monopoly – Techdirt
from the actually-helping-people dept
We’ve documented for decades how U.S. telecom is an uncompetitive mess dominated by politically powerful telecom monopolies that see no competition and effectively own Congress. As a result, the U.S. telecom and broadband market is an uncompetitive mess, with Americans still seeing higher prices, slower speeds, spottier access, and worse customer service than in many developed nations.
Generally, U.S. regulators are too captured to even acknowledge there’s a problem. When they do propose a solution, it either involves throwing money at the problem, or developing performative half-measures that don’t take aim at the real problem: monopoly power and the corruption that protects it.
With the Trump administration butchering whatever’s left of federal consumer protection and telecom oversight, states are taking a bigger role in telecom policy. That includes New York State, which, during peak COVID, passed a law mandating that big telecom companies provide low-income state residents with affordable broadband (25 Mbps broadband for $15 a month, or 200 Mbps for $25 a month).
That’s not a huge ask for regional telecom giants that routinely overbill for service.
Telecom giants didn’t much like that, though their legal efforts to kill the law fell short recently when the Supreme Court refused to hear their challenge. Now California is exploring its own, similar, law (AB353), which would require giant telecoms like Comcast and AT&T provide low-income state residents 100 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up broadband for $15 a month.
“Broadband affordability is not an urban versus rural issue, nor does it have to be a partisan issue. We all should agree that broadband is an essential service that must be affordable for all, ” California Assemblymember Tasha Boerner said of the law.
The proposal comes after Republicans killed a federal FCC program that provided a $30 discount off the broadband bills of low-income Americans. The Republicans in question claimed they killed the popular program to save money, but a follow up study showed that the program more than paid for itself (by a factor of four) because it helped expand access to remote healthcare, employment, and education.
This is, to be clear, a nightmare if you’re a lumbering giant like AT&T and Comcast, which have carved out lucrative regional monopolies, then glommed onto the federal tit as unaccountable domestic surveillance buddies. They’ve long insisted that any oversight of their business practices is “radical extremism,” and I suspect their lobbyists are extremely hard at work trying to scuttle California’s plan.
But this is, again, a byproduct of these companies’ own making. They’ve worked relentlessly for decades to not only crush regional broadband competition, but to lobotomize federal government oversight. They’re finally on the cusp of achieving this generational victory thanks to Donald Trump, whose government believes that affordable, equitably-deployed fiber optic broadband is “ woke.”
Now the only thing that stands between them and unchecked broadband price gouging and predation are a handful of states that occasionally try (with various degrees of success) to do the right thing. And the hundreds of local municipalities that are building their own (usually better, faster, and cheaper) community-owned fiber networks.
I think you’ll find this theme of localism becoming a steady constant drumbeat in the months and years to come. As the corrupt federal kakistocracy fails around us, state and local fights become exponentially more important and heated.
California, despite its well documented flaws on policy, has actually been doing a lot of interesting stuff on broadband. Like using billions in ARPA (COVID relief) bill funding to effectively build a massive new middle-mile fiber network, and fuel a whole bunch of new fiber broadband deployments to neighborhoods long neglected by shitty regional monopolies.
They’re actually targeting the real problem: consolidated monopoly power. That’s being layered with AB353, which just passed the state’s Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee by a vote of 7 to 2. Combined with a huge looming infusion of federal infrastructure bill broadband grants (assuming they don’t all get siphoned off by Elon Musk, AT&T, and Comcast), and there’s some actual potential for reform here, despite the insanity and ignorance going on at the federal level.
Filed Under: affordability, broadband, california, fiber, high speed internet, low-income, minority, monopoly, telecom
from the fix-your-own-shit dept
Mon, Apr 28th 2025 05:27am - Karl Bode
State laws attempting to make it cheaper and easier to repair your own technology continue to gain steam. With the recent introduction of a new “right to repair” law in Wisconsin, groups like U.S. PIRG note that all 50 U.S. states have now at least introduced such bills.
But so far only Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon have actually passed laws. Ohio could be the latest, thanks to the support of “free market Republicans” (remember those?) who don’t like the idea of big companies monopolizing repair:
“Blessing is a Republican state senator representing Ohio’s 8th Senate district, which includes much of the area surrounding Cincinnati. In April, Blessing introduced a “right-to-repair” bill that grants consumers legal access to the parts, tools, and documents they need to fix a wide range of devices while banning restrictive practices like parts pairing. If Blessing’s bill succeeds, the Buckeye State will become the latest to enshrine the right to repair into law, after similar legislative victories in Colorado, Oregon, California, Minnesota, and New York.”
