Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
Starlink, Caps, and Consumer Concerns - Episode 621 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
In this episode of the podcast, Christopher Mitchell is joined by freelance reporter Karl Bode to discuss pressing broadband issues, including the practicality and limitations of Starlink for rural areas, challenges with current broadband policy, and the ongoing efforts to ensure affordable access.
They explore the impact of recent political discussions on broadband funding, misunderstandings around satellite Internet’s role in rural connectivity, and why affordability remains a crucial barrier. They also delve into FCC initiatives, such as the investigation of data caps and new broadband “nutrition labels,” aimed at transparency in pricing and services.
Their conversation underscores the importance of consumer-centric policies and the need for regulatory action to break monopolistic control in the broadband market.
This show is 42 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed.
Transcript below.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
Listen to other episodes or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license
Christopher Mitchell (00:08):
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Beds podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell from The Institute from Local Self-Reliance, and we've got a little change up today, although you so a voice that many of you will recognize. We've got Karl Bode joining us freelance reporter and writer extraordinaire. Welcome to the show.
Karl Bode (00:28):
Hello. Thank you for having me. I appreciate [00:00:30] it.
Christopher Mitchell (00:30):
So people are, have not heard a segment pulled out of what you are gonna see in the future to, to ease some into the show. And there's no intro music. I think we're just running right into this. We have no editing. We're recording this on Monday morning, releasing it on Tuesday for complicated reasons that have to do with me not wanting to do it last week. So Karl, I appreciate you joining me for this voyage.
Karl Bode (00:55):
Absolutely. No problem. I'm happy to be here.
Christopher Mitchell (00:58):
We are gonna be talking about [00:01:00] a couple of things that popped out of the long former President Trump interview with Joe Rogan. We're gonna spend probably, I dunno, more than a few minutes on that. And then we're gonna talk about just briefly, and I think this is actually gonna come right out of that discussion. 15 Attorneys General have have signed on to invalidate the Universal Service Fund which was surprising to me. Then we're gonna really dig in a little bit on broadband caps [00:01:30] which the FCC is investigating. We're gonna talk about the nutrition labels and how that's going. And then briefly, the survey from US News and World Report. That's the agenda for today. And it's, it kind of overlaps a little bit with the 100th ish episode of Connect This!, which I hope people have checked out. We had Gigi Sohn, and Blair Levin, but we, we missed terribly Travis. We'll get him back. He has listened to the show. He thought it was okay. So we got his thumbs up on it, which was good. But Karl, [00:02:00] before we jump into this, I do wanna ask you something. Yes. are you the same Karl Bode who writes for Community Nets as writes for Techdirt because it's two different voices, <laugh>
Karl Bode (02:09):
No, I know. Yeah. Well, as a, as a, as a freelance reporter, you know, I have to gauge my audience based on, on, you know, on what they're used to. Sometimes I have a little more leeway to espouse my opinion. Other times I'm doing hard reporting where I wanna make sure I'm just getting the data and facts in there. So, yeah, I do, I do change it up sometimes. There's an occasional F bomb dropped in [00:02:30] I'm feeling particularly heated. But yeah, I'm, I'm already, I'm all all all over the map these days in terms of tone. But I also, my, my focus is always, my focus is always the same, you know, consumer protection. So much of modern reporting is fixated on business interest. Everything's filtered through a lens of does this make money and how can I make the most money possible at any single time? And there's very little perspective filtered to the lens of consumer welfare. That's an afterthought in a lot of coverage. So that's always my goal, no matter what the tone is, I always try [00:03:00] to make sure that I stick to that point, because I
Christopher Mitchell (03:02):
I've seen that. Right. And you've been doing it for like 30 years now, right?
Karl Bode (03:05):
Yeah, well, I started, I helped build DSL reports.com where I would, I spend about 15 years studying the broadband industry and writing about it every day and dealing with consumer complaints about their broadband providers. So that's a, that's an education if there ever was one. If you'd like to learn about the broadband industry, spend about 20 minutes with a Comcast customer or a room full of Comcast customers, and you're gonna, you're gonna learn a lot. Or the alternative is watch Comcast lobby for laws on [00:03:30] the federal and state levels and see how laws actually get made. And that's super educating.
Christopher Mitchell (03:35):
Yes. Okay, we're gonna jump into this interview. I, I'm, I have to admit, I am, I'm not a big Joe Rogan fan although I love podcasting. Just for reasons that I think will become evident as we discuss <laugh> some of the claims that were made and for the course of this. But but Donald Trump sat down with with Rogan and had a long [00:04:00] discussion. And in it they talked a bit about Internet access and particularly Starlink. And foreign president said that that when he talked to people in North Carolina, they said that the Starlink that they had now received after the hurricane wiped out a lot of the telecommunications infrastructure was better than the wires. And Karl, I gotta tell you, I thought we'd start here because I agree with him. I'm sure that people were telling him that <laugh>
Karl Bode (04:28):
Yeah, no, I'm sure he was. [00:04:30] Yeah. Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (04:30):
The wires were really bad in Western North Carolina.
Karl Bode (04:34):
Yeah. They were terrible. They were the first things to go, you know, they found out they had basically no redundancy in terms of fiber coming into that area. Once again, I mean, this is like the 40th time this has happened where a big disaster comes, wipes out the entirety of 911 service and telecom. And suddenly people realize, oh, maybe we should have some redundant options in these areas. Oh, rural, rural America is important, you know? Yeah. It's the same lesson. We don't always take our we don't learn from it repeatedly, but
Christopher Mitchell (04:58):
Keep that, yeah. So fiber, the fiber [00:05:00] cables got wiped out. So did the the copper cables that most of the people rely on. Yeah. 'cause there's, there's not a ton of fiber. There's some areas where we saw some good investment from co-ops and, and a few small private companies. But, but this is an area that had been pretty much left behind.
