I think this could be some collateral damage from negotiated rulemaking.

Seems to me that each time the FCC overhauls their (actually the US citizens') airwaves, there's always more people that want a piece than there were the previous time. Plus some of the same old big players want more. In a big way.

The high-powered operators have the strong lobbying efforts but this is a strict government agency and broadcasters do not always get their way. So they have to go into negotiations with flexible business models to build on what they already have, or for new ventures.

The only thing the FCC has to bargain with is the airwaves themselves.

So both sides make compromises until agreement is reached.

When the FCC will not budge, the business model must change.

Then the licensee comes back with a revised business model, giving up some lucrative plans in exchange for the FCC to be flexible also. If the FCC settles with good will after only giving in a small amount to the operators' ambitions, everything seems about as fair as it can be and things go forward with only a "slight change" to accommodate the "new normal".

All the FCC ever compromises is the airwaves themselves, even if it's only a little bit. It never goes the other way. Little by little the usefulness of the airwaves to the citizens is chipped away at in favor of those who are more empowered than ever to use the airwaves against the citizens instead. And that's above and beyond the financial implications.

Not just the airwaves. When a recognized greedy operator (usually regulated) wants permission to blatantly rip off the ratepayers more than ever (very obvious in the fine print), any decent regulator catches it in the first draft and starts negotiating it away ASAP before the public finds out how bad it was really intended to be for them.

This bold-faced greed doesn't really slip past that many regulators, it's just too extreme to begin with.

So basically on behalf of the operators, the public representative waters down the proposal to something they think might have a chance for approval, without seeming too much like a complete public giveaway from the beginning.

And even then, when the idea is to get more money out of everybody all the time, and more often too, everybody understands that, plus it's one of the most common business models that doesn't take any acumen at all.

But that way there's always the significant fraction of the financially non-prosperous who could barely afford to participate already and would be devastated by any rate increase whatsoever.

Well that's who the compromises will made in the name of, so the cost increases for the protected group (for those relatively few poor citizens) can be held dramatically below maximum levels. It sure looks good on paper and can be pointed to as some real compromise.

As long as it is agreed that everyone else can be ripped of like never before, that will more than make up for it.

Only one side is negotiating in a way that can be taken to the bank no matter what.

I think at one time cell carriers were negotiating to rip off customers worse, and they couldn't get their way without letting "competitors" use their networks like never before.

Which gave rise to the reseller gold rush until that niche ended up being filled by a few major (usually decent legitimate) marketers getting most of the true competitive monthly consumer dollars. Resellers like Cricket or Metro without their own radio towers, giving customers a slightly better deal to use the same wireless networks owned by places like AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.

Some would say better than no regulation at all, but I think rule migration in this direction has allowed a well-crafted robocaller to get operational more often than a competitive new cellular reseller could ever do again.

And now there's hundreds if not thousands which have been added to the list right under everybody's nose for years.

Who knew?