The passage of a right to repair reform in Ohio would be an ideological win for the movement given the state’s highly conservative bent. It illustrates once again that support for these reforms is hugely bipartisan. Often corporate policy guys find a way to generate partisan animus around issues (see: privacy, net neutrality), but so far they’ve yet to have that kind of success in “right to repair.”
In large part because a cornerstone of consumer annoyance at these practices have involved John Deere screwing over rural farmers with cumbersome restrictions that dramatically drive up the cost of servicing agricultural equipment.
The problem: while a lot is made of states passing right to repair laws, the press, public, and activists tend to ignore or downplay the fact that no state has actually enforced these laws yet. Most companies in most states are still just happily monopolizing repair with clunky DRM, “ parts pairing,” consolidation of repair options, and making manuals and parts hard to get a hold of — with no penalties.
At some point, some of the amazing energy being put into passing these laws needs to be redirected to demanding states actually enforce them. Unfortunately during Trump’s second term, when states face unprecedented and costly legal fights on absolutely everything, I suspect that this sort of consumer protection will likely be the first to fall through the cracks among cash-strapped states without states being pressured on the daily to make it a priority.
Filed Under: activism, consumer protection, monopoly, repair, right to repair, state law
from the ripping-off-a-captive-audience dept
Fri, Mar 21st 2025 05:22am - Karl Bode
I think the Biden FCC under the leadership of Jessica Rosenworcel engaged in a lot of regulatory theater that made for good press clippings, but was ultimately hollow. While indisputably better than the corrupt and bizarre authoritarian zealotry we’re seeing now under Brendan Carr, the Biden FCC routinely failed to take direct aim at the obvious cause of problems in telecom: consolidated monopoly power.
There was one major and useful exception: last year the agency finally put a cap on predatory family-to-inmate phone calls by shitty, predatory prison telecom monopolies. At least one prison in Arkansas has responded this year by cancelling all prison phone calls entirely:
“Sheriff John Montgomery of Baxter County, Arkansas, isn’t going to take it anymore—if by “it” you mean “having to offer lower phone call rates to incarcerated inmates.” Noting that such phone calls are “not required to be provided by law,” Montgomery is ending all inmate phone calls on March 30, 2025.”
In a press release, Montgomery says he knows the action will hurt prison families, but says he’ll restore inmate calling if the Trump administration rescinds the price caps, which I suspect is likely. Private prisons are expecting a lucrative windfall under authoritarianism for historically obvious reasons.
However terrible telecom monopolies are in the free world, they’re arguably much worse in prisons. For decades, journalists and researchers outlined how prison telecom giants like Securus have enjoyed a cozy, government-kickback based monopoly over prison phone and teleconferencing services, resulting sky high rates (upwards of $14 per minute at some prisons) for families.
Reforms have been hard to come by thanks to the “iff’n ya don’t want to get ripped off, don’t go to prison” yuk yuk brigades. Last year’s regulatory win was a decade-plus-long effort.
Most of these pampered monopolies have shifted over to monopolizing prison phone videoconferencing. And the relationship between government and monopoly is so cozy, several of these companies, like Securus, have been caught helping to spy on privileged attorney client communications or abusing overbroad wireless company location data collection.
Previous efforts to rein in prison monopolies were undermined by the Trump FCC and former FCC boss Ajit Pai, who worked for prison phone giant Securus before his time at the agency. Trump and Pai pulled the rug out from under the agencies own lawyers’ feet while they were trying to defend their efforts in court, resulting in a legal loss, which dismantled broader reforms.
I suspect in time that Brendan Carr, when he’s not busy bullying media companies for failing to kiss Trump’s ass, or harassing telecom companies for not being quite racist enough, likely has similar plans in store for prison price caps as part of his broader effort to lobotomize whatever’s left of FCC consumer and fair market protection standards.
Carr actually supported price caps on prison telecom monopoly calling last year. But you can’t have your cake (dismantle the entirety of FCC authority over telecoms) and eat it too (stand up to concentrated monopoly power), and I expect his mindless devotion to manbaby authoritarianism will doom this and countless other rare FCC efforts to actually do the right thing.
