December 2011

Public Knowledge welcomed three new members to the organization’s board: Maura Colleton Corbett, Andrew McLaughlin and Kevin Werbach.

Maura Colleton Corbett is the president and founder of the Glen Echo Group. She brings 20 years of communications, public affairs and coalition building experience to the Glen Echo Group, which provides senior-level strategic counsel to clients faced with complicated issues affecting the high-technology industry including Internet policy, wireless technologies, broadband competition, deployment and applications, and content-related policy issues including privacy, security and copyright. Corbett received the 2010 Women in Technology Leadership Award, for her demonstration of exemplary leadership skills and exceptional results in community-related work.

Andrew McLaughlin, who recently began a new assignment as a vice president of Tumblr. He is the former executive director of Civic Commons, a new non-profit that help cities and other governments share and implement low- cost technologies to improve public services, management, accountability, transparency, and citizen engagement. From 2009-2011, McLaughlin served on President Obama's White House staff as Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States and was a member of the a member of the Technology, Innovation and Government Reform cluster of the Obama/Biden Transition Team. From 2004-2009, he was Director of Global Public Policy at Google.

Kevin Werbach is Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics, at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His research addresses strategic and public policy issues at the intersection of law, business, and technology. He is the also the founder of Supernova Group, a technology analysis and consulting firm. He organizes the annual Supernova conference. Werbach served on the Obama Administration’s Presidential Transition Team, and was employed as an expert advisor on broadband policy to the FCC and National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

[Commentary] Is the Federal Communications Commission’s expert staff of engineers, economics, and legal experts being manipulated or overruled to support a political agenda?

Unfortunately, that appears to be the inescapable explanation for at least some of the agency’s strange behavior. But something deeper and more disturbing is happening. The agency has many opportunities to stray, largely because, when it comes to broadband and the Internet revolution more generally, the FCC has no playbook to work from. The Commission, quite simply, has lost the ability to keep up with the remarkable pace of innovation in communications technology – the same technology whose deployment the FCC was created to facilitate. Congress is partly to blame. It last made significant changes to the agency’s charter in 1996, well before the Internet revolution reshaped the landscape of telephone, radio, television, and mobile communications. Those innovations, which have spawned an almost magical new world of information interactions for U.S. consumers, also render obsolete much of the agency’s governing law. The failure of communications law to keep up—perhaps inevitably, given the high-speed pace of technological innovation–has undermined the agency’s ability to pursue its prime directive to “make available…rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.” Everything from the FCC’s organization chart to its management paradigm for allocating radio spectrum has mutated into perilous anachronisms.

As part of our Consumer Empowerment Agenda, the Federal Communications Commission has been taking action to ensure that consumers are getting the information they need to make informed decisions. Our efforts to combat bill shock are one recent example, where we worked out a landmark agreement with the wireless industry to alert consumers before they are charged overage fees. The residential broadband market is another area where consumers may be faced with decisions they don’t have adequate information to make. Signing up for broadband—high-speed Internet—service can been a real challenge for consumers. To be an informed shopper for any service, you have to know what will best meet your needs, and you have to know that service providers will deliver what they advertise.

In our Measuring broadband America report, we presented findings in a number of ways, by technology, provider, and time of day. Many providers performed quite well, some even exceeding advertised speeds. But we also found some instances where broadband service fell significantly short of what was advertised, particularly at the times of day for peak broadband usage. As we had hoped, our results quickly began informing the marketplace. Our findings were reported not only on the news and on the websites of consumer groups, but also in television commercials, radio ads, and press releases from Internet service providers themselves. Those who had done well in our tests spread the news, and attempted to use their strong performance results to win customers in the marketplace. In the months since we released our initial report, we have continued to gather direct measurements of broadband performance. We are pleased to note that the performance of one company—Cablevision—markedly improved from earlier this year. As we noted in our report, during March 2011, subscribers to Cablevision’s 15 Mbps service were receiving average download speeds during peak hours of only about 50% of the advertised speed. By comparison, average users across all companies other than Cablevision were receiving download speeds during peak hours of 89% of the advertised speeds. During October 2011, the most recent month for which data is available, subscribers to Cablevision’s 15 Mbps service were receiving average download speeds during peaks hours at over 90% of the advertised speed.

The International Telecommunications Union is encouraging its member countries -- which includes the U.S. -- to capitalize on the transition to terrestrial digital television to make sure TV is more accessible "to everyone, everywhere."

"For terrestrial broadcasting services, spectrum availability is sometimes an issue," the report acknowledged. "As the global manager of the radio frequency spectrum, ITU is actively encouraging its 193 Member States to ensure that sufficient spectrum is allocated to support services promoting accessibility for persons with disabilities," ITU said in releasing a new report, "Making TV Accessible." The report talks about the importance of terrestrial broadcasting to immigrant populations and the elderly, and for emergency communications.