Karl Bode (05:15):
Yeah. Cellular was wiped out too. You know, I know some of the carriers did better than others. I think at and t did a little better than some of the others that were offline for days and days without much in the way of communicating anything to the customers. So that
(05:27):
Was a mess. And in that instance, you know, in those situations, [00:05:30] sure. If you can get a Starlink terminal to that area and you can get it powered and the people could afford to pay the $120 a month for it or whatever, then it's, yeah. It's, it's a great, it's a great option.
Christopher Mitchell (05:41):
So we're gonna talk about the rest of that little exchange. And I wanna note something, which is that I read this, it kind of melted my brain. I got angry. I wrote, I wrote four paragraphs on LinkedIn. It's already had more than 4,000 views, because when you write something with passion and people start commenting, then the algorithm juices it up. Yeah. And one of the things [00:06:00] that kills me is the number of people that write in to say, I actually really like my satellite Starlink. And I'm like, yeah, no one's disputing that it is. No, it's the best satellite service out there, <laugh>.
Karl Bode (06:09):
It's good. It's, it's an amazing improvement over the old satellite stuff. You know, the problem, it is twofold. It doesn't have the capacity to scale. Right. We can't get enough satellites up there to really make a huge impact to challenge the monopolies. It's only gonna hit a certain number of million of customers. It doesn't have capacity.
Christopher Mitchell (06:26):
Yes.
Karl Bode (06:26):
And the other problem is, it's expensive. $120 a month plus whatever [00:06:30] the hardware costs. The one of the big, as you know, one of the biggest obstacles for broadband access in the US is affordability. And people can't afford those kind of things. They need cheap access. So, right.
Christopher Mitchell (06:41):
Yeah.
Karl Bode (06:42):
So we're gonna, it's not, it's not like a magic. It's not like a magic bullet. You know, Starlink is fine and it's great, you know, and I'm glad that people are enjoying it on their RVs and recreational vehicles and boats, and that's all great. And if you have the money to spend it for your cabin out in the wilderness, that's wonderful. But it is not a full scale solution for broadband [00:07:00] problems. The podcast, podcast not for community.
Christopher Mitchell (07:02):
Right.
Karl Bode (07:02):
The podcast really, you know, both of them broken at Trump really get into like how this is just like this magical thing. You just plunk bunch of Starling terminals down.
Christopher Mitchell (07:09):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Karl Bode (07:10):
And it's fixes everything. And for somebody who's spent, you know, decades writing about complicated policy, that's frustrating to have it all untangled in a matter of 30 seconds by people who don't really, neither of them really know what they're actually talking about.
Christopher Mitchell (07:22):
Right. So Trump goes on to say, we're spending a trillion dollars to get cable all over the country to upstate areas. That's the quote. [00:07:30] And it's not accurate. But whatever, like, it's not
Karl Bode (07:33):
1000000000042.5.
Christopher Mitchell (07:35):
Right? I mean, I think you and I would agree that there's been a lot of waste not what the Republicans would call waste <laugh>. Yeah. They don't, they actually think that writing big checks to at and t to get nothing back is a good idea.
Karl Bode (07:46):
Right.
Christopher Mitchell (07:47):
For many of the, many of the elected Republicans, I should say, not the people who vote for Republicans often don't think that's a good idea. They agree with you and me on that.
Karl Bode (07:54):
Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (07:55):
But we haven't spent a trillion dollars on it. We have spent a lot, and right now we're in the process more or less over [00:08:00] the, the past four years, in the next four several years of spending on the order of a hundred billion dollars, maybe more yeah. On this sort of thing. But, so then Rogan says 42 billion were wasted on this Internet access program, meaning BEAD. And you've heard me and I've heard you cri being very critical of BEAD. And yet I would not think that's an accurate characterization in any way.
Karl Bode (08:21):
No, no. I mean, part, but it is that, you know, that money's gonna start flowing here in the spring, but that's after the election. Right Now you see folks like FCC Commissioner [00:08:30] Brennan Carr claiming that BEAD was a big waste of money because he knows the money's not coming until after the election. So he can say before the election that, you know, Democrats wasted $42.5 billion on nothing, when that's not true. And also, there's very legitimate reasons that that money has taken a little while to get to the states.
Christopher Mitchell (08:47):
That's what I wanted to poke you on. You've talked about this. So why did you pick on Carr there? Has he been involved in some way and why it
Karl Bode (08:53):
Took so
Christopher Mitchell (08:54):
Long to get it rolled
Karl Bode (08:54):
Up? Well, yes, fact, he has he, he was directly, you know, involved in the rural digital opportunity [00:09:00] fund, the FCC program that under Trump, I forget how much money they doled out. 20 billion. Was it?
Christopher Mitchell (09:05):
Well, it was it was supposed to be a total of 20 over two auctions. The first auction was gonna be like 11, but I think like six billion's been released. My colleague, my colleague Christine and Ry, they have a, a dashboard that tracks this. Yeah. I think it's between four and 6 billion that has actually been rolled out.
Karl Bode (09:21):
Yeah. But while Carr was there at the FCC, they didn't track if the ISPs that were claiming the funds could actually deploy the Promise Network. So you had a lot of companies, including Starlink [00:09:30] jumping in there and saying, sure, we'll offer broadband to this huge swath of area for X number of dollars. And they didn't really do their due diligence to make sure that could happen. So you got all these defaulting bidders, you got a huge mess. People having to run back in there and say, okay, why wasn't this money spent? And part of the reason for the BEAD infrastructure bill delays are because they actually want to try to do this correctly. They wanted to map broadband access, make sure that you're sending money into the places that make sense. They wanted to make sure that they were getting ISPs that could actually deliver on the promise network to [00:10:00] speeds and prices. And so yes, there's a delay. And yeah, the agency in charge of it, the NTIA does have a history of not being the quickest on things, but it's not like this has become a boondoggle, you know, I think there's a lot of politics being played pre money deployment and pre-election to make it sound like that money is just being thrown in the ocean when that's clearly not the case.