Filed Under: brendan carr, fcc, monopoly, price caps, prison, prison calls, reform, regulation, telecom
from the fix-your-own-shit dept
Mon, Mar 10th 2025 05:27am - Karl Bode
State laws attempting to make it cheaper and easier to repair your own tech continue to gain steam. With the recent introduction of a new “right to repair” law in Wisconsin, U.S. PIRG notes that all 50 U.S. states have now at least introduced such bills:
“This is more than a legislative landmark—it’s a tipping point. We’ve gone from a handful of passionate advocates to a nationwide call for repair autonomy,” said Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit. “People are fed up with disposable products and locked-down devices. Repair is the future, and this moment proves it.”
While U.S. consumer protection issues are a hot mess in the United States, the right to repair movement continues to be a singular bright spot. The more that giants like Apple, John Deere, and others try to monopolize repair (usually through obnoxious DRM, “ parts pairing,” or legal fine print), the greater the public support for the movement seems to grow.
The catch: so far only Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon have actually passed laws. And in some instances the bills have been watered down post-passage, like in New York, where Governor Kathy Hochul buckled to company lobbying to make the law much weaker while also exempting many of the most problematic industries.
Elsewhere, state governments just aren’t really enforcing the laws so far despite no shortage of corporate violators. Reformers can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve yet to see a meaningful enforcement action against a major company in any of the states that have passed such legislation.
And I’d suspect that as Trump 2.0 takes aim at labor rights, civil rights, and pollution standards, most states will have their hands full facing costly legal battles across a litany of other subjects. Challenging big companies on right to repair probably won’t be a high staffing or budget priority.
That’s not to say the right to reform movement shouldn’t be hopeful. But activists and consumers alike need to understand that getting a law passed is only the first step; they’ll need to apply pressure on state officials that pass such laws, consider the issue settled, then immediately fall into a deep coma.
Filed Under: consumers, drm, hardware, ifixit, monopoly, parts pairing, reform, right to repair, us pirg
from the build-it-and-they-will-come dept
Mon, Feb 24th 2025 05:27am - Karl Bode
The 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) continues to quietly help fund a number of extremely popular community-owned, open access fiber deployments that are challenging entrenched U.S. monopoly power, and driving super cheap, community-owned and operated fiber networks into long neglected towns.
New York State, for example, just leveraged ARPA funds to give a $26 million grant to Oswego County. Oswego County is going to use that money to build an open access fiber network. That means multiple ISPs can come in and compete over shared infrastructure owned by the county. Our Copia report showcased how this model can help disrupt monopoly power and lower broadband costs for users.
The anchor tenant on Oswego County’s new network, Empire Access, will provide locals with 500 Megabit per second (Mbps) service for $50 a month; symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) service for $65 a month; and symmetrical 2 Gbps service for $100 a month.
That’s not great news for regional New York State monopolies Charter and Verizon, who’ve grown fat and comfortable charging much higher prices for much slower access. The lack of real competition between the two giants for decades has resulted in high prices, slow speeds, spotty coverage, inconsistent upgrades, repair delays, and substandard customer service.
Charter, you might recall, was almost kicked out the state for lying to regulators about its merger with Time Warner Cable. Verizon similarly has long been under fire for cheaping out on uniform fiber upgrades despite untold millions in taxpayer subsidies.
Meanwhile in Minnesota, Carver County officials say they’ve also been leveraging ARPA funds to deploy affordable gigabit fiber to every county resident. Their model is slightly different: The city has used grant money to build dark fiber, which they then lease to a company called MetroNet as part of a public-private partnership. MetroNet is offering locals gigabit fiber for prices way less than regional monopolies:
“Metronet currently offers four tiers of service with varying promotions, which currently include symmetrical 150 megabit per second (Mbps) fiber for $35 a month; symmetrical 500 Mbps for $45 a month; symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) for $50 a month; symmetrical 2 Gbps for $70 a month; and symmetrical 5 Gbps for $110 a month.”
Again, this kind of stuff doesn’t get much attention from a press that declares infrastructure too boring to cover. But this kind of stuff is quietly transformative all the same. It’s also not clear to me why Senate Democrats aren’t competently messaging the impact ARPA funds are having on affordable broadband. Or local community centers, local road improvements, or affordable housing.
