Research

The US Government Accountability Office was asked to review FirstNet’s progress and efforts to ensure the network is reliable, secure, and interoperable. GAO (1) examined FirstNet’s efforts to establish the network; (2) obtained stakeholder views on network reliability, security, and interoperability challenges FirstNet faces and its efforts to address them; and (3) assessed FirstNet’s plans to oversee its network contractor. GAO reviewed FirstNet documentation, key contract oversight practices identified in federal regulations and other sources, tribal communication practices identified by federal agencies, and assessed FirstNet’s efforts and plans against these practices. GAO also interviewed FirstNet officials and a nongeneralizable selection of publicsafety, tribal, and other stakeholders selected to obtain a variety of viewpoints. GAO recommends that FirstNet fully explore tribal stakeholders’ concerns and assess its long-term staffing needs. FirstNet agreed with GAO’s recommendations.

Do Medicare and Medicaid pay when beneficiaries use two-way video visits to get care from their doctors? It depends. Medicare pays for some two-way video visits—referred to as "telehealth"—if the patients connect from rural health facilities. Medicare is testing new ways to provide health care that allow telehealth coverage regardless of location. Under Medicaid, states may cover different types of telehealth services from different types of care providers. In the 6 states we reviewed, officials from states that were generally more rural said they used telehealth more frequently than officials from more urban states.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) faces persistent fundamental change in its strategic and operating environments. This report suggests this reality is the product of the United States entering or being in the midst of a new, more competitive, post-US primacy environment. Post-primacy conditions promise far-reaching impacts on US national security and defense strategy. Consequently, there is an urgent requirement for DoD to examine and adapt how it develops strategy and describes, identifies, assesses, and communicates corporate-level risk. From a defense strategy and planning perspective, post-primacy has five basic defining characteristics including: Hyperconnectivity and the weaponization of information, disinformation, and disaffection.

[Commentary] The now-raging battle over the fate of landmark network neutrality rules adopted by the Obama-era Federal Communications Commission just two years ago is, at the same time, a war of ideas. On the front lines is a subterranean network of think tanks and hired-gun economists, lawyers, and others mobilizing their credentials to justify FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s sprint to reverse not just the net neutrality rules, but also a raft of measures on concentration in the broadband, mobile wireless, cable TV and broadcasting markets, broadband privacy and pricing, and on and on. If the rollback is successful, Pai’s FCC will deliver a regulatory agenda beyond the biggest telecom-ISP and media companies’ wildest dreams. Each step of the way, industry-friendly think tanks and front groups have commissioned academics to flood the ‘marketplace of ideas’ with corroborating ideas and ‘white papers,’ often without disclosure. What they’re paying for is the veneer of academic legitimacy.
[Jeff Pooley is Associate Professor and Chair of Media & Communication, Muhlenberg College, Allentown. Dwayne Winseck is Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, Ottawa, and Director of the Canadian Media Concentration Research (CMCR) Project.]

A new, nationally representative Pew Research Center survey of 4,248 US adults finds that 41% of Americans have been personally subjected to harassing behavior online, and an even larger share (66%) has witnessed these behaviors directed at others. In some cases, these experiences are limited to behaviors that can be ignored or shrugged off as a nuisance of online life, such as offensive name-calling or efforts to embarrass someone. But nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) have been subjected to particularly severe forms of harassment online, such as physical threats, harassment over a sustained period, sexual harassment or stalking.

Social media platforms are an especially fertile ground for online harassment, but these behaviors occur in a wide range of online venues. Frequently these behaviors target a personal or physical characteristic: 14% of Americans say they have been harassed online specifically because of their politics, while roughly one-in-ten have been targeted due to their physical appearance (9%), race or ethnicity (8%) or gender (8%). And although most people believe harassment is often facilitated by the anonymity that the internet provides, these experiences can involve acquaintances, friends or even family members.

Republicans and Democrats offer starkly different assessments of the impact of several of the nation’s leading institutions – including the news media, colleges and universities and churches and religious organizations – and in some cases, the gap in these views is significantly wider today than it was just a year ago.

The national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted June 8-18 among 2,504 adults, finds that partisan differences in views of the national news media, already wide, have grown even wider. Democrats’ views of the effect of the national news media have grown more positive over the past year, while Republicans remain overwhelmingly negative. About as many Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents think the news media has a positive (44%) as negative (46%) impact on the way things are going in the country. The share of Democrats holding a positive view of the news media’s impact has increased 11 percentage points since last August (33%). Republicans, by about eight-to-one (85% to 10%), say the news media has a negative effect. These views have changed little in the past few years. While a majority of the public (55%) continues to say that colleges and universities have a positive effect on the way things are going in the country these days, Republicans express increasingly negative views. A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45% last year. By contrast, most Democrats and Democratic leaners (72%) say colleges and universities have a positive effect, which is little changed from recent years.

