Neither New York nor California understands that companies won’t sell products for a loss. 
Hoot of the Day
My hoot of the day is AT&T Is Stopping Its 5G Internet Air Service in NY Because of New Broadband Law
A new broadband law is going into effect this week in New York state requiring internet provider to offer low-income residents access to monthly broadband rates of $15 for 25Mbps or $20 for 200Mbps. As a response, AT&T has decided that it no longer plans to offer its 5G home internet in the Empire State and will begin notifying users about the decision on Wednesday.
“While we are committed to providing reliable and affordable internet service to customers across the country, New York’s broadband law imposes harmful rate regulations that make it uneconomical for AT&T to invest in and expand our broadband infrastructure in the state,” the company said in a statement provided to CNET.
“As a result, effective Jan. 15, 2025, we will no longer be able to offer AT&T Internet Air, our fixed-wireless internet service, to New York customers.”
New York first passed its broadband law back in 2021, with an appeals court allowing it to move forward last April after legal challenges looked to thwart it. The US Supreme Court decided in December that it wouldn’t hear challenges to the new law.
Lessons from California and New York
In New York, 5G service is now so affordable that you can’t get service at all.
That’s a minor nuisance compared to California, where policy mandates by Governor Newsom led to cancelled policies.
CBS News reports Thousands of Los Angeles homeowners were dropped by their insurers before the Palisades Fire
About 1,600 policies in Pacific Palisades were dropped by State Farm in July, California Department of Insurance spokesman Michael Soller said in an Thursday email to CBS MoneyWatch. An analysis of insurance data by CBS News San Francisco last year found that State Farm also dropped more than 2,000 policies in two other Los Angeles ZIP codes, which include the Brentwood, Calabasas, Hidden Hills and Monte Nido neighborhoods.
State Farm’s decision reflects a trend of private insurers, including Allstate and Farmers Insurance, of dropping California policies or halting underwriting, leaving homeowners with the choice of getting coverage through the insurer of last resort, the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, or FAIR Plan, or forgo insurance altogether. The FAIR Plan provides basic fire insurance coverage for properties in high-risk areas when traditional insurance companies will not.
Seems to me that State Farm, Allstate, and Farmers did their homework.
California would not let State Farm price for risk, so the companies decided not to renew policies.
Not content with already disastrous stupidity, a new regulation mandates Business
Insurance Companies in California Must Offer Coverage in Wildfire-Prone Areas.
Insurance companies will be legally required to write policies in those areas “equivalent to no less than 85% of their statewide market share.” Coverage won’t increase to that threshold immediately. Instead, companies will be given a requirement of a 5% increase every two years.
Every insurer in California should leave the state unless they can price according to risk.
Even if the insurers stay, understand they will have to overprice elsewhere if they underprice fire prone areas.
Related Posts
June 17, 2024: Hoot of the Day: California Proposes Restraining Orders to Stop Thieves
More and more headlines look as if they are from the Babylon Bee. Let’s discuss the latest idiocrasy from la-la land.
January 18: Nebraska Takes on the EPA, the EV Truck Lobby, and California.
The campaign by California to force trucking companies to adopt electric trucks will soon crash.
January 12: Governor Newsom Issues Executive Order to Cut His Own Red Tape
No, this isn’t a Babylon Bee Headline. It’s from a Newsom post on X. Grok created the image.
January 8, 2025: Bernie Sanders Accidentally Tells the Truth on Devastating California Fires
“Donald Trump must treat this like the existential crisis that it is,” says Bernie. I agree, but the crisis isn’t what Bernie thinks.
The homeowners insurance is a mess.
I own my home I want a policy for half the value and I will pick up the rest if there is an claim. The insurance pool will not due this they say it is a law that they must use their formulas to calculate the insurance required. They insure my contents for some exorbitant amount that I will never be able to use. I can’t set that value either.
Why can’t I buy the insurance that I want!
Everything you said, now apply the same logic to health insurance. I’d like a plan where I pay for everything under $1000, but anything over 1k they pay 100% for. All doc visits, annual physicals, most dental, yearly labs, etc. I’ll pay. If I get cancer, get in a car accident, require hospitalization, then insurance pays for that.