Christopher Mitchell (10:20):
There is, there is a boondoggle though, and it's the maps, and this is where I'd even blame Commissioner Car on it also, because the, the Trump FCC, like [00:10:30] the all other FCCs <laugh>, whether they're from president Bush, president Obama, president Trump, <laugh>, like Yeah. All of them said, we don't need to map where broadband really is. We'll just take, we'll just take
Karl Bode (10:44):
Comcast at his word because that
Christopher Mitchell (10:46):
Works out. Yeah. And I mean, Comcast isn't even the most egregious a about it. Yeah. You know, I mean, so they, this is the first of several times in which I'm gonna defend Comcast in this show I produced <laugh> No worries. Which is funny. But but it's this thing in which, like, [00:11:00] this, the thing that frustrates me is if they would actually, they listen to me, you know, and I don't wanna actually go there and do the work, I'll be honest, but like, if they were just listening to me armchair quarterbacking, they are determined to make sure that not one location gets money if they already have an option. Right. That's why the mapping has to be perfect. Whereas my point of view is let's figure out how in general, to get it to the right regions and make sure there's universal service. And if a few families happen to then get a competitive option, that's still a win.
Karl Bode (11:29):
Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (11:29):
But no, instead [00:11:30] we're gonna spend all of this money and super wastefully with these contracts with cost quests that are very much not in the public interest.
Karl Bode (11:37):
Right. To provide data that doesn't, that the public doesn't own. You know?
Christopher Mitchell (11:40):
Right.
Karl Bode (11:41):
The con cost stones, you know,
Christopher Mitchell (11:42):
Money and it's moneys. There's like, this is like the Russian nesting doll of, of just like horribleness. But Commissioner Carr is responsible for like multiple dolls within
Karl Bode (11:52):
Yeah, yeah. So like, so, so most of the delay on this money is thanks to his FCC and the Trump FCC. And now they're coming out and pretending like the s boon dog [00:12:00] was just somebody else's fault, you know?
(12:01):
Right.
(12:02):
But the reason the delays are happening is because of systemic failures that they <laugh> played a role in earlier. So it's all political patty cake at this point. It got very silly. And I, so at this point, go
Christopher Mitchell (12:12):
Ahead.
Karl Bode (12:12):
I was really frustrated when Musk came out, I think a couple weeks ago and said that people died because Starlink didn't get their billion dollars in subsidies at the Trump
Christopher Mitchell (12:20):
FCC. Oh, yeah. Ridiculous claim. Unrelated.
Karl Bode (12:23):
Yeah. It was pretty gross. I mean, that's a pretty gross statement to say, for one thing, that money wasn't going to come until much later. It wouldn't have [00:12:30] been there in time, you know?
Christopher Mitchell (12:32):
Right. That money gets, it's a, it's literally a monthly check that would go out for the number of locations. And, and so I don't know if you would've had any extra launches. I don't think that they you know, I think right now they're kind of limited by some other politics, good or bad. I think possibly bad. Yeah. I'm a little full story that's limiting their launches. But but anyway. Yeah. No, it's, it's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous claim that somehow if RDOF had given the money to [00:13:00] Elon Musk, to Star to Starlink and SpaceX, I should say, which is not actually run as much by El Len Musk as, I believe her name's Gwen oh, I can't remember her last name now. But there's a person who actually runs SpaceX and like, gets things done and like, just never gets any of the credit. Like it's amazing to me.
Karl Bode (13:16):
<Laugh>. Yeah. That's how it works in most of his companies, actually. But,
Christopher Mitchell (13:18):
Yeah. At any rate yeah, there's no reason to think that if RDOF had given money in violation of the rules, basically. Yeah. Because, because, yeah. It is not clear to me. We've covered this on previous shows. [00:13:30] I think the FCC is correct in that SpaceX did not meet the terms of the program. But at any rate, so so Rogan says 42 billion were wasted. That's ridiculous. And the money hasn't spent yet. Although, you know it, it plays into this idea that government can't do anything. Right. Which drives me nuts, even as I'm criticizing how government works. So former President Trump then says they haven't hooked up one person, not one person. I think Travis might have sent him that line. I don't know. <Laugh>. So [00:14:00] but, so then Rogan says they could have gotten star links to everybody with that kind of money. And this is the part that I really wanna, I wanna dive into more because this is a popular misconception. Yeah. Particularly, again, among Republican legislators in DC who seem to think if we just give more money to Elon Musk, we would more rapidly solve this issue and make sure everyone in rural areas could be hooked up. So let me just ask you this, what do you think would happen if we gave billions of dollars to SpaceX for [00:14:30] Starlink for increased coverage?
Karl Bode (14:31):
They would start to deploy it. If people could afford it. They'd quickly noticed that their service was slowing to a crawl. You know, Starlink, why is that would start implementing because they lack the satellite capacity to actually serve more than, I forget what the total is, five to 10 million people without starting to implement really sophisticated network management tricks that'll slow down your connection, even at the maximum number of satellite launches. There's several stories and studies on this. I think one telecom firm talked about it. You know, even [00:15:00] if you have the maximum number of low Earth orbit satellites out there, you cannot even make a dent in the needs of this country's capacity needs. You cannot do it. You know, and Musk himself was clear about this really early on. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. He was like, this is capacit capacity constrained service. You know, we cannot do this at scale, you know, but when it's time to get subsidies, he's suddenly like, yes, just Starlink everywhere. It's a magic bullet. Everybody would be fine.
