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FCC To Halt Expansion of Broadband Subsidies For Poor People (arstechnica.com) 424

Posted by BeauHD from the short-end-of-the-stick dept.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced today that the FCC will be "dropping its legal defense of a new system for expanding broadband subsidies for poor people, and will not approve applications from companies that want to offer the low-income broadband service," reports Ars Technica. The Lifeline program, which has been around for 32 years and "gives poor people $9.25 a month toward communications services," was voted to be expanded last year under FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. That expansion will now be halted. Ars Technica reports: Pai's decision won't prevent Lifeline subsidies from being used toward broadband, but it will make it harder for ISPs to gain approval to sell the subsidized plans. Last year's decision enabled the FCC to approve new Lifeline Broadband Providers nationwide so that ISPs would not have to seek approval from each state's government. Nine providers were approved under the new system late in former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's term, but Pai rescinded those approvals in February. There are 36 pending applications from ISPs before the commission's Wireline Competition Bureau. However, Pai wrote today, "I do not believe that the Bureau should approve these applications." He argues that only state governments have authority from Congress to approve such applications. When defending his decision to revoke Lifeline approvals for the nine companies, Pai said last month that more than 900 Lifeline providers were not affected. But most of those were apparently offering subsidized telephone service only and not subsidized broadband. Currently, more than 3.5 million Americans are receiving subsidized broadband through Lifeline from 259 eligible providers, Pai said in today's statement. About 99.6 percent of Americans who get subsidized broadband through Lifeline buy it from one of the companies that received certification "through a lawful process," Pai wrote. The remaining 0.4 percent apparently need to switch providers or lose service because of Pai's February decision. Only one ISP had already started providing the subsidized service under the new approval, and it was ordered to notify its customers that they can no longer receive Lifeline discounts. Pai's latest action would prevent new providers from gaining certification in multiple states at once, forcing them to go through each state's approval process separately. Existing providers that want to expand to multiple states would have to complete the same state-by-state process.
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FCC To Halt Expansion of Broadband Subsidies For Poor People More

FCC To Halt Expansion of Broadband Subsidies For Poor People

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  • The more stupid shit they do to try and take from the poor while giving to the rich, the more likely it is that they'll get their stupid asses thrown to the curb in the next election cycle. It's like politicians don't understand that poor people vote too.

    • Re:I hope this trend continues. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by slashdot_commentator ( 444053 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @11:02PM (#54140111) Journal

      It's like politicians don't understand that poor people vote too.

      Of course they do. That's why they gerrymander districts, "steal" Supreme Court nominations, and attack access to voting rights under the pretext of near non-existent voter fraud.

      Poor people are poor for a reason. They are red-lined into neighborhoods of poor people. They and their children are raised to execute suboptimal reasoning. That makes them manipulable voters, and ineffective in protecting their self interest. Then they knock up the local poor girl, and the cycle perpetuates itself.

      • Re:I hope this trend continues. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @01:55AM (#54140819)

        People like you get to make choices. The poor (who are not people like you) don't choose. They "are red-lined", "raised", and end up knocked up.

    • Re:I hope this trend continues. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Known Nutter ( 988758 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @11:45PM (#54140341)

      the more likely it is that they'll get their stupid asses thrown to the curb in the next election cycle.

      Keep telling yourself that. The constituency is largely lazy, self-centered, and couldn't be bothered to vote. Many simply refuse to see the world beyond their own Big Mac. Most of what remains that fall into these categories seem to be extremely malleable and impressionable and will believe anything they're told when it comes from a person who aligns with their limited worldview. Then there is the small fraction of people who understand the issues, can articulate the problem, form solutions, and execute to achieve results. Sadly, these people seem to exist in relatively small numbers and don't seem to be making much of a difference. By and large, they are being out-bred by mouth-breathers at an alarming pace.

      With a 55% voter turnout in the 2016 presidential race, it's no wonder we are where we are.

      I'm 41 and I do not see any of this mess being fixed in my lifetime. Good luck to the next generations. You're going to need it. The Age of the Dominant Ego has arrived.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Boronx ( 228853 )

      Trump still has 90%+ approval among Trump voters, even after he betrayed them on health care. They simply don't care about any of this.

  • Background and the real issue (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @10:49PM (#54140063) Homepage Journal

    The lifeline subsidy does not come from your income taxes, but from a fee charged to telephone subscribers. This is used to make sure that poor people can call 911 and can participate in our society sufficiently so that they can get a job, go to school, and make use of government services that were formerly only available by phone or personal visit.

    These days, getting a job requires use of the internet and you can't really hang around the library for the entire time you're trying to get work. So, it makes sense to give poor people some basic connectivity.

    I believe the actual motivation behind this move is the same one that is behind making it more difficult for poor and disenfranchised people to vote - even though there is no evidence of significant voting fraud in the USA: Poor folks and minorities might vote Democratic. Suppression of the Black vote has historically been an important part of Republican strategy, this [washingtonpost.com] is just one of many reports on that issue. Having gerrymandered them into the most odd-shaped electoral districts, it becomes time to make sure they can't get news online or participate in democratic discourse.

