New Bill Would Ban U.S. Broadband Caps. Sort Of.
With the midterms looming, Democrats are apparently once again embracing one of their favorite strategies": pushing bills they know have no chance of passing, that may not even do the thing they claim to do, in a bid to make it look like at least they're doing something."
The latest case in point is a new bill pushed this week by Senators Ben Ray Lujan and Cory Booker that professes to ban usage caps. The bill tasks the FCC with imposing rules that prohibit broadband caps unless they're for reasonable network management":
A broadband internet access service provider shall not impose a data cap except when tailored primarily for the purposes of reasonable network management or managing network congestion.
The problem: usage caps are technically unnecessary bullshit. They're a cash grab imposed by regional monopolies to extract even more money out of captive U.S. consumers that already face some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world. It took years, but even the industry itself was finally forced to admit that caps don't actually help manage congestion.
It just doesn't technically work that way. There's a wide array of technologies that ISPs use to manage network congestion, but caps aren't among them. So the very act of including an exemption for reasonable network management or managing network congestion" creates a loophole for ISP lawyers to exploit as they look to dodge FCC enforcement on this issue.
The other problem, the FCC still lacks a voting majority because the telecom industry, GOP, and several key Democrats are blocking the nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn. So the bill might task the FCC with creating loophole-filled rules prohibiting usage caps, but the agency couldn't actually vote to approve them.
Getting Sohn appointed to the FCC should be the tactical priority for Democrats interested in telecom reform. Messaging on the importance of this appointment should be unyielding and relentless. But so far messaging support from the DNC, Biden, and her future FCC colleagues has ranged from fairly feckless press releases and petitions to complete radio silence. I don't know what that is, but it isn't strategy.
So, in short, the bill may not actually even do the thing it professes to do. And it won't pass a corrupt U.S. Congress that has made it clear it doesn't want to meaningfully challenge U.S. telecom monopolies. And it can't be implemented by an vote-gridlocked FCC. It won't even generate awareness of the issue because it was dropped in the middle of summer right before congressional recess (as of this writing the tech press didn't even notice this bill had been released).
This is, of course, the Democratic party MO. They're also pushing a doomed bill to restore net neutrality right before summer recess. Again, there can be a tactical function for doomed bills if they can raise awareness for important issues. But nobody is paying attention to fringe telecom policy in July. It would be great if they were, but wishful thinking isn't actual strategy.
So the only true function of this kind of bill is for a lawmaker to say hey, look at me, I'm doing something right before midterms." Which is better, I suppose, than pushing a corruption-fueled, terrible law serving industry (which is what most of Congress is busy doing). But I'm still not sure it's the best use of resources with everything going on (like, oh, fascists attempting to dismantle U.S. Democracy).
I get some pushback from activists who defend these performances (which might explain why U.S. telecom reform strategists have repeatedly had their asses kicked by industry over the last thirty years). But you really can't tell me there's nothing more strategically important a lawmaker could be doing than pushing a bill that won't pass, can't be implemented, doesn't do the thing it promises to do, and won't be noticed.