The GOP Is Very Mad Because The FCC Wants To Ban Shitty Cable Early Termination Fees

Earlier this month the Biden FCC announced that it was exploring banning early termination fees, which ISPs use to punish you for switching to competitors. It was a long overdue action in a country where cable and broadband giants routinely rip off consumers with a rotating bevy of fees, all designed to let them falsely advertise an artificially lower rate, then hit you with a much higher bill down the road.

A2019 Consumer Reportsstudy found that about 24% of consumer bills are comprised of bullshit fees, generating cable giants $28 billion in additional revenue annually. Efforts to protect consumers from these fees has beeninconsistent and selectiveat best. Keep in mind: the FCC is only taking aim at early termination fees. And, given this is the FCC, there's no indication they'll consistently enforce any new rules.

The FCC formally voted to approve the rules last week. And, the telecom industry, once again in perfect lockstep with the GOP, is having a conniption fit about a regulatory agency attempting to do the absolute bare minimum to protect U.S. consumers.

The cable industry's top lobbying group immediately tried to claim that locking users into long-term contracts and then financially penalizing them for trying to switch to a better offer is somehow pro-consumer and pro-competition:

We do not support banning consumers from choosing a service plan with discounted rates in exchange for long-term service agreements that may include early termination provisions," the NCTA said. The FCC should understand that its proposals would amount to rate regulation and result in consumers having fewer options."

Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr also took a break from hyperventilating about TikTok to falsely claim that blocking ISPs from ripping you off with errant fees is akin to rate regulation:

It's clear that the Administration has decided that the FCC is going to regulate rates, no matter how competitive the market and without regard to the FCC's legal authority," Carr said. We saw it in big proceedings like net neutrality and digital equity, and we see it in more targeted proceedings like this one."

If you're new to telecom policy, Republicans routinely hold up rate regulation" (doing things like mandating wholesale fiber sales or setting rate caps) as something akin to puppy torture. They like to pretend that U.S. broadband is super competitive, and having government regulators do anything at all upsets that careful competitive balance (which everybody clearly can see doesn't actually exist).

The irony is the Democratic FCC has never seriously considered rate regulation - and, in fact, routinely goes well out of its way to avoid it. The Democratic FCC simply lacks the political backbone to even consider it, yet it's routinely trotted out as a bogeyman by industry and their right wing allies to galvanize opposition to anything the FCC does among small government types.

But what's dressed up as a principled opposition to rate regulation (which again isn't what's happening here) is really just boring old corruption and regulatory capture. Every single time the FCC tries to do absolutely anything (no matter how modest), the telecom industry works with the GOP to first demonize the proposal (or regulatory nominee as we saw with Gigi Sohn) as extreme, and then set about working to dismantle it. Usually successfully. And often with the help of Democrats.

It's been going on for the better part of the last thirty years, and the end result hasn't been some sort of Utopian free market, it's been shitty, patchy, and expensive service from the likes of Comcast.