Christopher Mitchell (15:23):
Yeah. So I was talking about this with Roger Timmerman, who's an actual engineer who runs utopia Fiber. He happens to be an engineer. And I was like, [00:15:30] how do you respond to this? And, and where do you think the technology is going to be? And he pointed me out to this thing, satellite map space. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So if anyone wants to in their browser, you can pull up satellite map space. And I was really curious, it shows you the globe and where all the satellites are, and also where the ground stations are for Starlink. And so I've had this map as we've been talking, there was a period in which there was not a single Starlink satellite over North Dakota. Doesn't mean that people wouldn't have service, but like, you know, if they could see, [00:16:00] if you were in the northern part, you might get one over Saskatchewan.
(16:02):
If you were in the southern part, you might be able to hook onto a satellite over South Dakota. But North Dakota has hundreds of thousands of people. I think like 600, 700,000, 700,000 people. I'm gonna guess that that's on the order of 300,000 premises. And you can't serve 'em all from zero satellites or one or two satellites. Iowa just had two satellites over, now it has like six or seven, you know, and the maximum number of connections per satellite, simultaneous, [00:16:30] I would think is on the order of like three or 4,000, if you have every one of those satellites is a 10 gigabit satellite. Yeah.
Karl Bode (16:36):
It's a matter of, I mean, people take to, to, to take me to say I'm criticizing Starlink. And it's just a matter, it's a matter of physics. Like <laugh>, this is a capacity issue. This service cannot scale it the way they're saying it can scale. And that was the FCCs concern. If we're gonna spend taxpayer money, the ffc, the Biden FCC came in and said, we're gonna spend it on future-proof fiber. We're gonna push fiber as far as we can, and the rest of the people can get cellular and 5G [00:17:00] and fixed wireless. And for those left over, they can maybe get Starlink. Starlink is the niche solution that comes at the end of everything else. If we have not been able to get you, then we Yeah, sure. Satellite could come in and satellite will improve and get better. And maybe over time the capacity will grow. There'll be more competitors. And 10, 15, 20 years from now, it'll be a different story. But right now it's not some magic bullet. That's what, and that's people talking like Rogan and Trump are acting like this is just pixie dust. You sprinkle little Elon Musk pixie dust on the landscape of rural America and everybody's connected and happy and served. [00:17:30] It's just, that's not <laugh>, that's not the real world.
Christopher Mitchell (17:33):
Yeah. We're looking at, I think right now he has 6,000 satellites, wants to grow the constellation to 60,000 over the next five, 10 years or something like that.
Karl Bode (17:40):
Yeah. Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (17:41):
It's still not nearly enough to cover even if we were equally spaced throughout rural America.
Karl Bode (17:47):
Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (17:47):
Which we are not. There are many areas of rural America where you just cannot have every home having access because of the way the system works. You can't, you can't overload specific regions [00:18:00] just 'cause of like, you're shooting a satellite, you know, hundreds of miles, you're shooting this wireless hundreds of miles. Right. And you have some challenges with the number of, of like receivers and things like that, that you can go back and forth with, is my understanding.
Karl Bode (18:12):
And I, I think they're gonna try anyway. You know, and then I think they're gonna be forced to implement all kinds of weird usage restrictions. Like, you can't stream 4K video eventually, and it'll start being more like the HughesNet of old, you know, where they have like these weird rotating daily usage allotments that like, during the afternoon, I can't stream a 4K video. You know? And there's other issues with [00:18:30] Starlink as well that we could get into. You know, like the fact that all of the Starlink launches are kind of harming scientific night sky research. There's some issues with like, when all of these, you know, disposable smaller satellites burn up in orbit, there's potential to harm the ozone layer. There's a whole bunch of things you get into. Yeah, I would've talk about that.
Christopher Mitchell (18:46):
I mean, I'll say I'm not a killjoy. I, I had a chance I was hanging out with my friend Matt Rantin and and his partner Sarah and in Southern California. And we saw this magnificent thing on the horizon, and later we found out it was [00:19:00] a SpaceX launch, kind of figured it out from Vandenberg base. It was amazing. And, and it's just, you know, at the same time,
(19:08):
You
(19:08):
Get a sense of the, you know, you can imagine that like yeah. If you do like, you know, tens or a hundred of these a year, there would be some environmental devastation. You start doing more and more of that. It's more, and we don't, we don't know what it is right now. Maybe it's nothing. But like, like you're saying, you've got, you know, if we're gonna have 60,000 satellites and they're gonna be [00:19:30] spinning down and disintegrating in the atmosphere every
Karl Bode (19:32):
Five years, meaning all kinds of metals in them. There was a study pretty recently aluminum
Christopher Mitchell (19:35):
Oxide.
Karl Bode (19:36):
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Yep. Yep. That's gonna impact our efforts to repair the ozone layer. So, I mean, you can have this complicated capacity constrained system that has a whole bunch of environmental and scientific impacts that you might not wanna deal with. Or you can push fiber into remote people, which is what we should have done 50 years ago if we had a competent regulatory agency in
Christopher Mitchell (19:56):
China. 50 years would've been hard, but Yeah. Well, yeah. Well,
Karl Bode (19:59):
You know what I mean? [00:20:00] Yep.
Christopher Mitchell (20:00):
Yeah. Yeah. It should have been done. This is, and I'll just remind everyone of former commissioner Mike O'Rielly drove me nuts. 'cause He was always like, ah, people wanna get a Porsche when they should get a Chevy. And it's like, no, you're paying for a Porsche over and over again, and people are getting a Chevy. Like, this is the real problem.
Karl Bode (20:16):
You got a little inverted. Yeah, exactly. Right.