    • Simple question: If they stop paying out the money from the phone tax, will they stop collecting the tax? I suspect not, and I also expect the phone companies will get to keep that money.
      • There is still the legal responsibility to provide telephones to poor people, even if the money isn't used in part to provide them with broadband.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mishehu ( 712452 )
          And what you state is true with the USF. It just saddens me that people in positions of power seem to be willfully turning a blind eye to the fact that we've long since crossed the point where there is really any distinction between a telephone and the Internet. Ultimately both are considered by the vast majority of our society to be necessary to facilitate communication and to function in society. The cynic in me expect the chairman to keep on rowing his boat down this stream, so I expect things only to

          • so I expect things only to get worse.

            What, like they're going to ditch the internet provider privacy rules?

            Someone doesn't seem to understand the difference between what Google can see and what your internet provider can see. Lots of adds for VPNs and Proxies tonight, I noticed.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mishehu ( 712452 )

              Psssh I have to rent a vm elsewhere and run a VPN myself just in order to route an ipv6 /64 subnet to my residence. Since I live just 5 miles outside of the metro area, my choices for Internet are Jack (some neighbor who runs an ubiquiti airmax with factory default settings) and Sh*t (satellite). At the moment I'm tethered off my phone because Jack is highly unreliable for one who works in VoIP dev and is behind a TP Link NAT that is out of my control, so I'm already NAT-ed. Satellite is way too latent a

    • You may not like this (Score:4, Insightful)

      by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @11:16PM (#54140177)

      While you are correct that people need access, and that many people need assistance in getting access, the issue should be at the State level as FCC Chairman states. The Federal Government was never intended to be the source of Welfare systems, that is a function of the State.

      For some reason, over the last 70 years or so, all social welfare programs have been pushed to the Federal Government. This has caused a massive amount of bloat and comes with an excessive amount of problems. Social Security is a great example of a good idea, but the bureaucracy has completely destroyed the system. Instead of actually saving the money people put in, it has been spent as discretionary funds. There is no money in Social Security, and nothing has been saved since the very early 1970s. People paying in today are the only source of paying people that collect. There is no interest on the money as was promised, and no guarantee that you will get what you are supposed to get. Being 20Trillion in cash debt and 220Trillion in debt when you include entitlements, there is a good chance that you won't get yours.

      People should really read the Federalist papers and see where the Founders said power should go and why. They knew that a bloated Federal Government leads to what we have today. Massive corruption, massive cronyism, massive waste and fraud, and it's extremely difficult to remove at that high of a level.

      That is not to say that States don't run a risk of corruption, but the corruption at a more local level has numerous benefits. The Federal Government can investigate and charge for corruption at the State level, where they won't touch their own for fear of harming their own budgets. People unhappy with the State Government have more direct control of the elected officials.

      • Re:You may not like this (Score:5, Informative)

        by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Thursday March 30, 2017 @12:36AM (#54140567) Homepage Journal

        The problem I'm having with your argument is that I can't come up with a natural reason for this to be a State rather than Federal issue. What I've heard before is reference to intents of the founders or the 10th amendment. The 10th amendment argument generally takes an originalist view of the Constitution. Given originalism, we'd not have women's suffrage or racial equality, so much for originalism.

        If we look back to when social policies like this were enacted in the Federal context, it's when we've had the problem that some states have been dragging their feet about racial equality (and essentially any other social issue of the last century). The Federal government thus saw a need to step in.

        • Hmm. My copy of The Constitution says "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

          I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that the originalist view of that sentence is that women can vote in states that have elections (currently all of them). I would absolutely love to hear the non-originalist reading of that passage, and maybe some citations of court cases supporting the theory that this alternative sense (what

          • You cited the 19th amendment.

            The originalist reading of the constitution would be a reading of the intent of the founders. Who raped their slaves and kept their women at home.

            • Hmm, the founders provided a mechanism for changing The Constitution, and that mechanism was used. How do you interpret that to mean anything other than that they intended for that to happen? Is my copy defective? Did the printer leave off "Just kidding" from the text of Article 5 in my copy?

              And the answer to your question about who raped slaves and kept women at home is "Democrats". Democrats fought to keep slavery, and they fought to prevent women from voting.

              • Re:You may not like this (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Thursday March 30, 2017 @03:28AM (#54141033) Homepage Journal

                No, the founders who raped their slaves were not Democrats. The founders had a "Democratic-Republican" party, which is also referred to as "Jeffersonian Republicans" or "The First Republican Party" and isn't the Democratic party, and the other party at the time was the Federalist party.

                Each of the amendments started out with the decision that the intent of the founders wasn't going to matter any longer. Any future amendment must do so as well.

                Democrats fought to keep slavery, and they fought to prevent women from voting.

