New York Starts Enforcing $15 Broadband Law That ISPs Tried To Kill (arstechnica.com) 25
Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin reports: The New York law requiring Internet providers to offer cheap plans to people with low incomes will take effect on Wednesday this week following a multi-year court battle in which the state defeated broadband industry lobby groups. A US appeals court upheld the law in April 2024, reversing the ruling of a district judge who blocked it in 2021. The Supreme Court last month decided not to hear the broadband industry's challenge, leaving the appeals court ruling in place. The state law requires Internet providers to offer $15- or $20-per-month service to people with low incomes.
As we've written, the battle between New York and ISPs was an important test case for how states can regulate broadband providers when the Federal Communications Commission isn't doing so. The Biden-era FCC's attempt to reinstate net neutrality rules and regulate broadband providers as common carriers was blocked in court, but ISPs lost the fight against the New York affordability law and an earlier fight against California's net neutrality law.
New York-based ISPs can comply by offering $15 broadband plans with download speeds of at least 25Mbps, or $20-per-month service with 200Mbps speeds. The price must include "any recurring taxes and fees such as recurring rental fees for service provider equipment required to obtain broadband service and usage fees." Price increases are to be capped at 2 percent per year, and state officials will periodically review whether minimum required speeds should be raised. New York Public Service Commission Chair Rory Christian last week issued an order stating that the law will take effect on January 15. "On December 16, 2024, the United States Supreme Court denied the Plaintiff's request for further review," the order said. "As part of the litigation, the [New York attorney general] agreed not to enforce the ABA [Affordable Broadband Act] until 30 days after the date when the US Supreme Court decided the writ of Certiorari. Thus, the ABA will once again take effect and may be enforced in New York on January 15, 2025." The order said it plans to implement the law quickly because of "developments at the federal level impacting the affordability of broadband service."
ISPs can receive one-month exemptions by filing paperwork by Wednesday confirming they meet the subscriber threshold, notes Ars. To secure longer-term exemptions, ISPs must submit detailed financial information by February 15.
As we've written, the battle between New York and ISPs was an important test case for how states can regulate broadband providers when the Federal Communications Commission isn't doing so. The Biden-era FCC's attempt to reinstate net neutrality rules and regulate broadband providers as common carriers was blocked in court, but ISPs lost the fight against the New York affordability law and an earlier fight against California's net neutrality law.
New York-based ISPs can comply by offering $15 broadband plans with download speeds of at least 25Mbps, or $20-per-month service with 200Mbps speeds. The price must include "any recurring taxes and fees such as recurring rental fees for service provider equipment required to obtain broadband service and usage fees." Price increases are to be capped at 2 percent per year, and state officials will periodically review whether minimum required speeds should be raised. New York Public Service Commission Chair Rory Christian last week issued an order stating that the law will take effect on January 15. "On December 16, 2024, the United States Supreme Court denied the Plaintiff's request for further review," the order said. "As part of the litigation, the [New York attorney general] agreed not to enforce the ABA [Affordable Broadband Act] until 30 days after the date when the US Supreme Court decided the writ of Certiorari. Thus, the ABA will once again take effect and may be enforced in New York on January 15, 2025." The order said it plans to implement the law quickly because of "developments at the federal level impacting the affordability of broadband service."
ISPs can receive one-month exemptions by filing paperwork by Wednesday confirming they meet the subscriber threshold, notes Ars. To secure longer-term exemptions, ISPs must submit detailed financial information by February 15.
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Hmm. I think if the network reaches saturation, throttling is going to occur in any case; I'm not certain the number of new subscribers (as opposed to existing ones who qualify for the discounted rate), so it's hard to really say if this is likely or not. Personally I'm leaning not.
You know what is definitely going to happen. There's going to be a price increase. Not actually because of this law per-se, there was going to be a price increase eventually anyways. But THIS time they'll get to blame the Govern
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Back to the days of all those junk charges and quasi-taxes on your phone^H^H^H^H^H ISP bill.
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And the FCC's new rules last year were meant to prevent just that.
https://apnews.com/article/bro... [apnews.com]
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The reason it's so vital to kill this law (Score:1)
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Just imagine how low should Elona go now...
Law of unintended consequences (Score:1)
That price doesn't sound very realistic. Curious if this would in effect create a form of redlining. Namely, future entrants would avoid low income areas of the city, avoid the city outright, or incubants may even divest existing parts of their network into separate entities.
Basically what Verizon did just over a decade ago to a large swath of their DSL customers, though that did pretty much blow up in their face after the whole "let's be media companies!" idea didn't work out so well for them and AT&T,
Re:Law of unintended consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
I think New York is one of the states where cities can't provide Internet services if it would compete with the private sector. Redlining would provide justification for a municipality to set up its own Internet services. As far as I can tell Internet services provided by cities tend to have high user satisfaction. Part of this may be because of lower, more transparent fees.
