Some of this seems okay to me, anyway, and some is the same type of ignoramus
wordsmithing that proves nothing more than technical incompetence.
https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2018/11/20/fccs-thanksgiving-menu-5g-rural-broadband-and-stopping-unwanted
"We’re hoping to change [the ineadequacies of the USF program] in December.
First, we’re working to promote efficiency by moving away from simply telling
rate-of-return carriers what their allowable costs and return on investment
will be and toward setting broad goals for deployment and rewarding companies
for being efficient in meeting those goals (what’s called an “incentive-based”
model). Specifically, we’re offering rate-of-return carriers another
opportunity to opt in to model-based support, which would give them a
guaranteed revenue stream for a decade in exchange for meeting specified
buildout requirements. Second, we’re ensuring support is sufficient by offering
additional funding to carriers that currently receive model-based support and
who agree to meet increased buildout requirements. We’re also increasing
funding for carriers who do not receive model-based support. Third, we’re
recognizing that rural Americans need and deserved high-quality services by
increasing the target speeds for subsidized deployments from 10/1 Mbps to 25/3
Mbps. And fourth, we’re making the program more predictable by setting a new
long-term budget for rate-of-return carriers who choose not to opt in to
model-based support and ending arbitrary funding cuts. Long story short, we’re
making the Universal Service Fund a more efficient, effective way of
distributing funding to close the digital divide."
Unless there's one of those too-frequent hidden agendas here, this part seems
okay to me. Of course, the problem is, they might have no takers. I'm guessing,
they often will have no takers. And in that case, communities have every right
to establish and fund their own municipal broadband programs, without the
libertarian yahoos, and crooks on the take at today's FCC, laying down
roadblocks.
Now for the too-familiar incompetence, confusion, and obfuscation. This is
about phone spam.
"Consumer groups and legitimate businesses that place calls (say, pharmacies or
local banks) have repeatedly asked the FCC to enable callers to quickly learn
of all reassignments. The problem is two-fold. On the one hand, consumers who
have a reassigned number can receive unwanted calls intended for the previous
number-holder. At the same time, the consumer that used to have that number can
miss time-sensitive, important calls like fraud alerts, calls from a child’s
school, or notifications from a doctor’s office. In three weeks, the FCC will
vote on new rules to tackle this problem by establishing a single,
comprehensive database that will contain reassigned number information from
each provider that obtains phone numbers for use in America — specifically,
North American Numbering Plan (NANP) U.S. geographic numbers. The database will
enable any caller to verify whether a telephone number has been reassigned
before calling that number. These rules would reduce the number of unwanted
calls consumers receive and enable businesses to make sure they are not wasting
your — or their — time."
None of this would be a problem, if the rules written by the previous
non-corrupt and non-ignoramus FCC were allowed to stand. Go down that list.
There is no example of such legitimate "unsolicited" calls that would be made
by automatic dialing of random or sequential numbers. Not one. This seems like
another case of a disingenuous and truly ignorant FCC, attempting to waste
time, for the benefit of special interests and not the consumer, trying to make
a relatively simple problem sound oh-so-complicated.
And, even more overt proof of corruption and incompetence:
"On a related note, we want to help shield consumers from unwanted contacts on
their phones, no matter what kind of contact it is. As you surely know, the
preferred method of communication among many Americans is increasingly text
messaging. Thankfully, wireless messaging remains a relatively spam-free
service. The spam rate for text messages is estimated at 2.8%, compared to a
rate of over 50% for email. That’s not by accident. Today’s wireless messaging
providers apply filtering to prevent large volumes of unwanted messages from
ever reaching your phone. However, there’s been an effort underway to put these
successful consumer protections at risk. In 2015, a mass-texting company named
Twilio petitioned the FCC, arguing that wireless messaging should be classified
as a 'telecommunications service.' This may not seem like a big deal, but such
a classification would dramatically curb the ability of wireless providers to
use robotext-blocking, anti-spoofing, and other anti-spam features. So I’m
circulating a Declaratory Ruling that would instead classify wireless messaging
as an 'information service.' Aside from being a more legally sound approach,
this decision would keep the floodgates to a torrent of spam texts closed,
remove regulatory uncertainty, and empower providers to continue finding
innovative ways to protect consumers from unwanted text messages."
What a bunch of nonsense. A service that supports texting, just like e-mail,
just like voice telephone service, just like broadband in general, is OBVIOUSLY
a telecom service. It is a two-way communication service, for households and
individuals. Instead of using these disingenuous and plain STUPID tricks
(again, to try to make a simple problem appear practically intractable), you
just allow the telecom customer to tell the telecom company that they don't
want spam. You know, like the "do not call list." The telecom company already
knows how to detect spam. They can block the spam for THAT customer, as a
service to THAT customer, without undermining the neutrality of telecom
services. Which this crook of a Chairman only does for leverage, to benefiy
only his handful of special interest buddies. You watch. Before you know it,
this FCC will find a way to say that the telecom provider is allowed to make
special deals with whatever text spam companies they want, and only block those
they don’t want. Why stop there? Allow telecom companies to wall out other
telecom companies. According to this incompetent Chairman, telecom rules are
archaic.
The neutrality of telecom service must be sacrosanct. Crooks in position of
authority, who seem incapable of getting this, need to be ejected from public
office, and maybe more than just that. Neutrality of the service does not mean
that users of the telecom need to accept any call, or any text, or for that
matter, don’t need to visit every single web site out there. In short, users
can legitimately request the telecom company to filter their own service, using
any number of filtering criteria. That's how this is done legitimately, without
being designed just to meet the secret agenda of corrupt public officials at
today's FCC.
Bert