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The Internet Communications Government Network United States Technology

FCC Report Claims Broken Broadband Market Has Been Fixed By Killing Net Neutrality (vice.com) 116

Posted by BeauHD from the fake-news dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The FCC has released a new report falsely claiming that the agency's attack on net neutrality is already paying huge dividends when it comes to sector investment and competition. Unfortunately for the FCC, the data the agency is relying on to "prove" this claim comes from before current FCC boss Ajit Pai even took office and doesn't remotely support that conclusion. The Trump FCC's latest broadband deployment report [concludes] that "advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion." That claim comes despite the fact that this same data also shows that two thirds of U.S. homes lack access to 25 Mbps broadband from more than one ISP, resulting in numerous broadband monopolies in markets nationwide.

An accompanying press release goes on to claim that "steps taken last year have restored progress by removing barriers to infrastructure investment, promoting competition, and restoring the longstanding bipartisan light-touch regulatory framework for broadband that had been reversed by the Title II Order." The FCC has repeatedly tried to claim that the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules devastated sector investment -- despite the fact this is easily disproved by ISP earnings reports, SEC filings, and numerous CEO statements to investors. That hasn't stopped this FCC from repeating this claim anyway, apparently hoping that repetition forges reality. "The problem: these deployments aren't new, and industry watchers note that they all technically began under the oversight of the previous FCC," Motherboard concludes. "All of the examples provided by the agency cite deployments that predominantly occurred in 2017 as the result of obligations attached to mergers or subsidies under the previous Tom Wheeler-run FCC."
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FCC Report Claims Broken Broadband Market Has Been Fixed By Killing Net Neutrality More

FCC Report Claims Broken Broadband Market Has Been Fixed By Killing Net Neutrality

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  • The new norm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CRC'99 ( 96526 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:05PM (#56079929) Homepage

    Rewriting history was always the norm. Problem is, now we're trying to re-write the present.

    Repeat the same crap often enough, and people will think its true.

  • Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:07PM (#56079951) Homepage

    ... the people in rural areas who are most negatively impacted by the lack of readily available broadband will fall for this.

    • Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Funny)

      by pubwvj ( 1045960 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:23PM (#56080069)

      Wow. You are a class A chauvinist.

      For your information, there are a great many people out in rural areas who are far more intelligent than you. Get your glasses fixed.

    • Re: Unfortunately... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I live in a small town outside of Wichita. When we say we are going to town, it's not 10 mins. away, it's a drive. Not only do we get 25 meg plus broadband but the whole town has been wired for fiber. In fact they just hooked up my fiber connection today at 25 meg and it cost me $5 more per month when I had only 12 meg before. Yes we only have one ISP but they doing ok for the surrounding small towns. And yes I'm glad net neutrality is gone, nothing more than more regulations that don't work, just like mor

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Congratulations as well. My parents live 15 minutes outside of a small town in Iowa. Closest city is about 45 minutes away from town.

        Parents choices for ISP's:

        Verizon Wireless
        Satellite ISP's
        Dial up (though I think the local dial up ISP pulled out of our area)

        No fiber, no cable, no dsl.... So yes they have broadband via Verizon... a whole like 8GB a month (might be less), with a nice bill to go with it.

        My choices on the other hand (I live in a town in Georgia)

        TDS DSL (They have fiber in our town, but not in

      • More gun laws don't work?
        Tell that to the Brits

  • Doublethink (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:07PM (#56079953) Journal

    Big Brother has increased broadband speeds from 25 mbps to 10 mbps! Hooray Big Brother!

  • ...dog bites man. Wake me when there's really NEWS.

  • You know they don't care (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:11PM (#56079975)
    right? Show up for your primaries folks. Otherwise you'll have the same choice of Right wing corporate Dems and right wing Rs. Also, and I know this isn't a popular idea, but this _is_ a partisan issue. The Republicans are opposed to government regulation and want to leave the free market to decide (massive subsidies not withstanding) while the Ds, when they're not being actively bought off (again, show up at your primaries people) support government regulation with the aim of general societal improvements + correcting imbalances in the market. What I'm saying is, if you vote R you shouldn't be surprised when they don't want to regulate. They told you that in their party platform.
    • Yeah, nobody is going to vote for the party of identity politics. The Democrats haven't repudiated any of the vile, divisive policies that lost them the last election.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Yes, the democrats are so divisive that they had roughly three million more people vote for them than the republicans did.

