The FCC's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee wraps up and Dismantling the Digital Poorhouse https://www.benton.org/events
UN Broadband Commission sets global broadband targets to bring online the world’s 3.8 billion not connected to the Internet
Fifty percent of the world's population is expected to be connected to the Internet by the end of 2019. This leaves the other half – an estimated 3.8 billion people – unconnected and unable to benefit from key social and economic resources in our expanding digital world. In response, the United Nations' Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development has set seven ambitious yet achievable 2025 targets in support of "Connecting the Other Half" of the world's population. Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development 2025 Targets:
- By 2025, all countries should have a funded national broadband plan or strategy, or include broadband in their universal access and services definition.
- By 2025, entry-level broadband services should be made affordable in developing countries, at less than 2% of monthly gross national income per capita.
- By 2025 broadband / Internet user penetration should reach: 75% worldwide, 65% in developing countries, and 35% in least developed countries.
- By 2025, 60% of youth and adults should have achieved at least a minimum level of proficiency in sustainable digital skills.
- By 2025, 40% of the world's population should be using digital financial services.
- By 2025, unconnectedness of Micro-, Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises should be reduced by 50%, by sector.
- By 2025, gender equality should be achieved across all targets.
Make the internet American again? Trump's NTIA pick opened the door
President Donald Trump's pick to head the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, David Redl, privately assured Republican senators that he would look at reversing the Obama administration's decision to give up US oversight of over ICANN, the global nonprofit that manages the internet's domain name system. Redl made the pledge to Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT), who had condemned the move to international control as a giveaway that could empower authoritarian governments. Candidate Donald Trump has also attacked former President Barack Obama’s handover, describing it as a “stupid” decision that would turn over “the internet to foreigners." Redl promised the senators that he would recommend convening a "panel of experts to investigate options for unwinding the transition." It’s unclear whether Redl, who took office two months ago, has followed through on the pledge, or whether the Commerce Department even has the ability to reverse the handover at this point. But his words appear to contradict public statements from both Redl and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — while offering signs that Trump’s “America First” mantra may be intruding into the administration’s approach to the internet.
Remarks of Chairman Pai at Fourth Meeting of Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee
Today happens to be the one-year anniversary of the President appointing me the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. That marker meshes well with today’s proceedings, for a couple of reasons. First, the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee’s (BDAC) work is critical to my top policy priority as FCC Chairman—closing the digital divide. A second reason why this one-year anniversary means something is that the BDAC reflects a core tenet of my policymaking approach: that the decisions we make inside this building must reflect input and fresh ideas from outside these walls. The telecom policy expertise that resides at the Commission is truly world-class. But the FCC doesn’t have a monopoly on good ideas. Far from it. That’s why, ever since I joined the Commission in 2012, I’ve made it a priority to get out of Washington whenever possible to meet with innovators, entrepreneurs, state, local, and Tribal government officials, and consumers to learn first-hand from their experiences. Working together, we can help close the digital divide and extend digital opportunity to every American. And when we do, that rich legacy will be partly yours to claim.
Truth in Broadband: NYC Mayor's Office Issues RFI to Promote Open and Transparent Internet
The Mayor's Office of the Chief Technology Officer for the City of New York released a "Truth in Broadband” Request for Information (RFI) to establish transparency and accountability in how carriers provide internet service to consumers. The goal of the RFI is to gather input from industry and subject matter experts to help implement a system for monitoring the quality and performance of internet service providers. The move comes as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved regulations that would repeal network neutrality protections and give internet service providers control over what content reaches customers and what customers can send to the internet. Anyone can respond to the RFI. “Making New York the fairest city in America means protecting the fundamental right to access an open internet,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We are the first city to take this step as part of our plan to hold internet service providers accountable for discriminatory practices.” Responses to the Truth in Broadband RFI are due February 28, 2018.
