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posted by martyb on Monday December 09 2019, @07:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the snowballs-chance dept.

Presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders yesterday released a plan to overhaul the US broadband market by breaking up giant providers, outlawing data caps, regulating broadband prices, and providing $150 billion to build publicly owned networks.

[...]Sanders said he would "eliminate data caps and ban throttling" and "instruct the FCC to regulate broadband Internet rates so households and small businesses are connected affordably." This would include a requirement "that all Internet service providers offer a Basic Internet Plan that provides quality broadband speeds at an affordable price."

[...]Sanders' $150 billion proposal includes a Department of Agriculture Rural Utility Service program "to provide capital funding to connect all remote rural households and businesses and upgrade outdated technology and infrastructure, prioritizing funding for existing co-ops and small rural utilities." Sanders said that $7.5 billion should be set aside for tribal areas and that all public housing should provide free broadband to residents.

[...]Sanders also wants the FCC to define broadband as a minimum of 100Mbps download speeds and 10Mbps uploads, instead of the current 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up. Sanders would also "reinstate and expand privacy protection rules," reversing the Trump-era decision to eliminate broadband-privacy rules.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/bernie-sanders-vows-to-break-up-huge-isps-and-regulate-broadband-prices/


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:55PM (#930583)

    Bull-fucking-shit. There have been plenty of industries with price controls that have no supply problems at all. However, that takes a regulatory board that is actually independent, absolute transparency to real numbers from the regulated corporations, and thus able to assess industry rate increase requests objectively. It has happened in the past. But then, corruption.
    It would also help if entities providing essential services were not allowed to operate as for-profit operations but rather as... public trusts?

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