Christopher Mitchell (20:18):
Yeah. Alright, so we spent a little bit more time on that. We're gonna dive in. So then on top of this, right now we have tons of rural access. In fact like more than a thousand rural entities, [00:20:30] many of them private, small private companies hundreds of co-ops that have invested in rural areas and often with rural federal dollars. And they pay off those loans that they have often from local banks or from the federal government with the money that they get every month from the federal government for universal service. And the, what is it, the sixth circuit, the fifth Circuit, the fifth, I forget which one now. Fifth Circuit in this case blew it wants to blow it up. And I was surprised to see that 15 [00:21:00] Republican attorneys general want to invalidate the USF. They sent a letter to the Supreme Court. I think they actually did like a an amicus or like, you know, encouraging the, the Supreme Court to review the case, which is good because we want the Supreme Court to review the case, but we also want it to come down the other way. Yeah. It just sort of boggled my mind that all these people just wanna literally create possibly the greatest financial crisis in rural America
Karl Bode (21:23):
In the
Christopher Mitchell (21:23):
History of the country.
Karl Bode (21:25):
Exactly.
Christopher Mitchell (21:25):
So a lark.
Karl Bode (21:26):
Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, it's part of a broader effort to dismantle [00:21:30] the entirety of the regulatory state. They, they lump it all, you know, government can do absolutely no good. We might as well dismantle all this stuff. None of it's serving us, you know, if we just get rid of all of it, you know, magic utopian grass comes from the sidewalk and everybody lives happy ever after. And it's just not, it's not reality. And it is frustrating to see all those, you know officials suddenly come in and wanted to dismantle this program that has, it has had its problems. You know, I, I've written about them, you know, there was some waste in that the USF program, but it's also connected a lot of people's [00:22:00] schools. It's connected and educated, a lot of kids. It's helped a lot of people in rural America. And it's gross to just be tossing it away over some.
Christopher Mitchell (22:08):
Well, that's, that's the issue, right? Is that like, if someone wanted to write to me and say, you know what, Chris, I don't think you're taking concern seriously as a principled conservative, I would like to see this, this, and this. I would probably say a hundred percent agree with you. Like, I have many deeply conservative critiques of the way USF has done. Yeah. I don't think that throwing a thousand businesses into bankruptcy, threatening the balance sheets of, [00:22:30] of many local banks and, and potentially def having a default on thousand loans to the federal government is the way to do that through the courts <laugh>.
Karl Bode (22:39):
Yeah. It's like ripping out the girders from bridges and then having a little party by the bridge while it falls into the water. You know, it's, it makes no coherent sense, but this is where we are in a lot of the policy fights right now. You know, there's really, like I said, a concerted effort to dismantle governance of all kind. They just see governance as bad. It's, it's, it's not a complicated ideology. It's not based in facts. It's based in gut feelings [00:23:00] and vibes, <laugh>, you know, and it's not, it's not the real world and it's getting, it's dangerous. Yeah. And we're, we're entering a new phase in it,
Christopher Mitchell (23:07):
I think. I think a lot of people feel that their actions have no consequences. And, and I get that. I want a world where people have more control over their lives, but it freaks me out when I see attorneys general acting like their actions have no consequences.
Karl Bode (23:19):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you see, they're increasingly engaged in more and more gamesmanship. You saw it in the big tech fights too. You know, the claims that big tech is censoring conservative voices on the Internet.
Christopher Mitchell (23:28):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>
Karl Bode (23:28):
And big players in that too, [00:23:30] trying to, you know, bully Google into making sure they carry the latest hate rally speech or whatever. It's been pretty ugly for a few years now. That's just a broader extension of that stuff.
Christopher Mitchell (23:41):
Well we're gonna move on to broadband caps. You've been covering a bit my favorite Yeah. The Federal Communications Commission is taking comments on this.
Karl Bode (23:49):
Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (23:49):
And this is something that's near and dear to my heart. I am, you know, one of the things that I think again, I'm gonna get three references to Travis in on this, but but Travis with U Us I [00:24:00] five would say he loves broadband. The loves the bandwidth caps. It drives a lot of customers from Comcast to right into his
Karl Bode (24:05):
Lap, I'm sure. Exactly right. I literally think
Christopher Mitchell (24:08):
I'm with, I'm with Lumen Fiber now, and I thought I would never work again with a company that was derivative of US Western quests. Yeah. I was so infuriated with their service in my, like 20 years ago. But here I am.
Karl Bode (24:19):
Yeah. I, I literally, I'm not joking when I say I think I've spilled more ink on this subject than any reporter alive in usage caps. I'm pretty sure over the last 25 years I've written more articles [00:24:30] and pieces and stories about this. And it took so long to get people to understand that they are not a real technical solution to anything. They're a complete fabrication. They exist exclusively. So local monopolies can price gouge captive customers and make it sound like there's a good reason of it. You know? And it's, for years they would say it was because they needed to net manage network congestion.
Christopher Mitchell (24:50):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,
Karl Bode (24:50):
You know, and academics and network people would come out and say, that's not how any of this works. That doesn't manage anything doesn.
Christopher Mitchell (24:56):
Well, in theory, if you had a cap and, and to come back to the, the stationary, [00:25:00] geostationary satellite, they would have like daily cap or caps during prime time and things like that.
Karl Bode (25:05):
Yeah. Oh. If you do
Christopher Mitchell (25:05):
Like, those kind of caps could manage congestion
Karl Bode (25:08):
In a really annoying way Yeah. To the point where your connection is useless half the time, but Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (25:12):
Right. But like the idea that like, if I'm gonna be uploading a bunch of video at 2:00 AM that, that, that capping me is gonna help congestion anyway, is is absurd. No.
Karl Bode (25:21):
Especially in an era where network management technologies are so intelligent and so sophisticated and there's so much automation determining just, you know, they're detecting loads in real time [00:25:30] and, you know, shifting everything using, you know, intelligent algorithms and the caps are just like a blunt hammer, you know? And even eventually they stopped even trying to defend them. I don't know, it was like five or eight, 10 years ago. Like, I think there was a leaked Comcast memo that said, like, basically admitted this was about, you know, basically price gouging, you know, this isn't really any, there's no technical function to these things. And since then, they don't, the companies, the ISPs that have 'em don't even try to defend or justify them.