Consumers Need an Internet Bill of Rights, Says AT&T
[Press release] Government rules for the internet have been debated for nearly as long as the internet has existed, even before a professor coined the term “net neutrality” 15 years ago. The internet has changed our lives and grown beyond what anyone could have imagined. And it’s done so, for the most part, with very few—but often changing—rules. Regulators under four different presidents have taken four different approaches. Courts have overturned regulatory decisions. Regulators have reversed their predecessors. And because the internet is so critical to everyone, it’s understandably confusing and a bit concerning when you hear the rules have recently changed, yet again. It is time for Congress to end the debate once and for all, by writing new laws that govern the internet and protect consumers. Until they do, I want to make clear what you can expect from AT&T. AT&T is committed to an open internet. We don’t block websites. We don’t censor online content. And we don’t throttle, discriminate, or degrade network performance based on content. Period. We have publicly committed to these principles for over 10 years. And we will continue to abide by them in providing our customers the open internet experience they have come to expect. But the commitment of one company is not enough. Congressional action is needed to establish an “Internet Bill of Rights” that applies to all internet companies and guarantees neutrality, transparency, openness, non-discrimination and privacy protection for all internet users. Legislation would not only ensure consumers’ rights are protected, but it would provide consistent rules of the road for all internet companies across all websites, content, devices and applications. In the very near future, technological advances like self-driving cars, remote surgery and augmented reality will demand even greater performance from the internet. Without predictable rules for how the internet works, it will be difficult to meet the demands of these new technology advances. That’s why we intend to work with Congress, other internet companies and consumer groups in the coming months to push for an “Internet Bill of Rights” that permanently protects the open internet for all users and encourages continued investment for the next generation of internet innovation. [Randall Stephenson]
Broadband Price Diversity: Good for Adoption?
[Research] Is price diversity a bad thing for consumers or does it foster broadband take-up, especially by laggards? Academic research finds that tariff diversity is a driving factor for broadband adoption and does not impede take-up. Based on a rich original dataset with more than 10,000 residential retail broadband offers for 23 European states between 2003 and 2011, my research found that broadband demand is positively related to increased tariff diversity, especially in the presence of inter-platform competition. This result confirms my previous research, conducted with my PhD supervisors using data from 82 countries in 2012. These results suggest that demands by some public interest groups to limit price discrimination in broadband markets should be viewed with caution. Such limits may come at the cost of reduced numbers of subscribers and work against the goals of national broadband strategies that aim to promote broadband adoption and the take-up of next generation Access networks. [Mirjam Lange is a PostDoc at University of Frankfurt, Germany]
Twenty-Five Years Later: What Happened to Progressive Tech Policy?
[Commentary] As young policy wonks in D.C.—one working for Clinton-Gore, the other urging non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to engage tech policy—we listened to tech innovators and leaders for social justice. As we look back over those years, we see how many who inspired us in the early days decided to head off in a different direction. What precisely happened?
- Progressives gave up on democratic institutions and the rule of law.
- The First Amendment was repurposed to block regulation.
- Race and gender were trivialized and tokenized.
- Progressives ignored newly emerging media monopolies.
- Progressive organizations gave up their identities. Literally.
[Marc Rotenberg founded the Public Interest Computer Association in 1983 and helped establish Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Larry Irving served as an assistant secretary of commerce and was a principal Internet policy adviser to the Clinton-Gore administration.]
Verizon won’t be using tax cut to boost spending on network upgrades
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's claim that repealing network neutrality rules will boost network investment didn't get much support from Verizon's latest spending forecast. Verizon's network spending won't change much in 2018, and the company also won't be using its newfound tax savings to upgrade its broadband networks. Verizon reported $17.2 billion of capital expenditures in calendar year 2017, with the net neutrality rules in place the entire year. In 2018, with the net neutrality rules about to come off the books, Verizon says its spending will come in slightly below or above that. Even at the high end of Verizon's forecast, the spending would not exceed its total of $17.8 billion in 2015, another year in which net neutrality rules were in place. "Capital spending for 2018 will be in the range of $17.0 billion to $17.8 billion, including the commercial launch of 5G," Verizon said in an announcement of its year-end financial results. Additionally, the corporate tax cut that was supposed to create new jobs will go toward boosting Verizon's profit margin. Verizon promised that employees will "share in the company's success." But the tax savings "will be used primarily to strengthen Verizon's balance sheet."
