anti-regulation approach has increased broadband access and accelerated infrastructure construction. In May 2020, Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel pointed out that the actual scale of the expansion is immeasurable because ISPs had not provided accurate data. He withdrew net neutrality, made it easy for ISPs to convert bury disclosures, abandoned efforts limit the horrendous cost of prison calls, and gestured toward Section 230 to appease the Republicans (although there was no realistic way for him to do that). The director of Fight for the Future called him “One of the most corrupt government officials of the century.”
We have a longer one performance review here. He announced in November that he would step down as chairman today, and the official Twitter account is gone.
The FCC is not necessarily resolved. It currently includes two Democrats and two Trump appointees, both from Who support the GOP’s agenda to destroy section 230. (one of them, Nathan Simington, believed to have helped draft Trump’s futile executive order to punish Twitter). President Biden’s candidate for president must be approved by the Senate. The Biden FCC has a lot of damage to repair, but we can hope for a more transparent, affordable and fairer internet.