New York Law Requiring Cheap $15 Broadband Takes Effect
After King Trump’s dutiful Supreme Court recently refused to hear the case, a New York State law has taken effect requiring that ISPs provide low-income, state residents affordable $15 broadband. It’s a big win for digital equity activists and consumer groups that have long argued that America’s heavily monopolized (and barely competitive) broadband industry results in sky high prices for everyone, something that’s felt most keenly by the most vulnerable.
Big ISPs like Comcast and AT&T had fought tooth and nail against the law, first passed during peak COVID lockdowns when America was struggling with substandard broadband access during the home education and telecommunication boom.
New York’s Affordable Broadband Act exempts ISPs with less than 20,000 subscribers. It only applies to low-income residents who are on existing food stamp or other programs. It requires that ISPs provide these users access to either a 25 Mbps tier for $15 , or a 200 Mbps tier for $20.
NY State’s Affordable Broadband Act had a pained trajectory to fruition. In 2021 a US District Court judge blocked the law, claiming that the first Trump administration’s 2017 net neutrality repeal banned states from trying to regulate broadband. But courts repeatedly have shot down that claim, stating that the feds can’t abdicate their authority over broadband consumer protection and pre-empt state authority.
The idea of “rate regulation” is just about the most terrible phrase imaginable if you’re a telecom executive or “free market” Libertarian think tanker type. Limiting price gouging in this fashion is repeatedly brought up as a terrifying bogeyman in telecom policy conversations, though it very rarely manifests. NY’s effort is a fairly notable outlier in terms of such policy proposals.
A vast majority of U.S. state and federal telecom policies involve captured and corrupt policymakers simply doing whatever AT&T or Comcast says (merger approvals, mindless deregulation, big subsidy payouts, eroding consumer protection), which generally harms consumers and markets, and is usually held up by said free market Libertarians and telecom lobbyists as a “successful free market.”
New York’s case is important not just for the state’s low income families. It’s the first of many instances where state leaders are picking up the slack for a corrupt and captured fed.
As Trump 2.0 regulators like the FCC and FTC give up on consumer protection, it’s going to punt many of these fights to the state level. Given corporations spent so much money gutting Chevron deference in a bid to turn federal regulators into decorative gourds, they’re not going to like it much if consumer protection remains healthy and strong on the state level, even if it’s scattershot.
Corporate power’s goal really is no consumer protection on the state and federal level whatsoever. And contrary to folks to think that’s hyperbole, they’re well on the way to getting it thanks to the Trump courts.
The problem is that this is going to play out across so many sectors and issues over the next four years (immigration, environment, labor right, consumer protection) that states are going to get swamped with legal and policy fights, forcing them to truly pick and choose the most important battles. I could easily see broadband consumer protection and affordability issues being an early casualty.
Overall, New York State has been doing some very good things on broadband policy, levering ARPA and Infrastructure bills to help boost local broadband competition, including driving a lot of this historic subsidy infusion toward community owned and operated local broadband networks (yet another nightmare if you’re a telecom monopolist fat and comfortable with government capture).