Many states try to “address the digital divide” by throwing more and more money into the laps of giant regional telecom monopolies with a long history of subsidy abuse. Many other states are trying to “fix broadband access” by throwing money at Elon Musk’s Starlink, ignoring the LEO satellite platform’s capacity constraints, high prices, erratic leadership, and problematic environmental impact.
But some states (most notably Vermont, Maine, California, and New York) are trying a different tack: they’re investing heavily in community-owned open access infrastructure, and treating broadband more like an essential utility (where maximizing shareholder profits isn’t the top priority). They’re leveraging an historic infusion of federal funds to put local communities in charge of their own connectivity fate.
Entrenched telecom monopolies, which have worked tirelessly over decades to dismantle broadband competition and state and federal oversight, have worked tirelessly to demonize and undermine community broadband access. But in a decade it should be interesting to see what the data says about the differing approaches.
Keep in mind that states are also poised to receive more than $42.5 billion in additional broadband grants courtesy of the 2021 infrastructure bill. That program has significantly more restrictions than ARPA, and there’s every indication that the Trump administration will do its best to redirect as much of that money as possible away from community owned endeavors and toward companies that kiss Trump’s ass.
Filed Under: arpa, broadband, fiber, gigabit, grants, high speed internet, monopoly, municipal broadband, open access
Companies: empire access, metronet
from the fix-your-own-shit dept
Wed, Feb 12th 2025 03:44pm - Karl Bode
Terumo Cardiovascular, a company that makes six-figure medical equipment used in heart surgeries, is apparently keen on attracting the ire of the “right to repair” movement. But given the Trump administration’s assault on state and federal consumer protection, it’s not clear they’ll face many meaningful repercussions for it.
In a letter obtained by 404 Media, the company has apparently been contacting hospitals, telling them that they’ll no longer allow hospitals’ repair technicians to maintain or fix the expensive equipment (even if perfectly qualified), and that all repairs must now be done by the manufacturer itself. They’re also discontinuing the arbitrary certification process techs need to be qualified in the first place:
“The company, Terumo Cardiovascular, makes a device called the Advanced Perfusion System 1 Heart Lung Machine, which is used to reroute blood during open-heart surgeries and essentially keeps a patient alive during the surgery. Last month, the company sent hospitals a letter alerting them to the “discontinuation of certification classes,” meaning it “will no longer offer certification classes for the repair and/or preventative maintenance of the System 1 and its components.”
It’s a way to drive up the cost of equipment repairs to the benefit of the company. It’s the same thing we’ve seen in countless other industries ranging from game consoles to John Deere tractors. It’s increasingly the sort of thing that’s incurred the wrath of the (previous) FTC and the countless states that have passed right to repair legislation over the last few years.
The problem for reformers is that while numerous states have passed right to repair legislation, the laws currently aren’t being meaningfully enforced, so companies are ignoring them. And with a flurry of costly and complicated legal fights heading states’ way across everything from immigration to the environment due to Trumpism, I tend to suspect stuff like right to repair fights will be among the first to fall through the cracks.
And while right to repair was a popular battleground for Lina Khan’s FTC, it’s extremely unlikely to see the same attention under the more corporate-power-friendly Trump administration, which is very busy taking a hatchet to the entirety of federal consumer protection under the pretense of “populism.”
Filed Under: consumers, hardware, medical equipment, monopoly, right to repair
Companies: terumo cardiovascular
from the actually-giving-a-shit dept
Fri, Jan 24th 2025 12:26pm - Karl Bode
After King Trump’s dutiful Supreme Court recently refused to hear the case, a New York State law has taken effect requiring that ISPs provide low-income, state residents affordable $15 broadband. It’s a big win for digital equity activists and consumer groups that have long argued that America’s heavily monopolized (and barely competitive) broadband industry results in sky high prices for everyone, something that’s felt most keenly by the most vulnerable.
Big ISPs like Comcast and AT&T had fought tooth and nail against the law, first passed during peak COVID lockdowns when America was struggling with substandard broadband access during the home education and telecommunication boom.
New York’s Affordable Broadband Act exempts ISPs with less than 20,000 subscribers. It only applies to low-income residents who are on existing food stamp or other programs. It requires that ISPs provide these users access to either a 25 Mbps tier for $15 , or a 200 Mbps tier for $20.
