Anti Digital Redlining Act of 2021

Many consumers pay as much for DSL as they do for fiber, despite fiber offering significantly faster speeds and greater reliability.

Internet service providers are less likely to upgrade to fiber as a transmission medium in low-income communities. Households where fiber networks are deployed have a median income 34 percent higher than those with only DSL.

Communities of color are more likely to have slower and less reliable internet service. This disparity creates significant barriers to accessing employment opportunities, educational opportunities, healthcare resources, and diminishes opportunities for civic engagement.

The creation of significant disparities in internet service within a geographic area imposes significant costs not only on the individuals with slower or less reliable service, but on government at the local, State and Federal level by requiring governments to provide non-digital as well as digital means of accessing benefits, paying bills, sharing information, and otherwise choosing between either offering redundant non-digital means of interaction or excluding residents without access to high speed, reliable broadband.

Communities with poor quality broadband have difficulty attracting businesses, attracting new residents, and have difficulty competing with communities with superior broadband options available.

Companies can deploy fiber to most lower income communities and generate sufficient revenue to recoup the cost of deployment.

Broadband is an essential service and consumers, regardless of income, race, ethnicity, color or national origin deserve affordable reliable broadband.

Competition between internet service providers within a specific neighborhood is an important means of ensuring quality service and lower prices to the residents of that neighborhood. By contrast, neighborhoods with a single provider often suffer from lower quality service and higher prices.

Internet service providers, State and local governments, and the Federal Communications Commission have all identified arrangements by ISPs between landlords, housing associations, and other relevant private entities designed (collectively “landlords”) to thwart access by competitors as a significant contributing factor to digital redlining by preventing or discouraging access to superior service and eliminating the threat of competition to the preferred provider. These arrangements may take the form of exclusive access for a single provider, discounts to residents on rent, utility payments, or other landlord generated charges, additional expenses to either the resident or the competing provider to access and install necessary equipment or inside wiring. Landlords may also impose restrictions on access by rival providers for purposes of marketing rival services, or otherwise limit communication between rival providers and residents.

Although the Federal Communications Commission formally prohibited express exclusive agreements between landlords and broadband providers in 2007, these arrangements continue to persist as a consequence of loopholes and the lack of an effective enforcement mechanism to ensure swift access of willing competitors to willing customers.

Even where local and State authorities have reached agreements with competing internet service providers to deploy in neighborhoods suffering redlining, the presence of these agreements has thwarted competitive entry and aggravated digital redlining.

As a consequence of agreements between landlords and internet service providers, Americans can lose the benefits of competition, leading to higher prices and poorer service.

Traditionally, wireless technologies have been less subject to digital redlining because a single tower can cover an area of many miles. Newer wireless technologies, such as 5G, employ towers with much smaller coverage areas—sometimes requiring multiple towers to provide adequate coverage within a neighborhood. This has generated concern that, without Congressional action, communities that now suffer digital redlining from wireline services may suffer similar wireless digital redlining in the future.

Easements and access to private property for the purpose of providing critical and competing services are a well-established regulatory tool, and do not constitute an unconstitutional taking.

to identify and remedy “digital redlining”, regardless of the level of competition in the market as a whole, by ensuring all Americans, especially those in traditionally underserved or marginalized communities, have access to competing broadband networks at the same quality of service, at reasonable prices, as available in other similarly situated communities with higher median incomes or different demographic makeup;

to empower and require the Federal Communications Commission to identify what constitutes digital redlining, and to empower and require the Commission to enact regulations designed to eliminate digital redlining; and

to enable competing broadband providers frustrated by exclusive arrangements between rival providers and landlords to serve willing customers.

Overcome identified barriers from such notice of inquiry, including rules to prevent discrimination of access based on income level, race, color, religion, or national origin.

Define the granularity of the geographic area in which the Commission considers compliance with the rules adopted, taking into account whether information at a census-block level or a more discrete level is needed to identify areas where redlining is occurring.

Determine what factors would permit an ISP to not deploy to the entirety of a clearly defined geographic area with comparable robust broadband service, taking into account that deployment planning for areas may proceed in differing stages. In developing this determination, the Commission shall establish a process by which a provider may request an exemption from a requirement to deploy robust broadband to the entirety of a clearly defined geographic area upon a showing that factors other than income level, race, color, religion, or national origin are the causes of the inability to deploy broadband.

An order to provide interconnection to any other ISP willing to provide service to the area found to be redlined and to whatever additional area the Commission may determine is necessary to make service to the redlined area reasonably profitable and sustainable.

An order to compel an ISP to provide service to the area found to be redlined—

An order to require a party not subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission to provide access to any physical premises, wiring, or facility.

Any other relief or penalty authorized under this Act.

promotes or favors any ISP or MVPD with regard to marketing, obtaining or retaining residents of a multi-dwelling unit as subscribers; or

in any way discourage a resident of a multi-dwelling unit from subscribing to an ISP or MVPD the resident chooses.

shall be just, reasonable, and non-discriminatory;

does not impose an undue burden on an ISP or MVPD seeking to provide service;

does not unreasonably interfere with the ability of an ISP or MVPD to upgrade or repair its network; and

can accommodate the speed, quality of service, and channel capacity the ISP or MVPD offers its subscribers.