Commissioner Pai’s Plan and the FCC Lifeline “Compromise” That Wasn’t

[Commentary] Much has been made of the political theatre that surrounded the Federal Communications Commission’s recent vote to modernize the decades-old Lifeline program. A minority on the Commission is pushing a narrative with all the appeal of a particularly wonky House of Cards episode (without the sex and murder): frantic negotiation, last-minute compromises, staff all-nighters, strong-armed negotiation tactics, improper outside influence, and interference from Capitol Hill, the works. All the while they bemoaned the loss of a bipartisan compromise that, they claim, would have brought meaningful reform to the Lifeline program. The problem is, that the proposed “reforms” Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly supported would have actually crippled, and ultimately sunk, the Lifeline program.

If their was goal to advance a serious plan to update Lifeline for the 21st century, acknowledging that broadband is a necessity and not a luxury, proposing a punitive budget number picked out of a hat and a minimum service standard that Commissioner Pai has called “arbitrary” and unwanted by most Americans and Commissioner O’Rielly has called “artificially high” and “untenable” was counterproductive. The Pai plan 1) guarantees the Lifeline program will be ineffective at helping poor families in urban and suburban areas (where services meeting his minimum standards are most likely to be deployed) because they’ll be priced out Lifeline-eligible services, and 2) reduces the types of services that certain consumers can access -- paternally dictating that poor families shouldn’t have the same choices in the broadband marketplace that wealthier subscribers have.