November 23, 2016

Trump may send your cable and internet bills soaring

LA Times - A top advisor to Donald Trump on tech policy matters proposed all but abolishing the nation’s telecom regulator last month, foreshadowing possible moves by the president-elect to sharply reduce the Federal Communications Commission’s role as a consumer protection watchdog.

In an Oct. 21 blog post, Mark Jamison, who on Monday was named one of two members of Trump’s tech policy transition team, laid out his ideal vision for the government’s role in telecommunications, concluding there is little need for the agency to exist.

“Most of the original motivations for having an FCC have gone away,” Jamison wrote. “Telecommunications network providers and [Internet service providers] are rarely, if ever, monopolies.”

The FCC declined to comment for this story, but its current leadership has disagreed strongly with that analysis. Its Democratic chairman, Tom Wheeler, has spoken of an Internet service “duopoly” in much of the country that limits competition. And he has compared telecommunications to the rail and telegraph networks of the 19th century, calling for new rules of the road as the Internet becomes the dominant communications platform of the 21st century.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

May send internet bills soaring? If you live in the rural heartland or deep inner city urban environs, then those bills already are. The net neutrality provisions only really affect those living in areas still providing affordable bandwidth. For those outside those areas, net neutrality is a nonissue due to the fact that all bandwidth intensive content is prohibitively expensive now. The effectiveness of the FCC has been largely a fiction given the contractions in ownership that were allowed under Bill Clinton's Telecommunications Act of 1996. So come on, Sam, keep up with the Trump scare tactics, the problem with that, of course, being that for nearly every point you can raise about what Trump might do we have a history of a Clinton having already been there.
This election was Hobson's choice, and when one factors in the destructive potential of signing TPP. TTIP, and/or TISA, along with the saber rattling taunts antagonizing the Russians and Chinese, it seems the public made the correct choice.