FCC Extends Lifeline Comment Period
The Federal Communications Commission has extended the deadline for public comments in its Lifeline proceeding. Comments now due January 17, 2018; reply comments due February 21, 2018.
Democratic Reps Seek GAO Review of Lifeline Verifier
Some Democratic members of the House Commerce Committee have asked the Government Accountability Office to "review" the Federal Communications Commission's efforts to deploy the Lifeline National Verifier, which is meant to be a more efficient way to monitor who gets the Lifeline Universal Service Fund subsidies and make sure they are eligible for the money. They told GAO in a letter that they are concerned that the FCC is not doing all it can to deploy the verifier in a timely fashion, pointing to the fact that implementation has been delayed, combined with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's efforts to reform the program to cut out waste, fraud and abuse, an effort he said spurred his decision to cut off funds to several new applicants until the FCC gets a better handle on how the money is given out. They want the GAO to prioritize the verifier review and that it answers a number of questions, including whether the FCC has a strategic plan for implementing the verifier program "on time," what steps it has taken to implement that. Signing on to the letter to GAO were Reps Bobby Rush (D-IL), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Mike Doyle (D-PA), G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), Doris Matsui (D-CA), Jerry McNerney (D-CA) and Evette Clarke (D-NY).
FCC moves threaten Iocal news in Iowa and across the nation
[Commentary] Right now, there is a merger waiting for approval in Washington that hits Iowa hard. Sinclair Broadcasting and Tribune Media are seeking approval to combine their television stations. If allowed, this combination would create a national broadcasting behemoth that would change the local character of broadcasting. It would mean a single company could reach 72 percent of the nation’s households by owning an unprecedented 230 television stations. Across the towns and cornfields of Iowa, Sinclair and Tribune combined would own or operate nearly a dozen television stations. Their service would reach 1.7 million households in Iowa every day. In Des Moines alone, they would own two of the top four television stations — dominating the news in the capital city. For authentic local coverage, local ownership and commitment matters. Allowing a broadcaster to become so big has real consequences for news, campaigns and communities across Iowa. Washington should not be clearing the way for big companies to overwhelm local media markets. Because local traditions — and local coverage — matter. [FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel]
FCC's New Media Ownership Rules Take Effect Feb 7 (CommLawBlog)
Demand Progress Seeks Investigation of FCC's Sinclair Deal Vetting (Broadcasting&Cable)
Once Cozy With Silicon Valley, Democrats Grow Wary of Tech Giants
Tech policy officials from the Obama administration and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, as well as prominent Democrats in Congress, are demanding changes from companies they had long viewed as too important and nimble for regulations. “Democrats and progressives still strongly feel that there are shared values with Silicon Valley, but there is also a real concern over the industry’s increasingly concentrated wealth and power,” said Daniel Sepulveda, an ambassador and deputy assistant secretary at the State Department for the Obama administration. Karen Kornbluh, who served as Obama’s ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said that before the election, there was a view of “internet utopianism” in government. Officials looked to the internet to solve problems in education, income inequality and global democracy. They called on tech executives to help with those initiatives and hired from Google and other tech outfits to bring their expertise into the White House. “So if you were championing the best things about the internet, it was easy to be disappointed that it was hijacked to subvert the very things it could foster,” Kornbluh said. But she said few people in government were looking with a full view of how social media and other internet services posed national security, economic and other risks. “#DigitalDeceit: Exposing the Internet Technologies of Precision Propaganda” argues that the interests of internet giants in helping advertisers run persuasive campaigns are aligned with those of someone looking to spread misinformation.
Facebook should run like your cable company, Rupert Murdoch says. How would that even work?
