Senator Bernie Sanders is vowing to break up the US's internet-service-provider monopolies if he's elected President.
On Friday, Sanders unveiled a plan to bring "high-speed internet access for all," and among the promises is using the White House's existing antitrust authority to end internet, cable, and telecom monopolies.
"Their greed must end," Sanders said in the plan, which points to the billions of dollars Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T have been raking in. "With no incentive to innovate or invest, these conglomerates charge sky-high internet prices to reap profits from consumers, and they collect government subsidies to provide service to rural households while still leaving millions of Americans unconnected," he went on to claim.
The internet as we know it was developed by taxpayer-funded research, using taxpayer-funded grants in taxpayer-funded labs.
Our tax dollars built the internet.
It should be a public good for all, not another price-gouging profit machine for Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 6, 2019
That said, breaking up a big internet service provider wouldn't be easy. It would involve investigations and court battles that could drag on for years. Nevertheless, Sanders' plan calls for other ways to regulate the broadband sector. This includes requiring ISPs to offer customers a "Basic Internet Plan" at an affordable price that would still supply fast internet speeds.
On top of all this, Sanders wants to pave the way for city and state governments to create their own broadband. It's a movement that's been gaining steam across the country, especially among communities fed up with their existing providers. But to no surprise, the telecom industry has been lobbying against the creation of public ISPs.
Sanders wants to change this. He proposes offering $150 billion in infrastructure grants to support these "publicly owned and democratically controlled" broadband networks. In addition, he plans on preempting state laws that try to limit publicly owned broadband projects.
"High-speed internet service must be treated as the new electricity—a public utility that everyone deserves as a basic human right," he added.
It's no secret that the state of wireless internet access in the US is terrible. This week, the FCC found that Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular have been overstating their 4G LTE coverage in rural areas across the country. The lack of widespread broadband in the US has caused Sanders and other Democratic presidential candidates to promise funding more high-speed internet projects if elected to office.
In Sanders' case, he plans to get the $150 billion for public broadband projects through his $16 trillion "Green New Deal," which would tax the fossil-fuel industry, scale back on military funding, and pull in additional tax revenue from new jobs created in renewable energy industries.
In the meantime, the Trump administration's FCC has been trying to subsidize faster internet access in rural areas through government funding. But the agency has struggled to determine which communities need the subsidies due to the inaccurate wireless-coverage maps the major carriers have been submitting. An FCC report released this week recommends the agency consider punishing carriers who submit bad data and also to create teams devoted to vetting the wireless coverage maps to ensure accuracy.
Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast did not immediately respond to a request for comment.