NY State’s Affordable Broadband Act had a pained trajectory to fruition. In 2021 a US District Court judge blocked the law, claiming that the first Trump administration’s 2017 net neutrality repeal banned states from trying to regulate broadband. But courts repeatedly have shot down that claim, stating that the feds can’t abdicate their authority over broadband consumer protection and pre-empt state authority.
The idea of “rate regulation” is just about the most terrible phrase imaginable if you’re a telecom executive or “free market” Libertarian think tanker type. Limiting price gouging in this fashion is repeatedly brought up as a terrifying bogeyman in telecom policy conversations, though it very rarely manifests. NY’s effort is a fairly notable outlier in terms of such policy proposals.
A vast majority of U.S. state and federal telecom policies involve captured and corrupt policymakers simply doing whatever AT&T or Comcast says (merger approvals, mindless deregulation, big subsidy payouts, eroding consumer protection), which generally harms consumers and markets, and is usually held up by said free market Libertarians and telecom lobbyists as a “successful free market.”
New York’s case is important not just for the state’s low income families. It’s the first of many instances where state leaders are picking up the slack for a corrupt and captured fed.
As Trump 2.0 regulators like the FCC and FTC give up on consumer protection, it’s going to punt many of these fights to the state level. Given corporations spent so much money gutting Chevron deference in a bid to turn federal regulators into decorative gourds, they’re not going to like it much if consumer protection remains healthy and strong on the state level, even if it’s scattershot.
Corporate power’s goal really is no consumer protection on the state and federal level whatsoever. And contrary to folks to think that’s hyperbole, they’re well on the way to getting it thanks to the Trump courts.
The problem is that this is going to play out across so many sectors and issues over the next four years (immigration, environment, labor right, consumer protection) that states are going to get swamped with legal and policy fights, forcing them to truly pick and choose the most important battles. I could easily see broadband consumer protection and affordability issues being an early casualty.
Overall, New York State has been doing some very good things on broadband policy, levering ARPA and Infrastructure bills to help boost local broadband competition, including driving a lot of this historic subsidy infusion toward community owned and operated local broadband networks (yet another nightmare if you’re a telecom monopolist fat and comfortable with government capture).
Filed Under: affordable, broadband, high speed internet, monopoly, new york, rate regulation, telecom
from the this-is-fine dept
Tue, Dec 3rd 2024 05:31am - Karl Bode
For decades, U.S. cable and broadband providers have statistically had some of the worst customer support and satisfaction ratings of any industry or government agency in America (see: the American Customer Satisfaction Index). That’s quite a feat in a country where banks, airlines, insurance companies, and medical giants intensely compete to deliver vast untold frustration upon the U.S. consumer.
The reason is no mystery: the heavily consolidated, monopolized, and government pampered telecom industry sees very little real competition in broadband, resulting in high prices, spotty access, slow speeds, and terrible customer service.
Every so often the FCC puts on a little show pretending that it cares about this. Like last month when the Biden FCC announced it was conducting a review of broadband customer service problems. Part of that review involved asking the telecom lobby what it thought about the industry’s customer service, and you’ll be unsurprised to learn that they think it’s absolutely fabulous.
The primary reason that U.S. broadband customer service is fabulous, the industry declares, is because frustrated users can simply switch to another ISP:
“If a provider fails to efficiently resolve an issue, they risk losing not only that customer—and not just for the one service, but potentially for all of the bundled services offered to that customer—but also any prospective customers that come across a negative review online. Because of this, broadband providers know that their success is dependent upon providing and maintaining excellent customer service.”
For most Americans that is, of course, a lie. Most communities are lucky if they have access to one fixed-line ISP capable of offering broadband at the standard acceptable service level (broadly now considered 100 Mbps downstream, 20 Mbps upstream). Most are under the thumb of, at best, a shitty cable provider and a phone company that’s struggled to consistently upgrade DSL to fiber (despite billions in subsidies).
The FCC is, of course, getting a much different story from smaller regulators and local customers and businesses, which routinely pummel the agency with stories of prolonged outages, high prices, all manner of dodgy fees, and substandard customer service.
Of course because Trump won the election, this entire inquiry is now moot. Given his choice of FCC boss (Brendan Carr) is unwaveringly loyal to giant providers like AT&T and Comcast, and is absolutely guaranteed to take a hatchet not only to this inquiry, but all FCC broadband consumer protection efforts, whether into consumer privacy, sneaky fees, or customer service.
You know, for “populism” (??).