Rupert Murdoch — the Fox News founder and executive chairman of News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal — said that Facebook should support credible news organizations by paying them for their content. Beyond publishers receiving money for their content, it isn't clear how Murdoch envisions his cable analogy playing out on the Internet. To take a hypothetical example, charging Facebook for, say, News Corp content could elicit one of two responses from the social media company, analysts said. Either Facebook could refuse to pay and drop Murdoch's content from its platform — hurting a news outlet that depends far more on Facebook for traffic than the other way around — or Facebook could seek to pass along those content costs. Either way, the effects would likely have a harmful effect on the Internet as an open platform, said John Bergmayer, a tech policy lawyer at the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. “The idea that you have to pay a site to link to it undermines the entire purpose of the Web, and calling linking 'carriage' is either disingenuous or ignorant,” said Bergmayer. “If you don’t want to be linked to, don’t put stuff online, or put it behind a paywall.”
What if you want an iPhone app Apple rejects? Consider the case of one net neutrality app
Apple’s mobile-app marketplace has boundaries that Apple alone sets. A free network-diagnostic tool called Wehe is supposed to tell if your Internet provider is interfering with certain video apps' traffic, say on YouTube or Netflix, a question on the minds of people who argued for keeping the recently repealed net neutrality regulations designed to prevent providers from slowing or blocking legal content. Northeastern University computer-science professor David Choffnes had shipped a version of this net-neutrality monitoring tool for Android app months ago without incident. But when he submitted a version for iOS, Apple rejected it. Apple’s rationale, expressed in a message Choffnes shared in a forwarded screenshot, was that Wehe “may mislead users by providing inaccurate determinations.” That may not make much sense if you’ve had, say, the Yelp or TripAdvisor apps on your iPhone offer “inaccurate determinations” about a restaurant or hotel. But the App Store is Apple’s world, and it gets to make the rules there. Its app-review guidelines run almost 10,000 words, but the important ones are these: “We will reject apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line.” Choffnes had tried to appeal this rejection since the first thumbs-down in December, but the only thing that changed Apple’s mind was him going public, which yielded a bout of uncomplimentary stories about Apple’s rejection of an app meant to defend net neutrality. Finally, it had approved the app, and the resulting rush of installs left the Wehe servers struggling to deal with the new traffic.
Big Tech's new worst enemy: telecoms
Telecommunications companies like AT&T and Verizon are racing into the digital advertising space — currently dominated by Google and Facebook — now that Washington has given them the ability to sell data to third-party advertisers. The growth rate in the digital ad market is expected to decrease over the next four years, according to eMarketer, meaning that any market share internet service providers are able to gain will eventually come at the expense of other advertising-based businesses, mainly Google and Facebook. AT&T's proposed merger with Time Warner will be a linchpin in the battle between internet companies and the web firms that rely on their services. If the merger survives the Department of Justice challenge, AT&T and Verizon — two of the largest internet companies in the U.S. — could collectively put a dent in Google and Facebook's advertising dominance.
Rep Schiff, Sen Feinstein are demanding to know if Russian trolls or bots have tried to ‘manipulate public opinion’ on Facebook and Twitter again
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) are calling on Twitter and Facebook to launch investigations of potential Russian-linked accounts pushing for the release of a controversial congressional memo. Rep Schiff and Sen Feinstein sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asking that they “provide a public report to Congress and the American public by January 26” on the matter. The memo in question was drafted by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and is believed by some Republicans to show political bias in the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) probe of potential links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. For weeks, Republicans have sought to call attention to a secret dossier they compiled that details abuses of power at the FBI — an effort that Democrats say is merely an attempt to discredit an investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. Rep Schiff and Sen Feinstein in their letter cited data by the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, which found that Russian bots on Twitter were advocating for legislators to make the memo public.
