ditch-digger

Liberal Hippy Propaganda!

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-releases-open-internet-order

DISSENTING STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER AJIT PAI

New Broadband Taxes .—One avenue for higher bills is the new taxes and fees that will be applied to broadband. Here’s the background. If you look at your phone bill, you’ll see a “Universa l Service Fee,” or something like it. These fees (what most Americans would call taxes) are paid by Americans on their telephone service and funnel about $9 billion each year through the FCC —all outside the congressional appropriations process. Consumers haven’t had to pay these taxes on their broadband bills because broadband Internet access service has never before been a Title II service. But now it is. And so the Order explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband. As th e Order frankly acknowledges, Title II “authorizes the Commission to impose universal service contributions requirements on telecommunications carriers —and, indeed, goes even further to require ‘[e]very telecommunications carrier that provides interstate t elecommunications services’ to contribute.” 36 And so the FCC now has a statutory obligation to make sure that all Internet service providers (and in the end, their customers) contribute to the Universal Service Fund.

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Means hidden taxes in the utility title

Vimeo, for instance, argues that paid prioritization “would disadvantage user -generated video and independent filmmakers” that lack the resources of major film studios to pay priority rates for dissemination of content. 293 Engine Advocacy meanwhile asserts th at “[s]ome unfunded early startups may not be able to afford [to pay for priority treatment] (particularly if the product would be data -intensive) and will not start a company,” resulting in “reduce[d] entrepreneurship.” 294 Commenters assert that if paid pr ioritization became widespread, it would make reliance on consumers’ ordinary, non -prioritized access to the Internet an increasingly unattractive and competitively nonviable option. 295 The Commission’s conclusion is supported by a well established body of economic literature , 296 including Commission staff working papers.

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This does not mean that video providers have to pay more to get their information out, they do not down throttle people. It just means that the ones who pay will be up throttled on the infrastructure. They have unused line that they could free.

B3bomber

The fuck am I reading? USF was part of all internet bills before deregulation. Hell, a few DSL providers got in deep shit for adding their own bogus fee once it was repelled so as to not confuse their customers on why their bill went DOWN instead of UP/SAME.

I do not know the name of the tax for cable based services, but one existed/still exists because the build out for cable was also paid for by tax dollars (for reference, USF helps fund copper lines on telephone wires).

There was nothing hidden about this, ever. It was a fund to make sure the copper lines for POTS were maintained in areas phone companies deemed "unprofitable". The provider for copper lines got into a fight with the feds over replacing this PAID FOR infrastructure after hurricane Sandy wiped out some areas because they consider wireless towers to be much cheaper (again, they are putting out $0 to replace shit they're legally mandated to put there). There is a reason the copper line version is forced, it also carries power and works when the power is out (those fucking cell towers DO NOT).