Big Telecom Resorts To Lying To Senior Citizens To Scuttle Net Neutrality In California

from the disinformation-nation dept

With the bipartisan majority of Americans supporting net neutrality, the broadband industry often has to resort to outright falsehoods to try and make its case that we don't need net neutrality rules (or any meaningful oversight of natural telecom monopolies). From paying civil rights groups to parrot industry positions to hiring fake journalists to deny the obvious, the broadband industry has a long, proud, multi-decade history of using outright bullshit to scare the public, press and regulators away from the idea of net neutrality.

The latest case in point: after AT&T lobbyists successfully sabotaged initial efforts to pass new net neutrality rules in California, the state this week revisited the effort with a new vote on the state assembly floor. In a bid to try and scuttle the effort, an AT&T-linked group by the name of Civil Justice Association of California (CJAC) has been robocalling senior citizens in the state, informing them that their cell phone bill will jump $30 if the new rules pass. California State Senator Scott Wiener, the author of California's bill, wasn't particularly impressed:

We’re now dealing with a straight-up misinformation campaign on our #NetNeutrality bill, #SB822: industry robo-calls to seniors falsely telling them that protecting net neutrality will increase their phone bills by $30. Scaring seniors w lies about their financial security? Gross pic.twitter.com/1Lgop6KwSl — Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) August 25, 2018

The group is informing seniors that should California pass net neutrality rules, they'll not only see a $30 hike in their cellular phone bills, but their data will be "slowed down":

"Your Assembly member will be voting on a proposal by San Francisco politicians that could increase your cellphone bill by $30 a month and slow down your data. We can't afford higher cell phone bills. We can't afford slower data. We can't afford Senate Bill 822."

Of course the bill in question, SB822, does nothing of the sort. Like most net neutrality bills, it prohibits AT&T from throttling or slowing down your cellular data connections anti-competitively, and if anything will likely save California consumers money by preventing AT&T from nickel and diming them (via zero rating, interconnection shenanigans, charging you more just to watch HD video as intended, or countless other creative abuses of the largely-uncompetitive broadband market). The information conveyed by the robocall is patently false.

Knowing the bill is likely to pass in some form, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast lobbyists have spent the last few months trying to strip away most of the integral parts of the bill. With those efforts struggling in activist-heavy California, apparently the broadband industry thought the next best move would be to lie to senior citizens, which speaks volumes of the quality and integrity of its arguments.

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Filed Under: california, lobbying, net neutrality, scott weiner

Companies: at&t, civil justice association