1d ago

California Bill Would Require That AT&T And Comcast Make Broadband Affordable For Poor People

www.techdirt.com

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.

My state fighting a good fight. We’re flawed, but we sometimes get it right.

34 comments

watch gavin veto it

they took so long to give us fiber and charged us hella for slow speeds on it after california heavily subsidized it
- F them theyll just increase everyones costs if this happens theyll end up profitting more than ever

“Will these people just stop being poor already.” -MAGAcuck

This is not the way to do it not private enterprises screwing people, set up your own municipal broadband service. When they lower prices to compete in the areas you offer it, you then pass a law to make those prices apply to the entire state.
- It's prohibitively difficult to establish municipal broadband. Much, if not all of the infrastructure used for internet in the US is privately owned.
  Hundreds of billions of tax dollars were once given to these ISPs to establish fiber networks all over the land, and it's still sparsely used outside of major cities-- in favor of milking older copper lines with cable/DSL for as long as possible. None of them are working on expanding access or improving infrastructure, simply because they don't find it profitable to do so.
  The ISPs have carved out their own little fiefdoms across counties and regions, and effectively act as a cartel with all of the steadily increasing prices and no actual competition in their territories.
  The way it's set up now, there has to be lengthy lawsuits and decades of legal teeth-pulling for the state to take it all back for public broadband. Aggressive ISP lobbying has made it all practically impossible with restrictive laws and outright bans. These little wins now are merely temporary concessions that the telecom mob will be certain to undo as soon as they inject another corporate shill into the government ranks.
  
  I’m in a red state and they’ve pulled it off in a neighboring city. It’s can be done and has been done.

Have you tried doing what NY did? Just handing them lots of cash, time and time again and getting nothing but monopolies in return?
- We did that with PG&E. Except we did get something in return: lots of dead people.

I'm POOR and that's SOCIALISM! REAL FREEDOM is when we make it Affordable for the RICH while making it IMPOSSIBLE for ME to Afford!
- My sympathies exactly, my dear fellow.
  Best regards,
  A Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire
- I wish I had your gumption to vote against my own best interest.
- Newmam will veto this bill. The motherfucker veto anything that helps the poor. He wants to be president and thinks kissing corporations assses will help him with that.
  
  Corporate Democrats are there to ensure that poors never get anything from this clown regime when Republicans are on the bench taking a rest from fucking them 169%

$30 discount on broadband bills
It's wild that it costs much above $30 at all for you guys. In the UK 100Mbps starts at £22/m (~$30) and I'm comfortably at 500mbps at around £35/m ($45) and we've got pretty bad deals compared to other European countries!
Related graphic
- We pay like 30 euros here for 300-400Mbps
- Xfinity NOW is only $30/month for 100/20 Mbps with no data cap. Not sure if it's available in all Comcast areas though. If you're an existing customer you have to query a neighbor's address because they'd rather you not switch.
- It’s wild that it costs over $30 at all for you guys.
  Your plan costs $45 a month though?
  
  Yeah, but that's because I choose the second highest plan available to me. Entry cost is lower, and I'd expect most poor families would go for that or the next tier above.

That's what taxes and public utilities are for. Convert them.

how much subsidies has the taxpayer provided to these parasites?
why are we paying them more, we already paid for this. make them provide free internet to people who need it. fuck them, they can pay for it.
also, fuck comcast! nepo baby ran company stolen tax payer money, accrued 110b of debt on their balance sheet while gambling during media and streaming wars AND LOSING
now they got no cash, they are in structural decline since they never upgraded to fiber and still selling coax at the same price as fiber offerings. top it off with shite grade customer service.
WHY WOULD ANYONE DEAL WITH THEM UNLESS THEY ARE ONLY CHOICE?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_L._Roberts
This is a the parasite who did this, a disgusting product of nepotism.
You would think this is a private company but nahh it is actually listed... clown capitalism at its finest!
- how much subsidies has the taxpayer provided to these parasites?
  thought you were talking about poor people at first lol
  
  i have never seen term parasite applied to the poors on lemmy tbh
  reddit investment, landlord and other clown gathering location sure but on lemmy, bootlickers get checked

when I was working in the residential ISP space some years ago during the FCC credits, we had some basic plans (25/3Mbit, 35/5Mbit) that were entirely or mostly covered by that discount program. it's by no means a flashy number but it gave thousands of our customers access to broadband, that most of them lost the ability to afford it as soon as the discount ended. go California, I hope this works out because it's super important for everyone to have broadband

Poor people deserve bad customer service, too!
- Poor people deserve bad customer service, too!
  why did you choose to add "too" to the end of the sentence, instead of writing "poor people too deserve …"?
  Is it a visual choice? Are you trying to balance "O"s as in oo………oo
  
  Grammar Nazi chiming in:
  Too meaning ‘also’
  We can use too to mean ‘also’. It is more common than also in informal situations. We normally use it at the end of the clause.
  In short answers in informal situations, we normally say me too, not I too.
  In more formal situations, we can use too immediately after the subject.
  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/too
  
  You're not wrong. People tend to tune me out when I speak that formally, and I made a decision a long time ago to always write how I speak.
  That being said, you should hear my corrected version of Land of Confusion.
  This is the world in which we live
  And these are the names you've given us

A $30 discount sometimes still leaves a sizable bill, but getting rid of something like that should be criminal.
- ISPs really tried to make plans specially that were covered in whole by these credits, because it meant they could get customers who otherwise they wouldn't have at all, and of course for the ISPs that gave a shit, it was also just a good thing to do.
  
  That's good that they have plans like that

While I very much like the idea and would be happy for it to be made law, if they can do it for "poor people" why can't they just do it for everyone? If the government is going to step in and price regulate a non-government company, why stop at only doing it for "poor people"? Far more than just "poor people" could massively benefit from saving $30/month on their internet bill.

How scandalous. I'm sure that the corporations are fighting at tooth and claw, of course.

34 comments

Too meaning ‘also’