The Federal Communications Commission's extremely hands-off approach to broadband-customer complaints has alarmed Rep Mike Quigley (D-IL). Rep Quigley wrote a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in Aug after learning of a Frontier customer who was forced to pay a $10-per-month rental fee for a router despite buying his own router. It turns out that the FCC hasn't proactively forwarded any broadband-billing complaints to the Federal Trade Commission despite the agencies' working agreement. But Chairman Pai's initial response to Rep Quigley didn't reveal that tidbit. Chairman Pai's response letter told Rep Quigley that consumers filed 450 informal complaints about broadband-equipment rental fees in the past year and that "nearly all" of them were "served on the relevant provider for a response." Chairman Pai's letter also said that complaints about "unfair or deceptive billing practices by Internet service providers have been referred to the FTC."

After the exchange of letters, Rep Quigley's staff followed up with the FCC to find out how the agency decides whether to forward complaints to the FTC. The answer from FCC staff was that it hasn't forwarded any billing complaints to the FTC without being asked to do so first. The FCC apparently only forwarded complaints to the FTC when the FTC asked for a set of complaints about particular companies. "At no point has the FCC actually sent, of their own volition, a single complaint to FTC for enforcement," a Quigley senior staff member said. "So essentially what the FCC is saying is, 'If you complain to us, we have to send a letter [to your ISP] that recognizes that we got a complaint within 30 days. And if we do that, that's the extent of our responsibility.' Now, the second part of that is, [the FCC says that] 'If we think it's a really big deal and should rise to the level of enforcement, we'll send it to the FTC.' But [the FCC has] never done that."

The FCC told Rep Quigley's office that, since the Restoring Internet Freedom order, it has referred 4,228 broadband-billing complaints to the FTC but that all of those were specifically requested by the FTC. The FTC asked for those complaints in one case "related to an AT&T unauthorized cellular data plan" and in another "related to a Frontier Internet speed issue," the Quigley staff member said. "Somehow, the FCC has not received a single complaint that they think requires enforcement action or any followup whatsoever, beyond the recognition that they received this complaint," the Quigley staff member said. "When our committee staff heard about this, they were floored. This is certainly not what the FCC initially implied when they responded to our inquiry, and it's pretty alarming."

Broadband networks do not reach millions of people in the United States. And this lack of access has a significant impact. Research shows that in rural counties with better access to broadband services, the millennial population increased between 2010 and 2016, in stark contrast to the tendency in recent years for most rural communities to lose young people. Many rural communities understand the importance of broadband to their future and they are taking matters into their own hands. What we know in 2019 is that we cannot let where we live determine our potential to connect.  When people in rural America are connected, everyone who uses the network benefits—from Western rancher to urban hipster. We know that the future of agriculture is now rooted in broadband. We know that High-Performance Broadband can help close the rural health-care gap and solve some of health care’s most enduring problems and intractable challenges. What we need is leaders at all levels of government to ensure that everyone in America is able to use High-Performance Broadband in the next decade.

Despite raking in hundreds of millions in government broadband subsidies, Frontier Communications has failed time and time again to bring reliable, high-speed connectivity to the rural communities it serves. Instead of investing in network upgrades, Frontier has neglected its rural infrastructure to the detriment of its subscribers and the company’s own financials, with its worsening service quality paralleling its plummeting stock value. A new fact sheet, Frontier Has Failed Rural America, presents evidence of Frontier’s negligence and suggests that rather than continuing to trust Frontier, government officials should look to publicly owned and community-minded providers to connect rural residents, businesses, and institutions.

To gain federal approval of their $26 billion merger, T-Mobile and Sprint have spent years promising a universe of incredible benefits, from lower prices to better rural wireless coverage. So far, agencies like the Federal Communications Commission have been more than happy to believe them. But US telecom history suggests you shouldn’t believe a word coming out of their mouths. From AT&T’s 2006 merger with BellSouth to Comcast’s 2011 merger with NBC, telecom megadeals are routinely accompanied by any number of promises that are promptly ignored once the deal ink is dry. Instead, consolidation routinely delivers terrible customer service and ever-higher prices.

The House Antitrust Subcommittee heard from two major players in the government's review of Big Tech and whether the antitrust laws have kept up with their exponential growth, but not before the legislators had staked out their own positions. Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) pulled no punches, saying that the extreme concentration of online platforms may have some benefits, but they were clearly using their power to set market terms that enrich themselves and make it impossible to compete. He also commented on Google and Fitbit. “Google’s proposed acquisition of Fitbit would threaten to give it yet another way to surveil users and entrench its monopoly power online," he said. He said the power Big Tech wields is in some measures unprecedented, while government regulators have been paralyzed. Full Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) echoed that criticism. He said they were at a critical moment when a handful of dominant companies control "commerce, content, and communications." He got specific, pointing out that Google had over 90% of search, Facebook over 80% of social media revenues, and Amazon over half of online commerce.

Witnesses for the hearing were Department of Justice antitrust chief Makan Delrahim and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons. Delrahim and Simons both talked about their ongoing, separate, investigations into Big Tech and antitrust, but both talked about the actions they had already taken in the digital space, and that they would take future action if their investigation warrants. On the issue of enforcement, FTC Chairman Simons conceded that the FTC was resource-restrained so it focused on cases it had a better likelihood of winning, adding that if it had more money, it could pursue more cases.