Then they blame capitalism even though the government’s price caps forced companies to operate at a loss and pull out.
Tried T-Mobile 5G home internet service at my home in Indiana. Absolute garbage. They’ve so oversold the bandwidth it disconnects all the time and was impossibly aggravating to use. After literally hours of time spent on “customer service” a supervisor finally admitted they didn’t have the bandwidth to support the user base and had way oversold it. It’s cheap because it doesn’t work. Maybe AT&T decided it wasn’t worth the bad press and cost of angry customers.
Same experience in Los Angeles. Tried it, wanted to like it, sent it back. Service was abysmal.
Both of you are so FOS. I have T-Mobile 5G in New York and it works great and is $50 a month out the door. T-Mobile allocates so many slots for 5G home Internet and when they run out, they don’t sell any more 5G routers for that area. You do have to follow the instructions to position the router properly but if you can follow basic instructions, it is a great service.
Ever heard of rural broadband co-ops? That’s right, co-ops, that’s where bloodsucking monster att won’t go voluntary, because too few souls to squeeze, those poor bastards enjoy 2Gb fiber optics to the premises. Screw 5G and likes of att.
Until last Spring, there was a federal subsidy called the Affordable Connectivity Program that gave low income people a $30 credit monthly on their internet bills. That ran out of money, and Congress did not refund the program. But plenty of billions for Ukraine. (Sorry, I had to get that in.) Yeah, I know, another welfare program for the “have nots.”
It’s more than just internet that can’t be provided at lower than cost, Mike. A local hospital, Providence, says Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid/welfare) reimburses at only 56%. Prov has lost money for several years. What could go wrong?
“$15 for 25Mbps or $20 for 200Mbps” for 5G?
Sign me up. These speeds are fast enough for any internet usage and from anywhere using mobile: Youtube, music, video calls.
The only disadvantage is, the company that offers it goes bankrupt.
“Every insurer in California should leave the state unless they can price according to risk.”
I agree 100%. The problem is that insurers are going to spread that risk to everyone in the state and possibly outside their borders to other states. Rather, each home should have a cost that’s directly associated with only its risk and other homes that are hundreds of miles away with different risk profiles. Someone who lives on the northern coast of CA which is NOT a fire prone area is going to be paying for the risk associated with people who do. So risk spreading is normally how insurance works, but this antiquated method is quickly becoming unmanageable. These western fire disasters are something like 95% manmade and are catastrophic for the homes burned down but also for those who are seeing their premiums shoot higher but don’t share the same risk profile.
I live 350 miles from LA and my homeowners policy just went up 30%. Very few fires here. There was the ghost ship warehouse fire over in Oakland back in 2016, maybe that’s why. It seems regulated property casualty insurance is a good business if after a disaster that could be of a recurring nature you can then raise the rates at all the areas not at risk and cancel policies for the areas at risk.
Exactly! I’m the same way in NW Atlanta. My homeowner premium is going up because of hurricane losses. More locally, roofing contractors are gaming the system and replacing entire roofs at very high premiums that only really need repairs. And insurers ARE NOT pushing back, because they simply take this data to the GA Public Insurance Commission to justify higher rates. There’s literally ZERO checks & balances, so everyone’s rates are breaking higher. Just wait until we have a recession & property taxes & insurance will help ensure the foreclosure rate quite nasty. It’s all part of the everything bubble that’s been building for 15 years now.
It’s not the roofing contractors gaming the system. It’s the home owners pushing the contractors. If you are a home owner this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get a brand new roof paid for by insurance. Given costs for a new one regularly run 30-40K it’s a huge incentive to get an entirely new roof.
Just capitalists capitalizing on misery… totally normal .
I live in CA but not LA. Chatter at work is (finally) about how the fires, like the LA fire, are driving up everyone’s insurance costs.
But the real issue isn’t one of insurance market policy. CA has mismanaged its wildfire risks and is incurring far too many losses.
It’s utterly stupid to build so many houses so close to wildlands that are being managed as basically organically-grown biofuel depots. Tens of millions of acres all ready to go up in smoke at a single tiny spark.
