Stuart N. Brotman: “Recently, Los Angeles became the first major U.S. city to ban digital discrimination by expanding L.A.’s authority to oversee discrimination writ large. This localized approach may be a more effective route to confront this problem. It promises to lead to faster resolutions of neighborhood problems there, while also making sure that government continues to monitor the situation for potential violations.”
The rules package, which the commission ratified on Wednesday, would empower the agency to review and investigate instances of discrimination by broadband providers to different communities based on income, race, ethnicity and other protected classes.
The Biden administration has told the FCC it should adopt a broad definition of digital discrimination, including in pricing, as it comes up with rules for handing out tens of billions of dollars in broadband buildout subsidies intended to achieve unversal deployment by decade’s end.
The FCC has agreed to a notice of proposed rulemaking targeting “digital discrimination,” by which the regulator means trying to “facilitate equal access to broadband internet service” and prevent harm to “historically excluded and marginalized communities.” The notice is intended to collect comment on the FCC’s proposal to use the definition of digital discrimination used in the President Joe Biden-backed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which directed the agency to combat that discrimination.
The FCC is launching an inquiry into how it can “prevent internet providers from engaging in digital discrimination.” The agency was under a directive from Congress related to the tens of billions of dollars being handed out for broadband deployment and adoption in the Biden administration‘s infrastructure package. “Your ZIP code shouldn’t determine your access to broadband,“ FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in outlining the agenda for the agency‘s March meeting, when there will be a vote on launching the notice of inquiry.
