The other other Big Tech antitrust problem

With Amazon, Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech firms, how long do you think it will take for America's broadband ISPs to get the same attention? Because they probably should.

So says an excellent piece by arstechnica's Tom Simonite:

The new fervor for tech antitrust has so far overlooked an equally obvious target: US broadband providers. “If you want to talk about a history of using gatekeeper power to harm competitors, there are few better examples,” says Gigi Sohn, a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy.

Sohn and other critics of the four companies that dominate US broadband—Verizon, Comcast, Charter Communications, and AT&T—argue that antitrust intervention has been needed for years to lower prices and widen Internet access. [As many as] 162.8 million Americans do not use the Internet at broadband speeds [and] New America’s Open Technology Institute recently found that US consumers pay, on average, more than those in Europe, Asia, or elsewhere in North America.

[...] Children without reliable Internet have been forced to scavenge bandwidth outside libraries and Taco Bells to complete virtual school assignments. In April, a Pew Research Center survey found that one in five parents with children whose schools had been closed by coronavirus believed it likely they would not be able to complete schoolwork at home because of an inadequate Internet connection.

Such problems are arguably more material than some of the antitrust issues that have recently won attention in Washington. The Department of Justice complaint against Google argues that the company’s payments to Apple to set its search engine as the default on the iPhone make it too onerous for consumers to choose a competing search provider. For tens of millions of Americans, changing broadband providers is even more difficult—it requires moving.

I live in Canada, where broadband access is more affordable, so this issue wasn't top of mind for me, but Simonite's piece raises some excellent points; the telecom oligopoly that has been allowed to develop south of the border is just insane, and absolutely needs to be reigned in, or broken up, or at least broken open. Here's hoping that Democrats get a chance to do so; with everything they'll have to deal with (assuming they get control House, Senate, and White House, of course), their dance card is going to be pretty damn full for the next couple of years.

Simonite's piece is excellent, and well worth a read - there's a lot more over at arstechnica than what I've extracted above - so go give them some clicks.

Reminder: Net Neutrality matters

For people who might be thinking that Net Neutrality is an abstract, purely theoretical thing that will never impact them directly, we now have a very stark demonstration of exactly why and how it can become a matter of life and death.

From arstechnica:

A fire department whose data was throttled by Verizon Wireless while it was fighting California's largest-ever wildfire has rejected Verizon's claim that the throttling was just a customer service error and "has nothing to do with net neutrality."

[...]

Verizon yesterday acknowledged that it shouldn't have continued throttling Santa Clara County Fire Department's "unlimited" data service while the department was battling the Mendocino Complex Fire. Verizon said the department had chosen an unlimited data plan that gets throttled to speeds of 200kbps or 600kbps after using 25GB a month but that Verizon failed to follow its policy of "remov[ing] data speed restrictions when contacted in emergency situations."

"This was a customer support mistake" and not a net neutrality issue, Verizon said.

Santa Clara County disputed Verizon's characterization of the problem in a press release last night. "Verizon's throttling has everything to do with net neutrality—it shows that the ISPs will act in their economic interests, even at the expense of public safety," County Counsel James Williams said on behalf of the county and fire department. "That is exactly what the Trump Administration's repeal of net neutrality allows and encourages."

I haven't any reports linking Verizon's greed directly to any injuries or deaths, but it's not hard at all to imagine a number of ways that this could have gone horribly, horribly wrong:

The throttling affected a device on a fire department vehicle that is "deployed to large incidents as a command and control resource" and is used to "track, organize, and prioritize routing of resources from around the state and country to the sites where they are most needed," Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a court declaration. Internet access is crucial "for events like large fires which require the rapid deployment and organization of thousands of personnel and hundreds of fire engines, aircraft, and bulldozers," he wrote.

Worse yet? Verizon didn't end the throttling until "after County Fire subscribed to a new, more expensive plan." And that, folks, is some serious corporate bullshit. Seriously, fuck Verizon.

The next time you head to the polls, take the time to learn about the Net Neutrality stances of the candidates that will be on that ballot. Picking the right one might literally save lives.