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FCC Forces California To Drop Plan For Government Fees On Text Messages (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: California telecom regulators have abandoned a plan to impose government fees on text-messaging services, saying that a recent Federal Communications Commission vote has limited its authority over text messaging. The FCC last week voted to classify text-messaging as an information service, rather than a telecommunications service. "Information service" is the same classification the FCC gave to broadband when it repealed net neutrality rules and claimed that states aren't allowed to impose their own net neutrality laws. California's legislature passed a net neutrality law anyway and is defending it in court. But the state's utility regulator chose not to challenge the FCC on regulation of text messaging. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) was scheduled to consider the text-message fee proposal at a meeting next month but pulled the item off the agenda after the FCC action. "Under California law, telecommunications services are subject to the collection of surcharges to support a number of CPUC public programs that subsidize the cost of service for rural Californians and for low-income, disadvantaged communities, and provides special services for the deaf, the hard of hearing, and the disabled," the commission said in a statement Friday.
Yes the simple fact is the FCC called a meeting and nobody showed up
Let's impose a surcharge on each breath you take.
I know it's not popular to agree with the FCC, because Ajit Pai seems highly corrupt. However, it's reasonable for the FCC to have authority over telecommunications using systems that extend beyond state lines. I don't have a problem with that being classified as interstate commerce.
The real issue is that the FCC has made some very corrupt decisions, not whether they should have authority over these matters. For example, if the FCC doesn't have full authority over matters like net neutrality, they don't have the ability to prevent ISPs from throttling their customers or blocking access to content. Even if they made a rule requiring net neutrality, states could override the FCC's authority in their own state, and that would be bad for consumers and for a lot of businesses. While states like California might choose to require net neutrality for customers in their state, Oklahoma might choose to allow ISPs to throttle or block content.
I don't think the issue is whether the FCC should have the authority -- they should. The issue is that the current leadership of the FCC has severe conflicts of interest, and are far less than transparent about it. Their decisions generally align with telecommunications lobbyists, so they seem highly corrupt.
Letting states overrule the FCC is a double-edged sword. Let's instead focus on eliminating the corruption, so the authority they claim is used judiciously.
this was a perfectly safe thing for the FCC to do. It was intensely unpopular, unlikely to pass. The whole thing only exists because California's right wing made it difficult to raise income taxes but the state needs money to fight the drought. So they come up with insane things to get around the rule that they can't just raise taxes when they need to.
Seriously, their taxes are like a one way ratchet. You can lower them with a simple majority but it takes a super majority to raise them. It's part of that whole "Starve the Beast" thing meant to crash the government so everything can be privatized.
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I'm not sure if there's a benefit to the tax, but there's certainly a problem with calling a telecommunications service an "information service" instead. The same one that's a problem with calling internet an "information service". It makes it easier to get away with censorship, anti-competitive business practices, and other fascist and anti-consumer behaviors.
All telecommunications services are taxed for the purpose given in the summary. So that's some degree of virtue. I would add: text messaging is really a very bad mechanism for communication, for several reasons, and taxing it might be one step towards encouraging cell providers to move to something a little more functional.
For example: as I understand it in Japan, where data charges are reasonable, everyone uses email rather than text messages. This can do everything that texting can do, plus allows for longer messages, plus attachments, plus it's standardized and can operate between all platforms and services.
The FCC classified SMS as an "information service" instead of a "telecommunications service"
I'm sure -- when the other shoe has had a chance to drop -- we'll find that this change ends up jamming a large, studded steel pipe up the consumer's ass
I wish the government had the power to significantly tax every unsolicited SMS message, phone call, and email I receive! Especially the ones where they are spoofing the caller id!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The state otherwise known as the fifth largest economy in the world? That state? How big is the economy in your state?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Also, the state with a huge budget surplus.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
That's your favorite pollution-spewing factory who can't be regulated according to rightwing freedom specialists.
Enjoy your death penalty.
you'll have "water refugees" leaving the west and flooding your job market
[Basil Fawlty voice] Brilliant! [/Basil Fawlty voice]
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
you'll have "water refugees" leaving the west and flooding your job market, lowering your wages...
California refugees don't lower wages, they raise them. They sell their $2M condo in west LA, and buy a 1035-Exchange mansion in Texas, thus generating dozens of construction jobs and yet more jobs for all the trucks of furniture to fill it up.
I live in San Jose, and if I sold my house and moved back to where i grew up, I could afford to buy the entire trailer park.
Maybe just maybe some group you hate can do something good once in awhile. You may hate Trump but if he breathes oxygen would you avoid breathing oxygen because since he does it that must be bad? As a probable leftwinger that prides themselves on nuance and judging things rationally and individually maybe you should keep that in mind.
...the first one being California for thinking it was a good idea to tax communication. The second, the FCC, for declaring what is clearing a telecommunication service an "information service".
I'm in the camp that says states/localities should be taxing "information services" in an attempt to goad ISPs into declaring themselves telecoms instead. But no one listens to me...
