February 2010

Groups Scold FCC's Civil Rights Record in 2009

The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council and 22 other groups sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski criticizing the FCC's 2009 record on civil rights issues. The groups note that the FCC failed to:

vote on any of the dozens of pending proposals to advance minority ownership and participation in the industries the Commission regulates, including proposals endorsed by the Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age,
deliver a report to Congress on "identifying and eliminating...market entry barriers for entrepreneurs and other small businesses....",
adopt any of the two dozen proposed noncontroversial initiatives that would give minority businesses an opportunity to acquire FCC-licensed assets,
restore minimal enforcement of the broadcast Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Rule, and to assign a compliance officer to the 2007 Advertising Nondiscrimination Rule which, if it were enforced, could restore to minority broadcasters the approximately $200 million every year that they forego because of racial discrimination by advertisers,
hold a hearing on Arbitron's "Portable People Meter" (PPM) audience measurement technology,
act on the Spanish Radio Association/United Church of Christ/MMTC petition to provide for the multilingual broadcasts of emergency information. The September 8,2009 "FCC Preparedness for Major Public Emergencies" Report did not even mention this critical issue,
repeal the 2006 Designated Entity rules that have decimated minority wireless ownership: of the $19 billion fair market value of licenses sold in Auction 73 last year, minorities acquired $5 million, or less than three-hundredths of one percent of the total value of those licenses.
include even a mention of minorities or minority business enterprises in the December 2009 National Broadband Plan Framework - ignoring the transcripts from four staff workshops and two field hearings at which the witnesses focused on minority cyberpreneurship, and
support the only remaining federal initiative aimed at promoting minority and women media and telecom ownership - the Telecommunications Development Fund.

National Broadband Plan could derail local rights-of-way authority

The National Association of Counties and other local governments fear the Federal Communications Commission will use the National Broadband Plan to take significant rights-of-way (ROW) management authority away from local governments or threaten county budgets at a time that local governments are suffering layoffs.

Presently, the FCC is considering whether to change the ROW fee structure to only consider "cost recovery." Under the Communication Act, local governments are entitled to "fair and reasonable compensation" for right-of-way access. NACo believes that setting ROW compensation at only cost-recovery would be a windfall to private telecommunications companies that would not result in any increased broadband deployment instead, it would only result in decreased costs to these companies and possible layoffs of county employees or losses of services. NACo holds that the FCC has no legal authority over local ROW permitting or fees, and rejects any argument that "fair and reasonable compensation" is limited only to cost recovery. To support these claims in a filing with the FCC, the National Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) included detailed economic and academic studies which showed that limiting local compensation for ROW fees would not lead to increased broadband accessibility but would instead result only in increasing the "digital divide."

Data shows bad economy couldn't stop broadband growth

The Federal Communications Commission's new status report for high-speed Internet services indicates that broadband adoption in the United States grew in 2008 by ten percent, to a total of 77 million fixed-location broadband connections. That's in contrast to 2007, when fixed broadband subscribership rose by 17 percent. You can read 2008's slower pace as a sad commentary on the nation's oft-lamented rate of broadband penetration. Or you can interpret it as good news, considering that consumers kept buying relatively fast Internet connections through a year when the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate, well, didn't grow, to put it politely. GDP began at a tepid 2.1 percent in January of '08 and dropped to 5.4 degrees below zero by January '09, then got even worse in the next fiscal quarter.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate began its unpleasant march from 4.8 percent in March to 7.4 percent in December of that year, then got even worse (as you doubtless noticed). So it's a testimony to how much people want broadband that they kept their subscriptions or bought a new one through those scary months. Plus at the year end of 2008, 25 million mobile device owners had a high-speed data plan for their laptop or smartphone, the FCC reports. That's out of 86 million people who bought some kind of mobile gadget that could send and receive broadband data. We don't know whether that figure represents net growth, because 2008 is the first year that the Commission has set up a coordinated count for the mobile cohort.

