from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept
As we’ve famous just a few occasions now, U.S. taxpayers have doled out greater than $400 million to map broadband entry, but regulators are still struggling to get it right. U.S. ISPs routinely overstate broadband availability and protection, and so they’ve traditionally challenged efforts to enhance broadband maps lest it really illustrate the downsides of monopoly energy and restricted competitors.
Living proof: a Colorado resident complained to Ars Technica that he couldn’t get Comcast broadband service at his deal with, regardless of Comcast claims that he might. The outlet dug a bit of deeper and located that Comcast’s broadband maps, together with those submitted to the FCC, dramatically overstated the ISP’s protection throughout giant swaths of the person’s neighborhood:
Upon reviewing Hillier’s deal with, we verified that it’s not possible to order service on the house on Comcast’s web site. Simply as Hillier instructed the FCC, Comcast’s on-line availability checker says it’s an “invalid deal with”—regardless that Comcast not solely instructed the FCC it serves the house but in addition disputed Hillier’s problem when he identified the error.
We discovered comparable proof suggesting Comcast submitted false broadband protection info at dozens of properties close to Hillier’s Arvada deal with and on a avenue in Fort Collins, Colorado.
The FCC’s new mapping program features a problem system that’s supposed to permit residents, cities, or opponents to problem inaccurate ISP knowledge. However that system wants lots of work regardless of a decade of effort and $400 million. Comcast mechanically defended its unhealthy knowledge, forcing the customers to leap by way of hoops to try to show his very apparent lack of Comcast broadband service:
“I submitted proof from Comcast/Xfinity’s personal techniques that my deal with was not served by this supplier regardless of being reported as such to you by Comcast/Xfinity… I count on extra from a authorities physique just like the FCC [than] to only say ‘go type it out and tell us the way it seems,’” he wrote in a response to the FCC that he shared with Ars.
As Ars accurately notes, the FCC has a shaky observe document in the case of standing as much as monopolies that artificially inflate their broadband protection. Wi-fi carriers even have a protracted historical past of over-stating broadband and wireless coverage, and the GAO has been complaining concerning the FCC’s timidity on holding ISPs accountable for the better part of the last decade.
With greater than $45 billion in subsidies (because of the Infrastructure Act) stumbling down the street, you’re going to be seeing a lot of recent complaints about ISPs inflating their broadband availability to nab subsidies they most likely don’t deserve. You’ll additionally see numerous tales about how the feckless FCC — whose processes have lengthy favored highly effective monopolies — dropping the ball.
Needless to say Comcast can also be collaborating in a lobbying and smear campaign to stop the seating of Gigi Sohn to the FCC, making certain that the company lacks the voting majority to do a lot of something deemed controversial by the telecom foyer — together with holding them accountable for inflated broadband protection claims.
Filed Beneath: broadband, broadband mapping, broadband maps, cable broadband, fcc, high speed internet, infrastructure act, maps, subsidies, telecom
Firms: comcast
Source link