(It's bizarre that states can tax telecoms which are clearly in the federal zone of regulation, but they can't tax "information services".)
If Californians can't be taxed for it, how will 10% of the population of Honduras get subsidized phone service?
> Disclaimer: I live in San Jose, California, one of the brownest cities in America.
Did you mean whitest? According to the census, the entire state of Texas is 39% of *Mexican* descent, then add all of central America on top of that. Providence, Rhode Island has a higher percentage of Hispanics than San Jose does. Bridgeport, Connecticut is more Hispanic than San Jose. If San Jose were in Massachusetts, it would be the second-brownest city in Massachusetts.
> I believe immigration is a good thing
I've never heard anyone disagree with that. The question of the day is whether, when we make laws about immigration (or any other subject), we should follow those laws, or just pretend they don't exist. Republicans pretty consistently say don't make a law if you don't plan on following it. Follow the law, and if the law needs to be changed, change it. Democrats go back and forth on this about four years. In his first term, Obama was for strong enforcement of immigration law. In his second term, it was his official policy to unconstitutionally ignore the law. Hillary voted for a wall on the Mexican border, then later when she was invited on Univision she ridiculed the plan she had supported a couple years earlier. What's your stand on that, should we as a country DECIDE on immigration law, or should each politician do whatever they feel like today, ignoring the law?
Google, Apple, and Facebook made about $75 billion in net profits in 2017. So why not take 10% of that? That would provide about $156 per month per California State resident - we could give EVERYONE free 4G connectivity! Why tax texts - just tax those big companies benefiting from the Internet and communications!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Yet we're #42 out of all 50 in terms of fiscal condition, mainly from debt. A lot of that "surplus" is because Sacramento loves to punt expenses further down the road, and bank a small "surplus" to fund special interest projects.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You, Shanghai Bill, live in San Jose now? The other month you kept saying China...
You, Shanghai Bill, live in San Jose now? The other month you kept saying China...
I live in San Jose. I was working in my company's Shanghai office from mid-August to October.
This, the work against spam, and the death of Net Googality* - thus FCC has done more than any other selection of members.
* Ask yourself why your insurance is shit after the industry-authored ACA. Now try to be a big boy and figure out what would happen to your Internet with a Google-authored Net "Neutrality"
Japan uses SNS apps rather than email nowadays. "Line" is big there, similar to how WeChat is big with China. US phone companies definitely would not want people switching to this en-mass because both have the ability to do voice and video over the network, and unlike Skype do not charge for the privilege. International vs domestic is completely meaningless in this context. Fiefdoms would collapse.
The apps are also superior in that they have built in location send features, making finding the person you're trying to find in a crowd (one of the few times people still call other people nowadays) easy since you can just send a picture of a map with a dot showing your location.
Isn't it also the state with the highest number of people living in squalor/tent cities?
That's about FIVE TIMES as much as the current request for border wall funding.
That's about $4BILLION more than the entire nation spent on NASA - we don't have bases on the moon, but the rich in Hollywood and Silicon Valley have cheap gardeners and nannies.
The very same morons in CA who complain that Wallmart is effectively subsidized because its workers are underpaid and therefore are on government aid for healthcare and food refuse to face the fact that by this very logic all the liberals who hire illegals are equally subsidized.
When politicians are this corrupt and reckless, it's no surprise that they will look to tax ANYTHING to get more money (to buy more votes).
Surely this action must be reversed and CA must be allowed to retroactively tax all text messages going back five years. After all, we know this is being done by Ajit Pai's FCC and he and his boss, Mr Trump are ray-cysts who do nothing but evil. Where are all the screams that he is a puppet of Verizon and as a result he needs to be stopped?
Republicans pretty consistently say don't make a law if you don't plan on following it. Follow the law, and if the law needs to be changed, change it.
Let's talk about speeding tickets then, shall we ... ?
Or, in a form less polite ... bullshit.
Now we should see an outburst of effusive praise for Ajit Pai from the always vocal Slashdot crowd, right?
-Styopa
"They sell their $2M condo in west LA, and buy a 1035-Exchange mansion in Texas, thus generating dozens of construction jobs and yet more jobs for all the trucks of furniture to fill it up."
Ignoring the arrogance of this fiction, there is absolutely nothing about this, true or not, that would suggest the raising of wages.
While you claim to have moved out of the trailer park, the trailer park has clearly not moved out of you.
That's your confirmation bias.
at this rate, we'll have a yellow vest protest of our own soon
moving for better digs. When I say "water refugees" I mean the dirt poor leaving the state because there's no water. There'll be millions of them. Supply and demand dictates that a large influx of labor (supply) lowers demand (wages).
Heck, even the middle class won't be coming with tons of money. Those condos will be worthless when there's no potable water. It'll be like Detroit x1000. Assuming nothing is done about it. California's moving left, so they might actually step up and fix it.
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My insurance was great after the ACA. $300 cheaper a month in fact.
Gee, what a COINCIDENCE that the state with the HIGHEST POPULATION would also have the HIGHEST NUMBER OF HOMELESS!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.