        Look, independent of any electoral college debates, there are still MORE people voting democrat than republican. Republicans win exactly one demographic: white males.

        So tell me again how "divisive" democrats are when they own every demographic but one?

        • Oh, this is priceless. I say that identify politics are vile and divisive and get back a post defending the vile divisiveness of identity politics.

    • If you read the report it details the many ways the FCC is actually working to address those imbalances, as is required by law.

      The chairman has been very active over the years in promoting things like funding for rural broadband. In fact he's been critical of the previous FCC for not spending more to address these issues.

      I know it's not popular on slashdot to report these things as it doesn't fit the black and white narrative, but there is room for coming together behind some of these efforts.

      • because the rural voters are a reliable source of votes for Republicans and, well, he's a Republican. Everything Ajit Pai (and his party) does is to further their own ends. Once in a blue moon those ends cross paths with someone besides themselves and their corporate masters. That shouldn't distract you from the overall fact that they're screwing us all over for profit.

        Some things in life really are black and white. Fact are facts. I'll say it again, this _is_ a partisan issue. The sooner you realize th

  • By taking it away the FCC caused millions of last mile miles of fiber to be instantaneously laid to all the rest of the people in rural areas. Presto, magico!

    Sadly this will allow for the spread of more fake news so the president wisely cut the cord.

  • This is Fake Report.

  • Its probably not a lie (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:35PM (#56080121)

    >> falsely claiming that the agency's attack on net neutrality is already paying huge dividends

    It probably really is already paying huge dividends, just exclusively to the board and shareholders, not the customers.

  • It's Yuge! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Current FCC policy is paying Yuge dividends, Yuge I tells ya!

    In fact, under Obama, zombies were walking the streets, killing and raping. Mexican zombies! With Me and Pai, honeysuckle grows in verdant groves, fountains gush with mead, and bluebirds sing the national anthem.

    Can I tell you how I squashed the Dictator of Darkest Korea? Or how I personally defeated ISIS? My policies are single-handedly responsible for bringing down the Imams of Iran!!!

    And black people love me! There are so many black people

  • If you tell a lie often enough, gullible people will believe it.

    Meanwhile, in a court of law, you'll get sued by the attorney generals of the states that know you're lying about broadband and competition. Because they deal in facts.

  • They're probably including cell service (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rakarra ( 112805 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:47PM (#56080187)

    When the broadband companies took all those federal subsidies to increase Internet broadband, they used their own "creative" definition of what broadband Internet should be and dumped all that money into cell service. My guess is whenever they talk about Internet service, they're still counting stupid phone data availability.

  • Just as the incredible unemployment rate that Oblama took turned into a resurgent full employment situation the very second fearless leader took the oath, the entire boadband problem has been cured in a matter of days. Time to follow all of the republican ideas. They not only work - they work immediately, and often go back and change the past.

    Further proof of God's favor is when cabana boy rand announced how a secretary was so pleased about the recent tax package, because her paycheck increased by a lit

  • "Hey, we fixed broad band by allowing Cable companies to filter your network traffic....oh, and we redefined what broad band means by saying anything over 5 Mbps is broad band....yay merica! All hail Fuck Face Pai."

  • Who would pull Ajit Pai back from the street if he was about to get hit by a bus?

  • Anyone interested in this topic needs to read the actual report. There the FCC goes through the numbers behind its conclusions and the legal requirements that it faces when going about its analysis.

    But more importantly, the FCC report simply doesn't come to the conclusion that Slashdot reports here. In fact it explicitly says that there is more progress to be made, and that it was a lot more than Network Neutrality stuff going on last year.

    The report is a fine report that we should be able to get behind, as

  • Man promoted by liar turns out to be a liar. Wow.

  • Egads I feel dumber reading those "news" articles, and even dumber comparing them to the FCC release.
    If you are having some issues with this summary, which any reasonable person would, go and compare them to the actual FCC release. While the FCC release is about the USA as a whole the news articles are almost entirely on the areas with the issues, and the quotes and numbers they use are from the FCC talking about those issues.
    In this case the articles focus on remote indian land and conclude that since t

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