Curiously one segment of the U.S. broadband industry that tends to have stellar customer service is community owned broadband networks. In large part because these cooperatives, municipalities, and utilities are owned and staffed by community members with an actual vested interest in maintaining quality of service. It’s hard to dodge the ire of your customers when you shop at the same Walmart.
Such community broadband efforts have broad, bipartisan U.S. support. Big telecoms have also tried to crush this movement by passing shitty, state level bans. They’ve also lobbied Republicans to unsuccessfully (so far) impose a federal ban on your town or city building its own fiber network. Still, more than 700 municipalities and counting have embraced some level of local broadband network.
I’d suspect the Trump FCC will be more than happy to help the industry undermine such efforts. Usually the pretense is they’re just terribly concerned about the potential impact on taxpayers; concerns that magically disappear when it comes time to throw billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks at Elon Musk, AT&T, or Comcast in exchange for expensive broadband access mysteriously always half delivered.
As the federal government under Trump once again abdicates its responsibility to protect markets and consumers from monopoly power, I suspect these local, organic, grass root reactions to market failure will only get increasingly popular. With the federal government soon to become utterly unreliable, most fights — especially in sectors like broadband — are going to be state by state, block by block affairs.
Filed Under: broadband, customer service, fcc, high speed internet, monopoly, telecom
from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept
Mon, Nov 25th 2024 05:35am - Karl Bode
Look: I think it was nice for a change that the Biden administration at least paid some passing but inconsistent lip service to antitrust reform. It was a lovely change of pace from decades of feckless careerists who pay empty lip service to market innovation while rubber stamping mindless consolidation at every turn. And a lot of the work, like advocating for right to repair reform, made a difference.
But, and this will probably all seem quaint in context of the mindlessly pro-consolidation corporate coddling coming under Trump 2.0, there were still ample instances where the Biden White House was caught talking out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to monopoly power.
Like the Biden FCC, for example, which repeatedly pushed decorative policies tackling the symptoms of telecom monopoly power, but had a bizarre aversion to even acknowledging the threat or harm of monopoly power and muted competition in public-facing statements.
Or this new report from ProPublica, for example, that found that a major 2021 partnership between the Biden White House and Microsoft, which involved Microsoft pledging $150 million in technical services to help the U.S. government upgrade its digital security, wound up giving the company a de facto illegal monopoly over government security services.
The original pledge made by CEO Satya Nadella, was supposed to prop up an Executive Order that modernized the Federal Government cybersecurity defenses. It involved Microsoft seeding its consultants across the federal government to install the company’s cybersecurity products free of charge for a limited time.
It helped repair Microsoft’s image after some of its own security lapses caused several high profile security scandals. It gave the White House a lot of breezy press about how it was taking cybersecurity seriously.
But as ProPublica notes, once the free period expired, the government was locked into using Microsoft’s products (and inevitably soaring subscription fees) for the foreseeable future. It also found itself paying more and more money for Microsoft cloud services to prop up the now locked-in use of those services. The whole thing, ProPublica notes, actively courted monopoly and was arguably illegal:
“But while Microsoft’s gambit paid off handsomely for the company, legal experts told ProPublica the White House Offer deals never should have come to pass, as they sidestep or even possibly violate federal laws that regulate government procurement. Such laws generally bar gifts from contractors and require open competition for federal business.
Accepting free product upgrades and consulting services collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars is “not like a free sample at Costco, where I can take a sample, say, ‘Thanks for the snack,’ and go on my merry way,” said Eve Lyon, an attorney who worked for four decades as a procurement specialist in the federal government. “Here, you have changed the IT culture, and it would cost a lot of money to go to another system.”
If you have a moment, please read the whole thing. And note that the FTC is purportedly preparing to launch an investigation into Microsoft’s anticompetitive behavior as it pertains to cloud computing and Azure (though I suspect it won’t survive Trumpism, unless Trump needs leverage to bully Microsoft into coddling white supremacists or something).
Senator Ron Wyden warned about some of this. For all of the Biden government’s talk about monopoly power, government still has been broadly conditioned over decades to look the other way when it comes to monopoly harms to competition. That kind of rot takes far more than a few strategically chosen high profile antitrust lawsuits to address, it takes widespread, dedicated reform and an entirely new way of thinking.
