In the spirit of no taxpayer dollars left behind, big cable and telephone companies want to help spend grants awarded by the California Public Utilities Commission to groups promoting Internet use and subscriptions, but they don’t want to have do anything in return. Cable companies and AT&T filed rebuttals last week to recommendations made by a variety of broadband and consumer advocacy groups about how a “broadband adoption” grant program, newly funded by a tax on telephone bills, should be structured. Frontier Communications offered similarly self-serving comments last month.
Comcast’s, Charter Communications’ and Cox Communications’ lobbying front – the California Cable and Telecommunications Association (CCTA) – wants to leverage adoption grants, but doesn’t want to accept any responsibility that might go along the money, or cooperate with groups that get it. It endorsed the California Emerging Technology Fund’s (CETF) recommendation that organisations should be able to receive grants in partnership with incumbents. That’s not surprising, since Charter is paying millions of dollars a year to and through CETF for adoption – aka subscriber acquisition – campaigns. But CCTA doesn’t think its members should have to provide any information about results, even though it forcefully argues that grant recipients should be held accountable for those results, nor does it favor requirements that Comcast and Charter better advertise the low income discounts they, in theory if not always in practice, offer.
AT&T faithfully echoed CCTA’s comments. It’s tempting to think they coordinated their responses, but the monopoly business models of telcos and cable companies are so closely aligned that it would be remarkable if they didn’t agree. Like the cable companies, AT&T doesn’t want to disclose the number or location of their subscribers or share any customer information. But, also like the cable companies, it wants to take advantage of any subscriber acquisition benefits that might flow from the CPUC’s adoption grant program, particularly any opportunities to push its marketing message. “We clearly share the goal of maximising knowledge, and adoption, of our plans”, AT&T’s filing said.
Assuming the CPUC follows its published timeline, draft rules for the broadband adoption grant program will be posted in May 2017, with a final decision coming in June.
Phase 1 Reply Comments – filed 2 April 2018
AT&T
California Cable and Telecommunications Association
California Emerging Technology Fund
North Bay North Coast Broadband Consortium
Office of Ratepayer Advocates
The Utility Reform Network and the Greenlining Institute