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open internet
The End of Affordable Internet
The federal funding contained in the Affordable Connectivity Program offered a vital lifeline for people in South Carolina and nationwide. Now we must fight to resurrect such a program so that everyone has digital access that enriches individual lives and communities.
Jun 11, 2024
Almost four years ago, Congress established a little-known program called the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Since it was created, the program provided millions of Americans with affordable, high-quality internet. It never got much attention, but it’s impact on communities across the country including in South Carolina was enormous.
Launched by the Federal Trade Commission, the program provided eligible households with a discount on internet service of up to $30 every month to bridge the digital divide. Just this year alone, 415,680 families in South Carolina relied on the program, which averaged to about one in five households in the state. In total, the program saved people in South Carolina over $12 million each month on internet service.
Despite widespread support for the program, its funding expired on June 1st. As elected officials representing Silicon Valley, the tech hub of the world, and Chester, Fairfield, and Richland, predominantly Black counties that have struggled with reliable internet, we are fighting to raise awareness about rising internet bills for families and extend the program for another four years.
The ACP is too important to just let it expire without a fight. When bills come due and 23 million American households are suddenly slapped with an additional cost, the people who will hurt the most are our seniors, young students, people in rural areas or food deserts, and those who rely on the internet for activity and a sense of community.
The ACP is too important to just let it expire without a fight.
For many older Americans, the internet is a lifeline. It lets them talk with loved ones, learn about essential services and benefits, and access healthcare information online. Without affordable internet access, seniors may feel lonelier and more disconnected, lowering their enjoyment and quality of life.
Young people will also be hit especially hard by the program ending. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of online educational resources and in an era where technology shapes every aspect of our lives, students need to prepare for jobs in a digital economy. Both of us believe we need to ensure that the next generation has access to good jobs and opportunities and a shot at the American Dream. But we can’t prepare these students for the high paying tech jobs and advanced manufacturing jobs of the future if they don’t have internet access. The internet allows individuals to take advantage of at home remote and virtual trainings.
Another impacted group includes those living in rural areas far away from doctors, hospitals, or pharmacies. The stories we heard about what people went through before this program was enacted were heartbreaking. People were driving for miles and miles just to pick up their medication. Telemedicine provides another, much easier way to receive medical care through remote consultations to prescription refills that can be delivered directly to their homes. People living in food deserts face a similar situation when it comes to ordering groceries and other necessities. Ripping this access away deepens already existing disparities in both healthcare and nutrition.
At any age and in any location, people turn to the internet to find community and make friends. It’s become an essential place particularly for people who may experience discrimination or bullying at school. People with specific hobbies like playing an instrument or running have been able to connect and form bands or running clubs. The ACP empowered people to find like-minded people and pursue their passions and interests online.
The ACP program has improved the lives of millions and opened a new world of social connections, health benefits, education opportunities, and good paying jobs in South Carolina and nationwide. All of us need to speak out now to raise awareness and explore new solutions to protect affordable internet access for all.
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Trump's FCC Ripped Away Open-Internet Protections. We're This Close to Winning Them Back
A majority of commissioners is set to return to the agency the authority it needs to act as a strong advocate for a user-powered internet.
Apr 22, 2024
Later this week, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to reverse a Trump-era decision that stripped away essential open-internet protections. In a Thursday vote, a majority of commissioners will return to the agency the authority it needs to act as a strong advocate for a user-powered internet.
They will do this by reclassifying broadband-access services as telecom services subject to Title II of the Communications Act. Title II authority allows the FCC to safeguard Net Neutrality and hold companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon accountable to internet users across the United States.
Title II authority gives the FCC the tools to make the internet work better for everyone, ensuring that internet service providers can’t block, throttle, or otherwise discriminate against the content everyone accesses online. But it also gives the FCC the regulatory means to ensure that broadband prices and practices are “just and reasonable.” The agency will be able to step in to stop price gouging, safeguard user privacy, protect public safety, eliminate junk fees, and stop other abusive behavior from providers.
