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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday June 18 2020, @02:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the can-you-hear-me-now? dept.

T-Mobile's outage yesterday was so big that even Ajit Pai is mad:

T-Mobile's network suffered an outage across the US yesterday, and the Federal Communications Commission is investigating.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who takes an extremely hands-off approach to regulating telecom companies, used his Twitter account to say, "The T-Mobile network outage is unacceptable" and that "the FCC is launching an investigation. We're demanding answers—and so are American consumers."

No matter what the investigation finds, Pai may be unlikely to punish T-Mobile or impose any enforceable commitments. For example, an FCC investigation last year into mobile carriers' response to Hurricane Michael in Florida found that carriers failed to follow their own previous voluntary roaming commitments, unnecessarily prolonging outages. Pai himself called the carriers' response to the hurricane "completely unacceptable," just like he did with yesterday's T-Mobile outage. But Pai's FCC imposed no punishment related to the bad hurricane response and continued to rely on voluntary measures to prevent recurrences.

[...] Mobile voice services like T-Mobile's are still classified as common-carrier services under Title II of the Communications Act, but the FCC under Pai deregulated the home and mobile broadband industry and has taken a hands-off approach to ensuring resiliency in phone networks.

"This is, once again, where pretending that broadband is not an essential telecommunications service completely undermines the FCC's ability to act," longtime telecom attorney and consumer advocate Harold Feld, the senior VP of advocacy group Public Knowledge, told Ars today. "We're not talking about an assumption that T-Mobile necessarily did anything wrong. But when we have something this critical to the economy, and where it is literally life and death for people to have the service work reliably, it's not about 'trusting the market' or expecting companies to be on their best behavior. We as a country need to know what is the reality of our broadband networks, the reality of their resilience and reliability, and the reality of what happens when things go wrong. That takes a regulator with real authority to go in, ask hard questions, seize documents if necessary, and compel testimony under oath."

Several provisions of Title II common-carrier rules that Pai has fought against "give the FCC authority to make sure the network is resilient and reliable," Feld said. The FCC gutting its own authority "influences how the FCC conducts its investigations," he said. "[FCC] staff and the carriers know very well that if push comes to shove, companies can simply refuse to give the FCC information that might be too embarrassing. So the FCC is stuck now playing this game where they know they can't push too hard or they get their bluff called. Carriers have incentive to play along enough to keep the FCC or Congress from re-regulating, but at the end of the day it's the carriers—not the FCC—that gets to decide how much information to turn over."


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  • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday June 18 2020, @03:59PM (1 child)

    by epitaxial (3165) on Thursday June 18 2020, @03:59PM (#1009550)

    Someone better not say a dirty word on tv! That will put him over the edge.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by stormreaver on Thursday June 18 2020, @04:45PM

    by stormreaver (5101) on Thursday June 18 2020, @04:45PM (#1009570)

    Shit, he would fucking piss himself if that corrupt little cunt came across a swear word on TV. I'm sure some little religious cocksucker would report every little motherfucker without pure thoughts, and make Ajit go tits up with an aneurysm.

    Thank you, thank you.