Christopher Mitchell (25:56):
Yeah. I mean, for, you know what, like 10% of Comcast [00:26:00] customers, I wanna say it's an increase probably of like 30% revenue. Right. And so you can't just take that, that revenue away, especially with the kind of headwinds that Comcast is facing.
Karl Bode (26:12):
Investors would not be happy with that. So you gotta keep price gouging. So it's kind of a self-sustaining organism. But you notice that those caps for Comcast don't exist in the northeast part of the state or a country where they compete with fiber. Verizon Fios is everywhere in those territories, and so they don't have 'em there. So, you know, and that's the benefit of [00:26:30] municipal broadband is most of those networks don't have them. You know,
Christopher Mitchell (26:33):
I don't know of one that has 'em at this point.
Karl Bode (26:35):
I was gonna ask you about that, that before we came on, I was looking at it and I was trying to think of one that, and I, I don't think there's a single community broadband network that hasn't, because they serve a function. A few, they just piss off your subscriber base at this
Christopher Mitchell (26:47):
Point. Yeah. There was a few that flirted with them out of concern, and many of them decided that it was not worth the public relations hit.
Karl Bode (26:55):
Yeah. I remember talking with Sonic, CEO Dane Jasper a couple times about it, and he was always [00:27:00] hilariously, you know, succinct in the way he would just point out that these serve no technical function. It
Christopher Mitchell (27:05):
Is bullshit. Yeah. And it's worth noting, I feel like those people who have gotten into this field in the past few years probably aren't familiar with Phil Dam Pier. What? Stop the Cap. Oh, yeah. He's, he might, he might rival you for the number of words written, but he was, he's been so great and he's been kind of doing other things, but but he was a real great warrior on yeah. Similar beat to you.
Karl Bode (27:26):
Yeah. He really, he really drove a lot of local activism efforts, you know, in upstate [00:27:30] New York, specifically during the merger when there's debates about whether cap should be allowed, you know, but
Christopher Mitchell (27:34):
Mm-Hmm.
Karl Bode (27:34):
<Affirmative>. And now the FCC, I'm sure you were gonna mention this, but the FCC is finally saying they're going to quote unquote look into usage caps, you know, in the year 2024, after 25 straight years of debate about the subject, the federal regulator and actually in charge of our telecom systems is going to look into things.
Christopher Mitchell (27:51):
Yes. And I'm not gonna say a negative word about it, because I have been very critical of, of chairman, oh, you said Chairperson Rosen. And I'll just say that I think this is [00:28:00] wonderful. It's, I'm happy. I'm,
Karl Bode (28:02):
I'm happy, I'm happy. You know, on the plus side, they did open a website that kind of illustrates that these things are harmful. I'm glad that they're taking a look. I'm glad they're talking about it. It's good to make it clear to people that this exists. Am I confident that they're gonna come out and have the bold step of actually banning them? Probably not. Am I, I'd like to convinced that they could survive legal challenge in this post Chevron Supreme Court environment if they've tried. Not sure. But
Christopher Mitchell (28:28):
That, I was just gonna say, mentioning it, I mean, [00:28:30] there's a perverse kind of reaction that is possible from what I would call the overreach of the courts into these agencies that have been set up by Congress to do these tasks. And that is to basically say, all right, well, if the courts are gonna, if the courts are gonna bat everything away, we're just gonna go real hardcore into this, and yeah. Say, yeah, companies can't do this and this and that, and
Karl Bode (28:53):
Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (28:54):
And then like, you're
Karl Bode (28:54):
Gonna sue. Either way
Christopher Mitchell (28:55):
You can get the popularity of having done it. I mean, this is kind of what the Biden administration has done with student [00:29:00] loans is to say Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. You know, a bunch of announcements that get 'em good press and then it gets repealed, and then they come out with another announcement and
Karl Bode (29:06):
Yeah, exactly. Right. You know, and this, and you know, I have plenty of criticisms of the Biden administration in various parts, but they have actually cared about stuff like antitrust reform, at least at the FTC mm-Hmm. And they tried to get Gigi Sohn appointed to the FCCI know he was personally had a stake in, in, in her appointment. And it didn't work because, you know, Congress is a corrupt mess, <laugh>. So she, it didn't happen. But I know that they had a genuine interest in that stuff, and I applaud [00:29:30] that. That's, that's,
Christopher Mitchell (29:31):
Yes.
Karl Bode (29:31):
I've watched for, I've watched that agency for 25 years, and it hasn't been a lot of care about monopoly power or consolidated antitrust reform. So I I I do, I do appreciate that. I appreciate that somebody's finally taken that stuff seriously. And I, I hope it continues in Harris too. We'll, see, I'm not sure,
Christopher Mitchell (29:47):
But that's one of those things that is not clear. You know, this is a personal thing. It's not a Democratic party thing. You know, and so we may, we could see Democratic administrations like Harris and perhaps whoever might [00:30:00] succeed her if we go that route we might see them not
(30:06):
Going
(30:06):
Nearly as ambitious. Although I kind of think in the long term we will, I kind of think in the next four years, it's possible we'll step back from the bold efforts of the Biden administration, but I kind of think the following administration or, you know Yeah.
Karl Bode (30:20):
The road. I agree. Yeah,
Christopher Mitchell (30:20):
I agree with that. I think the movement, the people are fed up, you know? Yeah.
Karl Bode (30:23):
Especially, I think as, as you know, there is a, there is a considered effort to dis dismantle the regulatory state, all of the oversight, [00:30:30] safety, oversight, consumer oversight, labor oversight. And when the results of that hit, they will not be subtle. They will not be pretty, they will be very ugly. And the public and the press will take notice. And then I think you're right, there'll eventually be a counter movement to say, okay, let's rebuild something. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, something locally sustainable, something from the inward out. And I think that's, you know, where our, our organization comes into play. And I think that's where the conversation starts to get interesting. What is, what is this, what is the next step look like after they're done dismantling the regulatory state? [00:31:00] And everyone, the problem is that period in between there's going to be deaths there. It's think there will be fatalities.
