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FCC Panel Wants To Tax Internet-Using Businesses, Give the Money To ISPs (arstechnica.com)
The FCC's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC), which includes members like AT&T, Comcast, Google Fiber, Sprint, and other ISPs and industry representatives, is proposing a tax on websites to pay for rural broadband. Ars Technica reports: If adopted by states, the recommended tax would apply to subscription-based retail services that require Internet access, such as Netflix, and to advertising-supported services that use the Internet, such as Google and Facebook. The tax would also apply to any small- or medium-sized business that charges subscription fees for online services or uses online advertising. The tax would also apply to any provider of broadband access, such as cable or wireless operators. The collected money would go into state rural broadband deployment funds that would help bring faster Internet access to sparsely populated areas. Similar universal service fees are already assessed on landline phone service and mobile phone service nationwide. Those phone fees contribute to federal programs such as the FCC's Connect America Fund, which pays AT&T and other carriers to deploy broadband in rural areas.
The BDAC tax proposal is part of a "State Model Code for Accelerating Broadband Infrastructure Deployment and Investment." Once finalized by the BDAC, each state would have the option of adopting the code. An AT&T executive who is on the FCC advisory committee argued that the recommended tax should apply even more broadly, to any business that benefits financially from broadband access in any way. The committee ultimately adopted a slightly more narrow recommendation that would apply the tax to subscription services and advertising-supported services only. The BDAC model code doesn't need approval from FCC commissioners -- "it is adopted by the BDAC as a model code for the states to use, at their discretion," Ajit Pai's spokesperson told Ars. As for how big the proposed taxes would be, the model code says that states "shall determine the appropriate State Universal Service assessment methodology and rate consistent with federal law and FCC policy."
The BDAC tax proposal is part of a "State Model Code for Accelerating Broadband Infrastructure Deployment and Investment." Once finalized by the BDAC, each state would have the option of adopting the code. An AT&T executive who is on the FCC advisory committee argued that the recommended tax should apply even more broadly, to any business that benefits financially from broadband access in any way. The committee ultimately adopted a slightly more narrow recommendation that would apply the tax to subscription services and advertising-supported services only. The BDAC model code doesn't need approval from FCC commissioners -- "it is adopted by the BDAC as a model code for the states to use, at their discretion," Ajit Pai's spokesperson told Ars. As for how big the proposed taxes would be, the model code says that states "shall determine the appropriate State Universal Service assessment methodology and rate consistent with federal law and FCC policy."
We're letting *AT&T, Comcast, Google Fiber, Sprint, and other ISPs and industry representatives* write our tax code. I guess it's better than letting Enron, Exxon, and DuPont write them... Oh wait, they probably do
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
who tend to vote for them. Not that I mind rural communities getting the Internet, but not like this. Make it municipal broad bank. A country just did it for about $5 bucks a month. Verizon got billions of my money to build out rural fiber, kept the money and never did the work.
No more. Fund municipal broadband out of the General fund or tell the fuckers to fuck off. All this does is charge me $5 bucks a month (I pay for business class at home) for free money in AT&Ts hands.
Once again, we've got an election in 2 years. Show up at your primary and vote the fuckers out. Then show up at the general and put some real pro-consumer folks in. We had plenty of them in the primary in 2018 but so few showed up for the primary that most of these yahoo incumbents survived. Again, no more. Primary them and then vote in pro-worker and pro-consumer reps who refuse corporate PAC money.
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I thought that the reason we got rid of net-neutrality is because of our faith in the free market.
So why don't we just let the free market bring faster Internet to places that need it? Why do we need *both* an unregulated ISP market *and* tax-funded support for that market?
Of course I am being rhetorical. They want *all* of our money, every penny, and they will abuse every bit of power they have to get it.
Since "Internet-using" companies already pay their ISPs for access and bandwidth, like everyone else does, perhaps the ISPs could take some their -- what do you call them, ah, yes -- enormous profits and use them to build rural infrastructure all on their own. Sure, perhaps the ROI / profits from that won't be enough to list under the "Rape and Pillage" section of the quarterly reports, but maybe people will hate ISPs a little less -- except, obviously, for Comcast. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...we sue AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon for the $400 billion of public funding they already received for rural broadband and just pocketed and we can use that to provide rural broadband?
You're already paying the fuckers! CenturyLink is being paid $500 MILLION in tax money yearly for rural broadband expansion and they're only using it to cover areas that someone else covers already so they can stifle competition, completely ignoring unserved areas. The rationale behind municipal broadband bans is that it's unfair to compete with the government because they have tax authority, yet they gladly take tax money and use it to be anti-competitive. NO MORE TAX MONEY TO BIG ISPs!