The latest RTDNA/Hofstra University Annual Survey finds the minority workforce in TV news rose to 24.4%. That’s up more than a full point from a year ago… and is the second highest level ever in TV news.

The minority workforce at non-Hispanic TV stations rose to the highest level ever. The minority workforce in radio is up 2.3… but still well below the level in 2014. Women numbers were mixed in both TV and in radio. Still, as far as minorities are concerned, the bigger picture remains unchanged. In the last 27 years, the minority population in the U.S. has risen 12.1 points; but the minority workforce in TV news is up just over half that at 6.6. And the minority workforce in radio is less than 1 point higher.

Despite being still under development, it is envisaged that 5G networks will provide a ‘fibre-like’ experience to mobile users. As such, they are expected to accommodate services with very different requirements in terms of latency, bandwidth and reliability, among others, for the vertical sectors. However, the European Union has just approved the Telecommunications Single Market Regulation, which enshrines the network neutrality principle and guarantees that ‘all traffic through the Internet is treated equally’.

This article explores the potential conflict between net neutrality regulation and future 5G services, particularly regarding network virtualisation. We present a discussion on the challenges of building net neutrality upon judgements on whether traffic optimisation is objectively necessary. This proves complex in a technological environment that envisions network ‘slices’ created and priced on-demand according to the Quality of Service (QoS) required by specific applications at any given time. In addition, we argue that the ‘anything-as-a-service’ paradigm might turn into an important source of innovation for the future Internet infrastructure layer, and thus for the ecosystem as a whole.

A key concern with the Licensed-shared access (LSA) approach currently being developed by European regulators is that leaving incumbents and secondary users to agree to bilateral arrangements may be insufficient to incentivise an optimal level of sharing. We propose an efficient auction mechanism to incentivise incumbent users to offer shared access to the spectrum they use. The mechanism consists of two stages. In the first stage, LSA licences are auctioned. In the second stage, the incumbent is provided with a choice of either granting access under an LSA agreement to the winner of the auction or not. If the incumbent accepts, its existing licence fee is reduced, whereas, if it rejects, its existing licence fee is increased. The change in the licence fee is such that a rational incumbent always opts to share when it is efficient to do so, i.e. when the cost of sharing is below the value to the secondary user. We also explore how this simple mechanism can be extended to situations in which there is more than one incumbent in a band. Our proposed approach involves package (combinatorial) bidding and linear reference prices.

The Federal Communications Commission has not evaluated the Lifeline program’s performance in meeting its goals of increasing telephone and broadband subscribership among low-income households, but has recently taken steps to do so. Lifeline participation rates are low compared to the percentage of low-income households that pay for telephone service, and broadband adoption rates have increased for the low-income population even without a Lifeline subsidy. Without an evaluation, which GAO recommended in March 2015, FCC is limited in its ability to demonstrate whether Lifeline is efficiently and effectively meeting its program goals. In a July 2016 Order, FCC announced plans for an independent third party to evaluate Lifeline design, function, and administration by December 2020. FCC and the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC)—the not-for-profit organization that administers Lifeline—have taken some steps to enhance controls over finances and subscriber enrollment. Nevertheless, GAO found weaknesses in several areas. GAO makes seven recommendations, which FCC generally agreed with:
require Commissioners to review and approve, as appropriate, spending above the budget in a timely manner;
maintain and disseminate an updated list of state eligibility databases available to Lifeline providers that includes the qualifying programs those databases access to confirm eligibility; this step would help ensure Lifeline providers are aware of state eligibility databases and could also help ensure USAC audits of Lifeline providers can verify that available state databases are being utilized to verify subscriber eligibility;
establish time frames to evaluate compliance plans and develop instructions with criteria for FCC reviewers how to evaluate these plans to meet Lifeline’s program goals;
develop an enforcement strategy that details what violations lead to penalties and apply this as consistently as possible to all Lifeline providers to ensure consistent enforcement of program violations; the strategy should include a rationale and method for resource prioritization to help maximize the effectiveness of enforcement activities;
ensure that the preliminary plans to transfer the USF funds from the private bank to the U.S. Treasury are finalized and implemented as expeditiously as possible;
require a review of customer bills as part of the contribution audit to include an assessment of whether the charges, including USF fees, meet FCC Truth-in-Billing rules with regard to labeling, so customer bills are transparent, and appropriately labeled and described, to help consumers detect and prevent unauthorized charges; and
respond to USAC requests for guidance and address pending requests concerning USF contribution requirements to ensure the contribution factor is based on complete information and that USF pass-through charges are equitable.