Christopher Mitchell (31:06):
And I just, there's a part of me that also feels like this is a problem of the people who have championed the regulatory state. I mean, I grew up in Eastern Pennsylvania, and and my recollection is that during significant parts of my life, there were no fish in Erie, in Lake Erie. Like it was a dead lake, which I know is not near eastern Pennsylvania, but like, it was, it was known, you know, and, and it's coming back. And like we've done a lot of things that of, like, [00:31:30] there, the Monga, Gila River has not caught on fire recently. And like we've done a lot of really good things. And people, a lot of people aren't aware of that
Karl Bode (31:37):
<Laugh>. Yeah, no, that's true. Yeah. It is important to have some rules <laugh> for co-creation to follow occasionally. That is important.
Christopher Mitchell (31:44):
Speaking, speaking of which, we got nutrition labels you know, for food. I don't think those are going away, but we now have 'em for broadband too. And let me just say, I, I was gonna troll Comcast. I, I checked it out. 'cause As I mentioned, I moved away from Comcast because of the bandwidth cap, and I had fiber finally available [00:32:00] to me, and I looked up to see what Comcast was offering me. They offered the, the, the nutrition label was easy to find. It was clear. Oh, good. I was impressed. So yeah, I
Karl Bode (32:10):
Knew there was, there was some consumer group concern that they weren't gonna, they were just gonna hide them somewhere deep in the website or something. So that's
Christopher Mitchell (32:16):
Good. Yeah. And I think some companies have, but the Comcast hasn't. I
Karl Bode (32:19):
Think that's good.
Christopher Mitchell (32:20):
We're still trying to get a handle on, on all of it, but
Karl Bode (32:24):
It seems basic transparency is, basic transparency is definitely good. You know, my, my problem there is, [00:32:30] okay, great, you've shown the consumer that he's clearly getting ripped off <laugh>, but are we gonna do anything about actually ripping the consumer off? You know, so great. I know Comcast is charging me this and imposing crappy broadband caps, and I'm paying all these weird dumb fees that they settle on there to check up the advertised price. But are we doing anything <laugh> to actually stop that? And here in Seattle, I have the choice of one broadband provider. You know, I'm six miles from downtown. It's Comcast, it's capped Comcast. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, there's no incentive for them to stop ripping me off. And [00:33:00] so what are we gonna do about that becomes the question to me.
Christopher Mitchell (33:03):
Yeah. And the answer historically has been very little <laugh>, nothing, <laugh> not little. Now Washington State is an interesting place. Yes. Where you have Senator Banky who is on the Republican side, and senator, the new Senator Hanson. Right. Drew Hanson is now a senator from over on Bainbridge Island, I think. And the two of them, he's a, he's a Democrat. And the two of them have been working very hard, I think in the public interest on [00:33:30] broadband and telecom type issues. I think it'd be awesome if we saw Washington State start collecting the broadband labels and making data more publicly available for a good marketplace. I mean, this is not like a socialist vision. This is literally out of Adam Smith's playbook of like making pricing transparent so people can, the market will, it's not just for other people, but for other suppliers to better operate.
Karl Bode (33:52):
Yeah. Yeah. I, partisanship has made people silly, you know, I mean Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> basically a lot of this stuff, basic transparency is good. I don't care [00:34:00] <laugh> how much, you know, what kind of spin you wanna put at it, political or otherwise. But transparency is good. I wanna know what I'm paying. I wanna know if there's weird limitations on my connection. I wanna know, you know, that what I am advertised on the website is what I'm gonna pay. You know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we can start there and that's good. But you only have so much leverage against a company when it's a monopoly with so much power. You know, again, when community broadband enters the conversation, you can kind of incentivize <laugh> these big companies to try a little
Christopher Mitchell (34:28):
Harder. You had written about [00:34:30] this several times, but I think it's been 10 years since my colleague Lisa, this goes back to the Time Warner cable age before the charter merger time Warner Cable was famous for refusing to tell you what your actual rate would be after the promotional period.
Karl Bode (34:45):
Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (34:45):
They'd give you a promo rate, and no matter what you said or asked, they would not tell you what the long-term rate was. They said you had to wait to find out
Karl Bode (34:54):
<Laugh>, good luck. And even then it would change month to month. They have all these complicated maths that they would never really [00:35:00] explain to you.
Christopher Mitchell (35:01):
Yeah.
Karl Bode (35:01):
Why is my bill higher in January that went Oh, pro rating, pro, pro rating and other things were doing, but they didn't explain it in any consistency. Yeah. So,
Christopher Mitchell (35:10):
Well, that leads us right into the survey from US News and World Report in which it seems like, I don't know, like you were saying, people are fed up.
Karl Bode (35:18):
Yes, they are. Yeah. pretty, pretty consistently showing that broadband prices continue to increase, you know, and the amount that you're advertised usually is nothing like [00:35:30] the cost you're actually gonna pay. And a lot of these bigger states, we're starting to hit the a hundred dollars a month broadband point, which is pretty costly for a lot of people.
Christopher Mitchell (35:39):
Yes. I'll just, I'll note the proviso that which Blair Lavin offered on connect this, which is that, you know, this is also self-reported data. But it fits with what I see. Doug Dawson does a lot of these studies in which he privately figures out what people are paying.
Karl Bode (35:55):
Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (35:55):
And it fits.