The real surprise is that more of the state doesn’t burn to the ground each year.
The insurance gaming is more about socializing losses and allowing privatization of profits to the well-connected.
The discount was intended as a temporary measure during covid. These providers had to know once the Fed funds ran out state politicians were going to weaponize it. Smart move on AT&T to jump ship.
I suspect more companies will also leave. The profit margins on internet service aren’t all that great from my understanding. The Supreme Court decided to stay out of it so no more life lines.
If you provide broadband internet access at those rates everyone will drop their expensive cell service and just take phone calls with IP based apps. That’s the real problem here. Cell service rates in the USA is 3 to 4 times higher than anywhere else in the world and highly lucrative. ATT must shut this down to maintain that business model.
Anywhere else in the world? I doubt that your opinion applies to Canada.
Not sure what you are paying in Orlando (based on your above post about Florida), but here in West Palm I am paying about $35 for unlimited cell service + internet with AT&T. Cheaper plans than that are available.
They run $8 t0 $10 Euro in most of Europe. Asia is even cheaper.
Here’s UK costs. This link is for Sim only (you own the phone). The phone deals they have including rental cost of phone (ie you don’t own the phone) so the sim deals are the only way to compare the monthly rates.
https://ee.co.uk/mobile/sim-only-deals
Basically not that much different than what I pay.
“Every insurer in California should leave the state unless they can price according to risk.
Even if the insurers stay, understand they will have to overprice elsewhere if they underprice fire prone areas.”
Of course, and I’m sure Newsom understands and intends that. Florida has the same kind of laws under DeSantis. If you provide insurance in Florida, you have to provide it everywhere, which keeps insurance companies from cherry-picking away from the coasts. This causes people in Orlando to have to pay higher insurance prices than they would otherwise have to pay.
Insurance is socialism. Just provided by the private sector. Like socialism everywhere, it subsidizes poor decision making: building in natural disaster prone areas, eating twinkies instead of broccoli, etc…
I forgot to add: in Florida, maintaining socialist insurance processes is fundamentally necessary to the overall economy of the state. Most people want to live along the coast. If insurance were priced properly it would be unaffordable except for the very wealthy. But there aren’t enough very wealthy to maintain the development, building and construction industries, which are giant employers in the state.
I could be wrong but I expect NY will set up a public-funded company run by the appropriate politically connected DEI people who will provide the service.
Yup. CA will sell insurance at a loss and NY will sell broadband at a loss. Their voters will think those are good ideas and then be surprised when their taxes go up again.
Unavailable Broadband law. The levels of idiocy in NYS are hard to imagine but easy to get kicked in the ass by.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My suspicion is state reps will decry “profits over people” because government can’t admit that their actions are overhanded. Ultimately, it is likely to morph into a subsidized program. This way, government reps can say they provided for their neediest constituents, business can earn a profit, and all New Yorkers can help pay for it.
Yup, that’s how I see it playing out too. The state will subsidize the cost difference to AT&T and the rest of the tax payers can pay for it.
its getting to the point, that internet service should be limited to people over 21 years of age.
Smartphones should be prohibited for anyone under 21 years of age.
dumb phones for dumb kids, no texting, no camera, just a freakin phone and limited calling minutes per day. Let the children live in the real world and grow wise, not the electronic babysitter that turns them into autobots and morons.
oh and cellphone blocking on moving vehicles, phone doesn’t work unless the vehicle is stopped.
less internet service is a blessing, not a burden.
Aren’t the babysitters mostly Haitian Nanny’s at least that is what I see in Manhattan
Fixed wireless isn’t a driver of big revenue as it is. Verizon uses it to replace their old clapped-out copper network. TMO uses it as a retention tool to keep customers from switching to Cable NVNO as a package with broadband. If the service really took off the amount of buildout needed to provide reliable service would kill profit margins for years.
AT&T did the math and figured out that were they have an established footprint (south and south west) it makes more sense to build out fiber to the home (FTTH) even if it is higher cost up front. Trying to overbuild fiber networks in legacy Verizon RBOC areas (and competing with Comcast/Charter) means payback times in decades, assuming you can get enough people to switch. Fixed wireless requires nearly as much buildout as FTTH but with shared bandwidth over the last mile. One or two heavy users in a microcell will impact service because of oversubscription.
