A few days before Donald Trump’s helicopter shrunk in the sky, we had a promising initial indication that the wild journey of telecommunications companies under Trump’s FCC is coming to an end. Last week, Charter Communications, the company behind Spectrum, withdrew your petition to impose data limits: basically, your attempt to restrict customers’ use of the Internet to force them to spend more money. The FCC announced yesterday that Charter withdrew its petition, which it filed in June, a few months after the pandemic.
The Democratic-led FCC under Obama initially banned Charter Communications from imposing data limits until 2023, as a condition for its 2016 merger with Time Warner Cable. The idea was to prevent the company from having a profitable advantage on The competition. FCC President appointed by Trump and telecommunications puppet Ajit Pai said it was “about the government micromanaging the Internet economy”. Stopping a broadband company from raising prices is not micromanagement, but that’s the kind of jargon that Pai uses for the basic functions of the regulator he oversees.
In your petition, Charter argued that everyone is broadcasting everything now, and the data limits have not hurt competitors like Comcast, AT&T, Cox and Altice, so “the market is working”. Defense groups like Stop the Cap! argued that consumers hate data limits, citing the “shock to the account” of the fines imposed by Time Warner onages. Letter argued that consumers, in fact, love data limits because they provide an “economical alternative” to unlimited plans.
In a statement emailed to Gizmodo, Charter explained that the timing had only to do with the pandemic. “In light of the continuing seriousness of the global pandemic and its effects on our customers, we want to offer them the assurance that they will continue to benefit from the unlimited access to broadband and the financial security that it provides during these difficult times.” said: “and therefore we withdraw our petition.”
This is a departure from the Charter’s previous position that the pandemic should not have an influence on the decision to allow data limits to be imposed, meaning why Charter waived fees and increased pay for frontline workers. An FCC filing literally included the title: “The Charter provided substantial assistance to subscribers during the COVID-19 pandemic, which provides no justification for the continuation of conditions”
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Charter is almost certain to have a better chance of obtaining data limits under President Pai, who summed up at the beginning of his term as president with a casual crack about himself as a “Verizon puppet” and then he lived according to legend.
Dad said recently the Wall Street Journal said the Republican-led anti-regulatory approach has increased access to broadband and accelerated infrastructure construction. In May 2020, FCC Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel pointed that the real scope of the expansion is immeasurable because ISPs have not provided accurate data. He revoked net neutrality, made it easier for ISPs bury disclosures, abandoned efforts imposing limits on the alarmingly high costs of prison calls, and gesticulated in the sense of destroying Section 230 to appease the Republicans (although there was no realistic way to do this). Executive Director of Fight for the Future I called him “One of the most corrupt government officials of the century”.
We have a longer performance evaluation here. He announced in November that he would step down as president today, and the official Twitter account gone.
The FCC is not necessarily fixed. Currently includes two Democrats and two nominated by Trump, both of which support the GOP agenda to detonate Section 230. (One of them, Nathan Simington, believed to have helped draft Trump’s senseless executive order to punish Twitter). President Biden’s nominee for president must be approved by the Senate. The Biden FCC has a lot of damage to undo, but we it can wait for a more transparent, accessible and equitable Internet.