                Well, that's really bad. But the Democrats wisely decided to stop doing those things. In the years that the Democrats cut their ties with the segregationist portion of Southern voters, spanning from the Goldwater to the Nixon campaigns, the Republicans took them up. So we're now in the position that the Republicans are the political heirs of the 1964 Democrats. So having taken over the bad stuff the Democrats used to do, you are not in a good position to revile us for our past sins.

                • Ahh, yes, The Great Switcheroo of 1964-1969 [youtube.com].

                  I set it to start at the graphic, but please replay so you can watch the whole clip. And feel free to run down his sources.

                • So having taken over the bad stuff the Democrats used to do, you are not in a good position to revile us for our past sins.

                  All the Democrats did was switch the targets of their bad stuff. They play divide and conquer. When they could get more votes stirring up racial hatred among whites towards blacks, they did that with the KKK and Jim Crow laws. Once the culture shifted to where that sort of thing was no longer acceptable they switched to stirring up black hatred towards whites. The Republicans didn't switch. They mostly wanted a colorblind nation before Civil Rights and they mostly want one after.

                  We will never have a colorbl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      The title of the story makes it sound like they're cutting off funding.

      They're only suspending the legal defense of the previous administration's lawsuits on the issue of state sovereignty. Apparently the FCC approved some applications from Internet providers even though the State they were going to be operating in didn't approve them (yet) and was going to make the Federal Government force the sovereign State to accept their application anyways.

      The rest is just journalistic conjecture.

  • News at 11.

    FFS, how did we ever get to this point? How fucked up as a society are we to decide we can prevent the poors from having internet access, and the !poors get every mouse click and website visit get sold to who knows who?

    Seriously, dafuq?

    • prevent? Who is doing this alleged preventing? Are they following these poor people around, physically blocking them from being able to walk into not only libraries, but also businesses of all sorts that provide free wifi?

      I don't know about society, but I'd say that you personally are extraordinarily fucked up if you equate a halt in the expansion of a program that provides free internet access with preventing people from getting on the internet.

  • The game plan so far has consisted of: 1) Legalize spying and sale of data by ISPs and 2) Squelching attempts to help the poor get access to basic services necessary to working. I wonder what 3) will be? A SOPA, PIPA or ACTA revival? Expanded powers to prosecute people who infringe on intellectual property? New restrictions on the 4th amendment?

  • As someone who grew up disadvantaged (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    PSA to all those who don't seem to understand this: In today's society access to affordable broadband is required for both education and work. You can't do homework or apply for a job without it anymore. Subsidies like this are an investment in the future of this country, my own experience taught me that. I grew up in a very poor household and if not for similar programs I wouldn't have been able to go to college. Instead of flipping burgers for minimum wage I managed to build a solid career for myself and

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      I grew up in a very poor household where such programs weren't available. I still managed to become a productive member of society. As a matter of fact, I'm still "poor" and I still don't qualify for various handouts and still managing to survive.

  • It's about time someone finally stood up to the poor people. Thank God for Pai and his ISP cronies, once again making America safe from anything left of Ayn Rand.

    Imagine the trouble the poor people could cause if they actually broke out of the debt-swamp?

  • The right wing hates the poor and anything that aids the poor they try to ruin. I suspect that the poor may have responses that nobody will like. There are numerous ways to create internal enemies. You see those nasty poor people simply refuse to crawl into a corner and suffer and die. The tend to act out. It may be one hell of a hot summer.

  • don't read too much into it (Score:3)

    by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @08:52AM (#54142019)

    I know there will be a lot of back and forth as to denying access to the poor, etc. This is more about making it harder for ISPs to get the money than it is for poor people to get internet service. The system was being abused, severely. As an ISP myself, I have seen other ISPs abuse the lifeline system by putting wireless into nursing homes on the back of a single broadband connection (not even their broadband because they are an ISP in name only, they have no real gear) but collecting the $10/mo off every single patient in the nursing homes, including those not using the internet because they are in a coma. If that wasn't enough they also were profiting off lifeline by providing 'phone service' to every resident as well and collecting that money when they only pulled in a single T-1 to the facility and oversubscribed those ports 20:1. So $400/mo for the ATT voice T-1 with 24 DS0 channels, and $120/mo for a TWC broadband connection. ~300 residents for phone and internet.that they dont even maintain the equipment for. It is disgusting to know that all of our tax hikes are bankrolling his shit. His entire company is a fake company on paper with 4 employees and he's done this with over a dozen nursing homes. The nursing homes sign off on it because they share in the profits (by way of getting free internet/phone service for the business side of things as a byproduct).

  • Did you really think that a billionaire (Score:3)

    by mark_reh ( 2015546 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @10:37AM (#54142941) Journal

    in the whitehouse would give a crap about anyone but himself and people he hopes to make money from? Do you think he became a billionaire by caring about other people, especially people of lower socioeconomic status than himself?

    You have almost 4 years to mull it over. Hopefully, you'll learn from your mistake and do the right thing next time.

  • Better solution (Score:3)

    by avandesande ( 143899 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @12:31PM (#54143931) Journal
    How about providers have to offer a 1 or 2 mb solution to anyone who wants it for 10$ a month

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