Might as well pull out. No big loss.
Has anyone checked if the FAIR insurance program is bankrupt yet?
Pretty sure I’m going to get to help pay for rich people to rebuild their homes in places that are effectively uninhabitable due to California gov incompetence.
It’s only FAIR
In a free market someone else will step in to fill the void. What New York should do then is seize the radio frequencies AT&T won’t be providing. The game works both ways.
So you are in favor of this idiocy
Did I say I was in favor of anything? I am an observer and logical person. The observation here is AT&T doesn’t want to comply with the state request. The state controls radio frequencies so if AT&T does not want to comply it follows the state should redirect those frequencies. It’s simple.
Got it?
Pretty sure that Radio frequency bands are managed at the federal level, not the state level?
Why doesn’t the state just subsidize AT&T for the cost difference of what they want them to charge vs what AT&T charges? That’s going to be vastly cheaper than attempting to become an internet provider for the poor.
Also as noted by the above poster frequencies are regulated at the Federal level. That’s why your cell phone works anywhere in the USA.
I call BS on this. Try moving to the area of limited cell coverage and discover your fine plan stops working after about a month, they simply disable your “roaming” and tower, owned by competitor telecom won’t even accept your handsets connection attempt.
If you’re unlucky enough to have 1 tower near where you live owned by Verizon and another near where you work owned by ATT you’ll quickly discover how abusive the regional duopolies can get.
They’re using the same cellular bands that are used for handsets. It’s just one big pool of bandwidth. The difference is how the end devices are provisioned.
But your suggestion is moot anyway, the FCC controls the radio spectrum, not New York. And the FCC sold AT&T the spectrum at auction.
No that is the 5G ‘phone internet ‘ that companies like Spectrum don’t want you to use and want you to switch to Broadband aka ‘fixed wire internet’.
Also nearly 90 % , have the latest iPhone they don’t need subsidized Internet service
Why don’t you step in and provide the broadband services and devices for $1/month to all consumers? You would corner the market in an instant and have all the customers you could ever want! Why stop there? You could sell cars for $300, homes for $8,000, etc… What’s stopping you?
I would but too many socialists taking social security and medicare are draining my paycheck.
Your are an asshole. That tired response is nauseating. STFU
You must be a socialist living high on the hog off my paycheck to be triggered like that.
You’re upset…. Let me have one of my robots give you a hug.
How much for a sex robot?
by the hour, or by the day?
Lol you can’t even find a used car for $8000 now. Even a 20 year old Toyota Corolla is around 12,000
Is it a “Free Market” if the state of New York dictates pricing and service terms?
Geezuz…
Not the way it works. 5G is 5G for both cell and “home service”. AT&T is merely not providing “home service” anymore, still providing 5G for cell phones.
All that “home service” is just a repackaged cell receiver with a wifi built in for “home” use.
Play stupid games, win stupid prize NY.
And no, I’m no big fan of the AT&T/Verizion/T-Mobile triumvirate stranglehold.
I was just trying to do that. What button do I push.??
Duh the hide button.
Requiring health insurance for those with pre-existing conditions is forcing health insurance costs up, but the insured pool is large enough. In a profit motivated economy the ability to absorb the costs of insuring higher risk policy holders has a limit.this the problem of the commons. No easy answers.
Not forcing companies to lose money seems like an easy answer
Companies are people too, and much more important than the 2 legged ones.
Health insurance rises for a number of reasons, but number one is greed, having worked in the Health Care sector for 50 years, I can state it has very little to do with health of anything but certain people’s wallets.
I’ve been covered by and paid into employer policies for over 30 years, mostly into Aetna/UHC and spent nearly nothing over the years. Just because I change jobs shouldn’t mean a “pre-existing” condition shouldn’t be covered.
Serfs aren’t supposed to switch jobs.
That situation is different from the case of a person who goes without insurance until he becomes seriously ill, and then wants to be covered.
You had me at “New York”.