Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

Former FCC Commissioner: ‘We should be ashamed’ of the current state of U.S. broadband

Published Jun 19th, 2014 6:55PM EDT
FCC Commissioner Comments

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is not happy with the current state of U.S. broadband service under the watch of former top cable lobbyist and current FCC head Tom Wheeler. The longtime consumer advocate spoke on Wednesday during a meeting of internet industry executives and politicians in Washington D.C. and didn’t mince words when discussing the current state of broadband Internet service in the United States.

“I’m not here to celebrate,” Copps began, according to a report from The Consumerist. “I’m here to advocate.”

Copps said that true competition is crucial in ensuring U.S. broadband best serves consumers, but the U.S. market is not currently set up to encourage competition.

“We have fallen so far short that we should be ashamed of ourselves,” Copps said, referring to the quality of U.S. broadband compared to other countries. “We should be leading, and we’re not. We need to get serious about broadband, we need to get serious about competition, we need to get serious about our country.”

Copps then urged the FCC and Congress to do more to encourage competition, which is in further jeopardy thanks to looming Comcast-Time Warner Cable and AT&T-DirecTV mega-mergers.

“Our democracy depends on what happens between now and the end of this year,” he said. “Are we going to have regulators and legislators with enough gumption to make this happen?”

He continued, “Whose internet is it anyway? And whose democracy is it anyway?”

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.