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In sane countries, those granted the use of public right-of-way have to provide access to it equally to everyone under the same terms. Basically the part that is by necessity a state-granted monopoly gets to be treated as a public utility not as a cash cow.
Re: Law of unintended consequences (Score:2)
Laws that artificially constrain competition are the real problem in the ISP market in the US. When you have genuine competition, dinosaurs like Verizon, spectrum, frontier Comcast, cox and others are forced to offer better deals to retain their customers.
Re: Law of unintended consequences (Score:2)
I think New York is one of the states where cities can't provide Internet services if it would compete with the private sector. Redlining would provide justification for a municipality to set up its own Internet services.
If they can then they probably should, but I've personally never heard of municipal internet services, which are usually the cheapest, for $15 or even $20 a month. For perspective, $20 was at the low end of what a telephone line cost in the 90s. Given how expensive it is to do ANYTHING in New York, that just doesn't seem realistic at all.
Devil is in the details... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, TFA (yes, I read it) doesn't specify what constitutes 'low income'.
The court ruling indicates that "ISPs must offer one of two broadband plans to all low-income consumers who qualify for certain means-tested governmental benefits", which Verizon seems to indicate is 135% of the federal poverty level. Well, the 2024 poverty level was $15,060 for an individual/year, while the average rent in New York was $1,507/month, or $18,084/year (in New York City, average for a studio apartment was more than double that).
So, for those of us keeping score, Verizon's website indicates that anyone making more than $20,331/year doesn't qualify for this service, in a state where average rent is $18,084/year. In Verizon's case specifically, they're offering their home LTE service - the crappy, deprioritized, CGNAT'd, data capped service that can't handle VoIP or two concurrent Zoom calls...THAT's what they're offering.
Spectrum requires that applicants qualify for other government subsidies to qualify. The first one on the list is the National School Lunch Program, which requires an income of less than $40,500 for a family of four, which is less than the cost of rent of a 2-bedroom apartment in NYC.
Optimum/Altice/Cablevision doesn't have any specific stipulations on their website. Whether that means that anyone can apply, or that they're being coy about who actually qualifies.
So, who qualifies, in practice?
1. People who are all-in on government subsidies. The only way to live in New York on less than $40,000/year is with extensive government programs handling the rest.
2. People who aren't reporting their income. So, you can qualify if you make less than poverty wages on paper, which disincentivizes full disclosure of income.
3. People who live in rural areas of upstate NY. In these regions, the cost of living is much lower than NYC or its surrounding areas; it *might* be possible to eek out a meager living. Conveniently, those areas may not be serviced by these providers, except perhaps Verizon's LTE/5G option.
And, as an added bonus, most people renting don't have a choice in their ISP; their building decides who the ISP is for that building...so, if one qualifies for Optimum's low-income option, but not Spectrum or Verizon's, and the building has Spectrum as their preferred ISP, the person doesn't get subsidized internet.
So ultimately, the courts require that broadband be available to low income people, but make the standard so difficult to reach that the ISPs won't have very many qualified people who are capable of taking them up on the offer.
LAN party like it's 1999 (Score:3)
Does the law state the minimum speed that they need to provide or would 64kbps like in the 90s suffice?
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The law designates the official classification for "broadband" as a minimum of 20mbps down, 3mbps up, IIRC.
Hmm (Score:2)
If $15/mo is profitable, then why just low income, why not for everyone?
But if $15/m isn't profitable, then it's just mandated slavery ... "provide these unprofitable services. Because we say so!"
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Re: Hmm (Score:1)
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Because they don't make enough profit.
They don't want to encourage people take these lower profit services because that means less money for the CEO and smaller bonuses.
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Much of their network runs on government property, so it makes sense for the government to have opinions on how that network is used. I think they're getting off easy.
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If $15/mo is profitable, then why just low income, why not for everyone?
But if $15/m isn't profitable, then it's just mandated slavery ... "provide these unprofitable services. Because we say so!"
What is the profit per subscriber? Don't know because there are too many corporate expenses to consider. Plus, the cable companies offer promotional rates for specific subscribers, including loss leader rates.
That being said, the cost of a subscriber who doesn't need a truck to be called to the home is extremely low. Even at $15/month, the company still makes a profit.
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In the same way that it's slavery when your parents won't let you eat dessert until you finish the main course. There's a difference between forcing someone to do something with no compensation / consideration vs placing conditions which amount to a cost of doing business. "If you want access to the profitable sector of the market then you have to also serve the unprofitable sector" is just sound public policy when it comes to licensing natural monopolies.
Completely absurd that we have been subsidizing it (Score:2)
These guys are paid tens of billions of dollars to run cable and setup networking gear only to turn around and charge us to use it.
The Affordable Connectivity Program was funded by 14 billion dollars of taxpayer money to subsidize the monthly subscription to the telecoms. This is on top of the 42.45 billion they were given to provide service to unserved and underserved areas... all the while AT&T lobbies to prevent nationwide fiber rollouts.
The whole thing is a racket. We should have the cheapest, faste