Democrats love to tell you they represent, respect and help the low income families. In fact, by their policies they hate the poor. Here is just one example of how President Newsom is screwing the poor in California. No further comment is needed.
“In a Proposed Decision scheduled for August 25, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) proposes to limit the legal, eligible funds a low-income household can access for wireless broadband while increasing the amount that can be applied to wireline broadband. In other words, if a low-income household exercises the federal right to the monthly $30 Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) discount, the CPUC will withhold $16.23 in presently appropriated state funds. Essentially the CPUC proposes to punish low-income California citizens for accessing federally guaranteed benefits by capping broadband support to $22.48 ($9.25 in federal LifeLine support and $16.23 from California LifeLine).”
Whose Side Is The CPUC On? Not Low-Income Californians.
Roslyn Layton, Forbes, 8/18/22
California is America’s most impoverished state with 7 million people living at or below the poverty … [+]
In a Proposed Decision scheduled for August 25, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) proposes to limit the legal, eligible funds a low-income household can access for wireless broadband while increasing the amount that can be applied to wireline broadband. In other words, if a low-income household exercises the federal right to the monthly $30 Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) discount, the CPUC will withhold $16.23 in presently appropriated state funds. Essentially the CPUC proposes to punish low-income California citizens for accessing federally guaranteed benefits by capping broadband support to $22.48 ($9.25 in federal LifeLine support and $16.23 from California LifeLine). In practical terms, low-income Californians could enjoy unlimited mobile data plans with the ACP, but the CPUC wants to limit them to just 6 gigabits (GB) per month.
The CPUC itself reports that 81 percent of California Lifeline participants choose wireless service bundled with high-speed data and that less than 1 percent of program participants choose wireline service bundled with broadband. The CPUC proffers that by limiting wireless subsidies, it can “support improved access to wireline voice service bundled with home broadband service” with the savings of $16.23 per subscriber. The CPUC admits that it does not know how to do this as a policy matter.
Broadband is an unambiguous social good.
A pro-consumer broadband policy would maximize the amount of subsidy available to low-income Californians, ideally offering $52.48 per month (the combination of $30 from the ACP and $22.48 from Lifeline. This would create equity and meet the actual cost of broadband. Indeed the temporary federal Emergency Broadband Benefit offered to eligible families and households during Covid-19 was $50 per month. Affordability is critical, as demonstrated by a new national survey by EveryoneOn. Half of all survey households with annual incomes of $50,000 or less “live near the precipice of disconnection. These are the ‘subscription vulnerable’ who find the internet very difficult to fit their monthly service fee into their budgets.” Report author and leading broadband affordability scholar John Horrigan observed in an email, “I am not sold on the idea of somehow requiring that Lifeline be for wireless only while the ACP covers wireline. It could introduce administrative complexities and assumes the market is going to evolve in a certain and predictable way, which seems risky.”
Financial support to low-income Americans for broadband connectivity is an important, accepted social good. Ensuring universal access to jobs and employment opportunities, critical healthcare services, and virtual classrooms benefits more than low-income people. All Americans are better off when more people can have employment, health, and education.
Congress enshrined the $14 billion ACP with the goal to make robust, affordable wireless and wireline broadband offerings available to low-income households. Broadband is critical for low-income Californians who were adversely impacted by Covid-19, exacerbated by the state’s draconian lockdown and job lockout policies. California’s low-income families and individuals suffer further with wage and benefit erosion from soaring inflation. This makes low cost, universal, and unlimited broadband even more critical.
Federal broadband policy includes innovative elements learned from earlier iterations of subsidy programs: (1) disbursing discounts and payments directly to end users, and (2) technological neutrality so that end users, not regulators, decide which companies and technologies they use the funds for. This helps to limit waste, fraud, and abuse by companies and regulators. Indeed many economists favor further liberalization with the provision of unrestricted cash grants (like universal basic income) which reduces administrative cost and the risk of bias or manipulation by regulators.
What explains the CPUC’s discrimination of low-income consumers?
It appears that the CPUC is alarmed by the popularity of mobile wireless broadband, which is increasingly competitive, if not superior, to wireline service in price, speed, and data volume. Many choose mobile wireless broadband because of its value, convenience, and usability. In the CPUC’s eyes, however, good California consumers should be binge-watching Netflix via a giant fiber pipe to their home theater outfitted with 4K ultra high-definition smart TVs, not on the job with a lowly handheld device powered with ultra-fast 5G.
Forbes Innovation
The CPUC bills itself as being customer-friendly and fiscally responsible, but its series of actions to handicap wireless broadband in favor of wireline suggests otherwise. Moreover it engages the Public Advocates Office (Cal Advocates), the CPUC-funded “independent” lobby whose ostensible mission is to advocate for the lowest possible monthly bills. It follows then that the CPUC should support maximizing the subscription discount and the reach of subsidy program. Instead, the CPUC puts its thumb on the scales between competing broadband technologies.
The proposed decision also cites the so-called “Joint Consumers” composed of the Greenlining Institute, The Utility Reform Network (TURN), and the Center for Accessible Technology (CforAT) who warn inexplicably that offering discounts to low-income users creates a “windfall” for wireless providers. No evidence is offered for this claim, but actual financial reports of U.S. mobile providers as compiled by BofA Securities, Barclays, and others show a trend of declining average revenue per user and overall lowered profitability for some years.
Separately the CPUC’s pro-wireline policy receives support from advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, and Stanford Center for Internet and Society, but even they have declined to weigh in on this anti-consumer proposal. California’s State Assembly Chair of the Communications and Conveyance Committee, Sharon Quirk-Silva, along with other legislators raised concerns about the proposed decision. Their letter to the CPUC copies Governor Gavin Newsom who claims that broadband is essential to all California’s success. In 2021 he stated that “[P]rioritizing the unserved and underserved areas, facilities, households and businesses that remain disconnected in the digital era” is “vital.”
Californians shouldn’t be relegated to second-class citizens.
The CPUC proposal likely violates California state law which promotes the “equity of access” and the federal law creating ACP which mandates non-discrimination in that that funds can be applied to “any internet service offering of the participating provider.” Struggling families should have the option to choose the technologies and plans that best meet their needs, without being told what’s best for them by regulators. No other state proposes such an anti-consumer policy.
The CPUC should reject or amend its proposed policy so low-income consumers can receive both state and federal benefits to meet their communications needs. The goal of America’s broadband policy is to improve broadband equity and access, not to reward the CPUC’s favored companies.