During a Capitol Hill press conference last week, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said, “There are a lot of things in this country that divide us, but Net Neutrality is not one of them.” Rosenworcel cited poll after poll that show that people across the political spectrum overwhelmingly support the 2015 Title II Net Neutrality safeguards that the Obama FCC put in place. The same polls show majorities opposed the Trump FCC’s 2017 repeal of these protections.
“Bringing back the FCC’s authority over broadband and putting back net neutrality rules is popular, and it has been court-tested and court-approved,” she added. “[W]e have an opportunity to get this right. Because in a modern digital economy, it is time to have broadband oversight, national Net Neutrality rules, and policies that ensure the internet is fast, open, and fair.”
Back to the future
The rules up for a vote on April 25 are identical to the 2015 rules. The FCC will enforce them in the same way. And the draft order text that the agency will finalize and adopt already makes this clear — in some cases, going further than the 2015 order did — with a chance before the vote occurs for the FCC to make this language even stronger.
Losing Title II hurt people, which is why millions protested the Trump FCC’s action. Not only did its 2017 repeal gut the Net Neutrality rules, it also surrendered the agency’s power to protect communities from unjust or unreasonable practices by these internet-access goliaths.
This had troubling consequences during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, when Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai asked broadband providers to sign a
voluntary pledge to preserve people’s vital internet access (he couldn’t force providers to do this since he’d abdicated the agency’s authority to compel these companies to keep users connected). Despite Pai’s claim that the pledge was a success, reporting by Daily Dot found that many of these same companies still cut users’ connections during a national emergency, when everything from work to health care had shifted online.
A 2019 study by Northeastern University and UMass Amherst found that ISP throttling of network services happens “all the time.” Researchers analyzed data from hundreds of thousands of smartphones to determine whether wireless providers were slowing, or throttling, data speeds for specific mobile services. They found that “just about every wireless carrier is guilty of throttling video platforms and streaming services unevenly.”
In everyday terms, this means that companies like AT&T are picking winners and losers online. Allowing such throttling to continue opens the door to more content-based discrimination. This isn’t just about economic favoritism — for example, an ISP slowing down a competitor’s online app so people would use their product instead — but, potentially, the blocking of political messages that gigantic communications companies don’t like.
This isn’t a hypothetical. In 2005, the internet service provider Telus blocked access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. And in 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several ISPs were intercepting user search queries on Bing and Yahoo and directing them to “results” pages that they or their partners controlled.
The say-anything lobbyists
Lobbyists working for these large internet-access companies like to say that Title II authority offers “a solution in search of a problem” that doesn’t exist. And you can bet they’ll repeat
a lot of these lies in the aftermath of this week’s vote.
Throughout the 20 years of debate around Title II and Net Neutrality, the powerful phone and cable lobby has demonstrated a willingness to say anything and everything to avoid being held accountable. They’ll say that Title II’s open-internet standard is a heavy-handed regulation that will undermine investment in new broadband deployment; in reality, executives from these companies have said publicly that their capital expenditures
aren’t impacted in any way by Title II rules. The lobbyists will say that Net Neutrality is a hyper-partisan, politicized issue — ignoring public polling (see above) that shows internet users on the political left, right, and center overwhelmingly support the sorts of baseline protections offered under Title II.
The fight for this week’s victory predates the Trump FCC repeal of strong Title II rules in 2017. By restoring safeguards that millions fought so hard to make a reality, the FCC is recognizing the broad-based grassroots movement that coalesced in 2005 around the then-obscure principle of Net Neutrality and built a movement focused on retaining the people-powered, democratic spirit that was baked into the internet at its inception.
Without baseline open-internet protections, internet users are subject to privacy invasions, hidden junk fees, data caps, and billing rip-offs from their ISPs. In addition, without Title II oversight the FCC is severely limited in its ability to promote broadband competition and deployment, bringing this essential infrastructure within reach of people in the United States who lack access.
The FCC will change all of that later this week. It will respond to overwhelming public opinion and stand up for internet users against a handful of monopoly-minded companies that for too long have dictated media policy in Washington.
Come Thursday, I and many of the amazing advocates who’ve been fighting this fight for the past 20 years will be on hand at the FCC to witness the final vote. It will be a moment to appreciate our hard work and thank the agency for restoring to Americans their all-important online rights. Join us in celebrating!