More evidence that President Trump’s advisers talk to him through the television
Convincing President Donald Trump not to blink first during the government shutdown was a challenge that required coaxing by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), according to The Washington Post's Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey. Parker and Dawsey reported that the president's aides employed another tactic, too, as they tried to curb President Trump's urge to offer a deal that might have cost the GOP more than it ultimately gave: "The White House also made sure that senior administration officials, as well as top surrogates, were out on television pushing the president's message. The strategy helped magnify the White House pitch and ensure that Trump, who spent large portions of the weekend following the shutdown on cable news, would not see negative coverage that made him more inclined to strike a deal with Democrats, White House officials said." Here we have more evidence that Trump's advisers, formal and informal, talk to him through the television, believing his decisions are influenced by what he sees on cable news. The fear in this case was that Trump would grow impatient if too much airtime was filled by commentators blaming him for the shutdown, and might make a hasty, unfavorable concession just to end it. The solution: Soothe the impulsive president by putting supportive voices on TV.
Man threatens to gun down CNN staff for 'fake news,' FBI says
A Michigan man is facing federal criminal charges after an FBI investigation alleged he called CNN headquarters multiple times with threats to gun down employees of the network for producing "fake news." Brandon Griesemer, 19, of Novi (MI) on Jan 9 allegedly called a publicly listed contact for CNN. When the operator answered he said, "Fake news. I'm coming to gun you all down," according to a criminal complaint. Three minutes later, Griesemer is accused of calling back and making disparaging comments about the network. While the court documents detail four calls in which specific threats were made, it is estimated that Griesemer called the station 22 times on Jan. 9 and 10. Griesemer, a part-time worker in a grocery store, was arrested Jan 19.
President Trump slams ‘Crazy Jim Acosta’ in tweet claiming shutdown win
President Donald Trump in an early morning tweet on Jan 23 mocked "Crazy Jim Acosta," saying even the correspondent from "Fake News CNN" agrees that Democrats "gambled and lost" over the government shutdown. “Thank you for your honesty Jim!” President Trump tweeted, while apparently misquoting Acosta’s report on the fallout from the shutdown. The president was apparently referring to a CNN report by Acosta late Jan 22 on the government reopening after a three-day shutdown.
Internet Association is kicking off a new diversity initiative thanks to pressure from Congress
The Internet Association -- a key voice for Amazon, Facebook, Google and other tech giants in the nation’s capital -- is kicking off a new initiative to try to diversify the industry’s predominately white, male ranks. For years, Silicon Valley and other tech hotspots around the country have faced constant condemnation for failing to hire and retain employees from underrepresented groups. Among the critics is the Congressional Black Caucus, a powerful group of lawmakers that has even threatened regulation if tech doesn’t make major changes. In response to that political pressure, the Internet Association, told lawmakers that it would create a new role to focus on those issues — and kick off a campaign that aims to “improve diversity and inclusion in the tech industry.”
Millions of comments sent to FCC through bulk system used fake email addresses
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai actually allowed the weight of public comments on the FCC's proposed changes to network neutrality regulations to sway (or confirm) his position, he seems to have given more credence to the "opinions" of spam-generating software "bots" than actual citizens, researchers have found. Leah Figueroa, lead data engineer at the data analytics software company Gravwell, presented a detailed analysis of the public comments submitted to the FCC regarding network neutrality. Applying filters to the more than 22 million comments submitted to the FCC, Figueroa and her team attempted to identify which comments were submitted by real US citizens—and which were generated by bulk-uploading bots. Only 17.4 percent of the comments submitted were unique; in one case, the same comment was uploaded over one million times. In many cases, artifacts of database merge templates or programmatically generated text were found in submissions—waves of submissions from "people" living in the state of "{STATE}" were uploaded just before torrents of comment submissions by bots. Of those comments that were clearly submitted directly to the FCC (rather than through a bulk upload system), the vast majority favored network neutrality. And while "the majority of the raw total number of comments fall into the anti-neutrality camp," Figueroa said, the majority of the comments that were likely organic—including those submitted through another system—were in favor of network neutrality.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) -- we welcome your comments.
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