The Biden administration at least tried, on occasion, to take aim at monopoly power. Though again it tended to focus on some high profile cases that it still managed to miss the mark on. There’s no limit of highly consolidated industries dominated by politically potent monopoly power the government routinely and comically turns a blind eye to (oh hi there telecom industry, didn’t see you standing there).
Now again, this is all going to seem downright adorable in the context of the unbridled corruption, monopoly coddling, mindless deregulation and rubber stamping of terrible mergers that’s coming under a second Trump term. But it still demonstrates that monopoly busting and antitrust reform, should this country ever choose to actually embrace it, needs to be consistent and more than decorative.
Filed Under: antitrust reform, cloud, cybersecurity, executive order, monopoly, privacy, security, software
Companies: microsoft
from the you're-sure-as-shit-not-helping dept
Wed, Nov 20th 2024 05:24am - Karl Bode
We noted earlier this week how Trump had unsurprisingly picked Brendan Carr to head the FCC. We also pointed out how Carr’s “policies” are utterly indistinguishable from the interests of unpopular telecom and media giants like Comcast and AT&T. He’s going to demolish whatever’s left of the FCC’s consumer protection standards and media consolidation limits, and he’s not going to be subtle about it.
Carr is the dictionary definition of “regulatory capture.” He’s going to deliver the final killing blow to net neutrality (if the Trump-stacked courts don’t get to it first). He’s also going to take a hatchet to the FCC’s recent inquiry into shitty broadband usage caps, efforts to stop broadband “ redlining” (read: racism in fiber deployment), good faith efforts to help the poor afford broadband, and efforts to stop your cable, phone, wireless, or broadband provider from ripping you off with shitty fees.
But as I dug through the mainstream reporting on Carr’s appointment, very few outlets seemed interested in making any of that clear to readers. The New York Times and Washington Post, for example, kept the focus largely on Carr’s animosity toward “big tech” companies for their “censorship of Conservatives” (read: doing the absolute bare minimum to thwart racist assholes and right wing propaganda on the internet).
The fact that Carr’s primary function at the FCC will be to coddle unpopular telecom and media giants in about thirty different ways barely warrants a mention. Over at the Cox Communications owned Atlanta Journal Constitution (whose owners will benefit from a Carr appointment in several different ways), Carr’s appointment is framed like this:
We’re a decade into Trumpism, and major outlets are still putting false claims unchallenged in headlines. Why do you think that is, exactly? Readers told me the Atlanta Journal Constitution just reprinted the already soft WAPO story on Carr’s appointment, but cut off much of the second half where consumer groups illustrate that the headline they chose is demonstrably false.
Most of the rest of the mainstream coverage wasn’t much better. Fox News, of course, chose to focus on the exciting new racist potential of the Carr pick, but they screwed up the sub-headline to make it sound like he actually supports diversity and inclusion initiatives:
USAToday parrots claims that Carr is “fighting for free speech,” but can’t be bothered to mention that that (1) isn’t fucking true, and (2) that his primary role will be to gut consumer protections like net neutrality. Reuters similarly can’t be bothered to mention the risk Carr poses to consumer protection. In Politico, Carr’s looming assault on telecom consumer protection warrants one sad paragraph.
I’m sure there was some selective editing at play, but several major telecom and media consumer rights folks went out of their way to help media outlets highlight how Carr is a “nice guy” (see, in order, NPR, CNN, NYT), which I’m sure will be helpful as he happily demolishes twenty-five years of consumer advocacy policy work and threatens media giants for criticizing authoritarian leadership:
If the public doesn’t sense adequate alarm from experts whose entire careers have been in consumer and media market protection, they’re not going to be alarmed. I understand the desire for some civility, but this is not an ordinary administration. These are fascists who are going to steadily disassemble the entirety of federal consumer protection and corporate oversight over drinks and giggles.
Meanwhile, yes, Carr’s mindless authoritarian animosity to “big tech” is absolutely worth discussing, as are his threats to pull the broadcast licenses of companies that criticize Trump (even though that will be no easy feat, even with a Trump-stocked court and muted FCC authority). But his primary goal at the FCC will be to be as errand boy to historically unpopular media and telecom giants, and downplaying (or ignoring) that fact does Carr and his industry buddies no shortage of favors.
Meanwhile if you thought mainstream press coverage during this last election season was feckless, authoritarian-normalizing mush, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Filed Under: brendan carr, broadband, consumer protection, deregulation, fcc, high speed internet, media, monopoly, policy, telecom