What Google could learn from EU ISPs' experience with fiber

It is clear that, according to Google, the American telecommunications industry has dropped the ball when it comes to getting broadband out to the people. The search giant has decided to show us how it should be done, announcing its plans to run 1Gbps fiber pipes to up to 500,000 households. For obvious reasons, reporters focused on the size of Google's bit pipe. There was less focus on open access and innovation aspects of the plan. Hopefully, Google has kept an eye on the ISP landscape in Europe and Asia, as there are many lessons to be learned from ISP experiences there. In this article, ars technica reminds Google of some best practices, reviewing how open access infrastructure has been implemented elsewhere and the innovative ways fiber to the home can be delivered.

Broadband Reform: Jobs, Not Download Speed

[Commentary] When it comes to broadband, we Americans are a bit like Maverick and Goose in Top Gun. We feel the need for speed -- download speed, that is. No one is denying that download speeds matter. But too heavy an emphasis on megabits and gigabits per second threatens to obscure a more pressing issue during a period of high unemployment: how broadband can be harnessed to create jobs.

The Agriculture and Commerce departments should target broadband stimulus projects that can quickly reach displaced workers. There also need to be more funds made available to, and a greater focus on, public institutions, such as libraries, community centers, job training facilities, and adult education sites, where broadband spending may have the largest impact on jobs. Greater broadband competition, which the FCC recognizes is essential to promote more infrastructure development and more varied pricing, also will be helpful. So, too, will be more efficient use of our spectrum resources, particularly those that have been controlled by colleges, schools, and other educational institutions for decades.

Next Generation Connectivity

Back in October, the Federal Communications Commission released a draft copy of Berkman's review of existing literature and studies about broadband deployment and usage throughout the world to inform the Commission's development of a National Broadband Plan. After the FCC received public comment on the draft, here's the final report.

Spurring Broadband Deployment: Standards and Incentives

[Commentary] The national broadband plan could spur broadband deployment on an ongoing basis. It starts with the idea of establishing broadband standards. These standards will be the metrics by which we can determine if a community is fully served, if its users have access to enough bandwidth at an affordable enough price to do what they want/need to do. These standards will have to be multi-faceted so they can address the needs of different types of facilities and users. They will have to evolve over time to meet growing demands. And they will also have to factor in the status of competition in a community.

Network Neutrality: A complex topic made simple

What is Network Neutrality'? At its core, the Net neutrality movement in the US refers to efforts to keep the Internet open, accessible and "neutral" to all users, application providers and network carriers.

In theory, this means, for example, that one carrier would not be allowed to discriminate against an application written by a third party by requiring its users to rely on the carrier's own proprietary voice applications. A carrier's walled-garden browser, which allows access to only certain Web sites, is also not seen as neutral by many neutrality proponents. The term Net neutrality is clearly politically laden. It isn't used that much by the Federal Communications Commission in its deliberations on the matter. Traditional carriers don't use the term that much either, since they often argue there is nothing wrong with the openness of the Internet, something Google and a variety of public interest groups dispute.

DC wants Google's fiber network

Washington (DC) hopes to be a test market for Google's ultra-fast broadband network. District Councilwoman Mary Cheh is circulating a petition around the city and is urging residents to contact Google for more information about the project. Cheh, who oversees the District's Office of the Chief Technology Officer, said the CTO is also interested in pursuing the opportunity. "The proposed fiber-optic network proposed by Google would allow consumers to access data at speeds of up to one gigabit per second, which is over 100 times faster than the connections that many utilize today," she said. "In addition, this network would offer additional choices to Internet consumers."

Evanston Vies to Become Google's Choice for Pilot Fiber Network

Evanston (IL), the home of the Benton Foundation's Headlines, will respond to Google's Request for Information (RFI) to build ultra-high speed broadband networks in communities around the country.

Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl has asked City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz to convene a task force of City staff and interested community members to prepare a response to Goggle's RFI by the March 26, 2010 deadline. This task force will hold its first meeting on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 6 p.m. at the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center. Evanston will tap the expertise of its residents, Northwestern University, Rotary International, Evanston Hospital, St. Francis Hospital, Evanston Township High School, Evanston/Skokie School District 65 and other agencies to respond to the Google RFI.

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