Karl Bode (35:58):
I'll just, it's not the first to find something like [00:36:00] this. Yeah. This is,
Christopher Mitchell (36:01):
Well, I'd like to share the, the, a story from Derek Turner from Free Press, who does a lot of great number crunching and doesn't always make it into the public. But he had looked at years ago the number of people who told the American Community Survey that they had satellite Internet service. And then he looked at the few suppliers of satellite Internet service and in their, their wall Street disclosures and things like that. And you could have a sense of what the total market was, [00:36:30] and if there was like 3 million people paying for satellite at that point, the geostationary, you know, via SAT and HughesNet, if there was 3 million people paying for that, there would be 6 million people in the IMU American Community Survey saying that they had satellite service <laugh> because they didn't really know. Yeah,
Karl Bode (36:47):
Yeah. People don't know what, well, you know, the survey makes it clear. A lot of people have no idea what speeds they're even on. Yep. You know, there many may be in bundles, so they're paying combined prices, and I think carriers work really hard to make direct broadband [00:37:00] price comparisons. Very complicated. If you get into like bundling phone, wireless
Christopher Mitchell (37:04):
Mm-Hmm.
Karl Bode (37:04):
<Affirmative>, home phone, television services, you know, and also a lot of people aren't subscribing to the fastest tier available. So people are just taking, so the, and it is self-reported data, so you can only, it's only goes so far, but it's not like this is the only airport finding similar things. And the fact the only people saying otherwise are like organizations like US Telecom who are saying, you know, broadband prices dropped 17% in the last four months. <Laugh>, then you look at the data and it's like they're measuring it by very precise, strange metrics [00:37:30] that they very carefully.
Christopher Mitchell (37:31):
Well, it's, it's the same thing we saw with cable television, which was the price per channel as though a single person cares what the price per channel is.
Karl Bode (37:38):
<Laugh>. Yeah. And when they implemented usage caps, they'd be like, you can send 8 million emails, you know, to make it sound like they, they were these robust, wonderful limits. So these tricks are always one, one of the nice things I like seeing is this shift, like a affordability was not a priority in policy for a while. And I think it's starting to shift the last few years. And these studies are starting to show real world prices more and more. I think for a long [00:38:00] time they were tracking the pre the advertised prices. You know, this is what the ISP claims it offers, and those were the prices they were using to claim and they were hiding. They were bury all this crap outta these, you know, below the line fees and jacking up the price and usage caps and pay your bill in person pay $5 extra, you know, all the, all over the place.
Christopher Mitchell (38:17):
The mode rentals isn't Yep.
Karl Bode (38:19):
Yeah. Modem rentals. There's just a long list of this stuff that they don't include in those studies. And then you actually get your bill and you're paying $50 more a month, you know, and this, the academics are telling you you're not, there's a real benefit [00:38:30] disconnect there. So I like these studies that are getting more to the real world data.
Christopher Mitchell (38:33):
This is where I do think we will see what I will, like right now in, in the show, we talked about some of the, the lengths that I think the, that the right has gone to primarily the, the more conservative or the people that have historically called themselves conservatives who at this point are not concern.
Karl Bode (38:51):
Yeah. I don't know what it is now. Yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (38:52):
But I think I, I suspect that in three years, four years, I'm gonna be like the, the crank even more so than I am annoying [00:39:00] people on the left who are going off about how we should just take everything over with the federal government and en impose price controls. 'cause I, I'm deeply afraid that that will be a distraction that will not actually get us to where we want to go.
(39:13):
Yeah,
(39:14):
I agree. But I think a lot of people are gonna see 87% of people want the government to do something. Or was it That's the wrong, yeah, 87% of people want ACP to be reinstated, but it was like 70 some percent wanted to see some sort of price control from, from Washington.
Karl Bode (39:27):
76% wanted to see the federal government do something, [00:39:30] you know, and I'm sure there's a broad range of solutions there, but they wanna see, they, they believe in the regulatory stage, quote unquote, you know, they believe in this thing. Mm-Hmm. We're trying to dismantle. They want some help, you know, what it looks like is different. You know, implementing hard price caps in a complicated market is very difficult. Yeah. Enforcement is difficult. You know, you're better served by driving competition to market and busting up monopolies. You're better served by cracking down on monopoly power, you know, build some open access fiber networks as often as you can get multiple ISPs competing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> wherever you can. [00:40:00] And that you don't, you know, you don't need to worry as much about consumer protection. You still should, you don't have, but you don't have to worry about it quite as much if you've got actual organic market competition, which so many of these folks claim to support <laugh>, you know, over the past two decades. So, so I think that is a better route than, you know, very strict hard limits on, on what you can charge. But
Christopher Mitchell (40:22):
Yeah, it's almost like you've been involved in shaping the way I think about this stuff for decades, the way I hear you talk about it. Maybe
Karl Bode (40:28):
So. Maybe so. Maybe. And vice versa. Yeah. [00:40:30] Yeah. So we'll see. You know, I think a lot of regulatory solutions now are a little performative. You know, we've, look what we did today, we made Comcast say that it's ripping you off, and that's it. And we're gonna go take a nap <laugh>, you know, that's, which is great. And it's, you know, Democrats, you know, at least try on broadband policy, I think.
Christopher Mitchell (40:49):
Yeah. Some of them are great. And then others are are basically the best allies of the monopolies <laugh>.
Karl Bode (40:56):
Yeah. It's
Christopher Mitchell (40:56):
A little bit frustrating
Karl Bode (40:57):
Joe Manchin and friends. Yeah, exactly. So,
Christopher Mitchell (41:00):
[00:41:00] Yeah. Well I, I really appreciate all your time on the show today and we'll have to, we'll have to bring you back on with another kind of wrap up in the future. Although maybe we'll give you the gift of editing at that point. Right on. Always a pleasure. I really appreciate it.
Ry Marcattilio (41:18):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts available at community org slash broadbandbits. Email us@podcastatcommunity.org with your ideas for the show. [00:41:30] Follow Chris on Twitter. His handle is at community networks. Follow community nets.org, stories on Twitter, the handles at uni networks. Subscribe to this at other podcasts for ILSR, including building Local Power, local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly newsletter@sr.org. While you're there, [00:42:00] please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Thank.