AT&T (Again) Caught Cheating Federal Subsidy Program For Poor People

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a giant U.S. telecom monopoly has been ripping off a federal program designed to help the country’s low income residents. AT&T last week quietly struck a $2.3 million consent decree with the FCC for falsely inflating the number of people it was helping under a COVID-era program designed to make broadband more affordable for poor people.

During the pandemic, the government created the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program (EBB), which provided a $50 discount off the broadband bills of low-income Americans. AT&T used several different ways to falsely inflate the amount of users actually enrolled in the program to grab extra money it didn’t deserve. Then lied about it.

When contacted by Ars Technica in a bid for comment, AT&T spokespeople would only praise the company for participating in the program:

“When the federal government acted during the COVID-19 pandemic to stand up the Emergency Broadband Benefit program, and then the Affordable Connectivity Program, we quickly implemented both programs to provide more low-cost Internet options for our customers.”

In just the last decade, AT&T has been fined $18.6 million for helping rip off programs for the hearing impaired; fined $10.4 million for ripping off a different program for low-income families; fined $105 million for helping “crammers” by intentionally making such bogus charges more difficult to see on customer bills; and fined $60 million for lying to customers about the definition of “unlimited” data.

There’s also employee allegations the company has been ripping off school subsidy programs for years; allegations I’ve yet to see meaningfully investigated. And earlier this year, AT&T was fined another $23 million after executives were caught bribing Illinois officials to get favorable broadband regulation in the state.

AT&T is one of several companies currently trying to get out of federal obligations attached to infrastructure bill subsides designed to aid poor Americans. And they’re at the forefront of Supreme Court backed efforts to permanently defang what’s left of U.S. regulatory independence and authority. I wonder why?