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FCC Takes 'Great Step' Toward Restoring Net Neutrality Rules
One expert called the move "a no-brainer to the millions of Americans who want the FCC to work to ensure that all of us are connected to quality, affordable, open, and secure broadband networks."
Oct 19, 2023
Open internet advocates applauded on Thursday as Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission voted to begin reestablishing FCC oversight of broadband and reviving net neutrality rules rolled back under former President Donald Trump.
"Today's vote is an important start to restoring internet freedom and openness," said Public Knowledge president and CEO Chris Lewis. "Over the next few months, the FCC and the public at large will have an opportunity to look carefully at the benefits of having broadband included in the communications networks that fall under FCC authority."
FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel announced her plan to ensure broadband is treated as a public utility last month. Commissioners Anna Gomez and Geoffrey Starks on Thursday joined her in voting for the related notice of proposed rulemaking, which was opposed by Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington.
"The notice of proposed rulemaking adopted today seeks comment on classifying fixed and mobile broadband internet service as an essential 'telecommunications' service under Title II of the Communications Act," the FCC explained. "The proposal also seeks to restore clear, nationwide open internet rules that would prevent internet service providers [ISPs] from blocking legal content, throttling speeds, and creating fast lanes that favor those who can pay for access."
Lewis asserted that "this commonsense classification is a no-brainer to the millions of Americans who want the FCC to work to ensure that all of us are connected to quality, affordable, open, and secure broadband networks."
The FCC previously voted in favor of net neutrality rules in 2015, under former President Barack Obama. Those regulations were rolled back in 2017, when the FCC was led by Ajit Pai—a former telecom industry lawyer and an appointee of Trump, the GOP's 2024 presidential front-runner.
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order encouraging the FCC to restore net neutrality rules. However, such efforts were stalled by a divided commission—until the U.S. Senate finally confirmed Gomez to a long-vacant seat early last month.
"When Trump's FCC Chair Ajit Pai led the repeal of net neutrality and rolled back Title II classification for broadband access, it was a huge win for the telecom industry and its executives," Demand Progress communications director Maria Langholz said Thursday. "We applaud the FCC for not giving up this fight in the face of the seemingly endless effort by corporate giants and their lobbyists to block commonsense and broadly popular open internet protections."
"By restoring Title II oversight, the FCC can prevent net neutrality violations at the hands of powerful ISPs, as well as expand affordable broadband access and stop dangerous privacy abuses," she continued. "Given the widespread public support for these reforms, it's vital the FCC continue to move decisively toward reinstating strong Title II protections, and that members of Congress stand with their constituents by publicly supporting this effort."
Free Press co-CEO Jessica J. González similarly stressed that "Pai ignored the overwhelming public consensus" with the rollback and "people across the country are demanding these open internet safeguards, which will allow the FCC to ensure that everyone in the United States—no matter their location, political persuasion, race or income—has affordable, reliable, and safe internet connections free from discrimination, blocking, or other ISP manipulation."
"In a last-ditch attempt to win over public opinion, these companies are bankrolling a disinformation campaign designed to paint the agency's popular Obama-era rules as bad for business and the American way," she noted. "But no amount of lies from the broadband industry and their congressional allies will change the fact that we need a watchdog protecting internet users' interests and defending their right to an open and affordable internet."
"Broadband providers and their spin doctors are deeply out of touch with people across the country who are fed up with high prices and poor customer service," González argued. "We need a referee on the field to call fouls and issue penalties when broadband companies are being unfair."
Lewis emphasized that "now is the time for the public to take action," and pledged that Public Knowledge will be "filing detailed comments in the record on behalf of the public interest in the coming months."
"Many commenters have focused only on net neutrality protections, however, there are many important protections that Title II authority brings on behalf of the public, from network reliability, outage, and public safety standards, to looking at the important values of universal service, privacy, and competition and fair pricing," he said. "We are already creating resources for those who are unfamiliar with the many benefits of placing broadband under FCC authority."
"We encourage all members of the public to make their voice heard at the FCC and in Congress where legislators are watching closely," he added. "Your senators and representatives need to know that you support FCC authority over broadband to protect open, secure, and affordable broadband access."
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