December 2013

Commissioner Pai Remarks Before Communications and Technology Task Force of ALEC

Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai spoke at a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Task Force on Communications and Technology. Commissioner Pai celebrated their common cause: fighting for the cherished principles of a vibrant free market, limited government, and federalism. “Perhaps nowhere are they more vital right now than in the communications and technology sector,” he said.

He focused on the IP Transition -- the Internet’s is transformation of the nation’s telecommunications networks. He said “allowing new IP-enabled services to thrive free from undue intervention isn’t enough. Some heavy-handed rules currently apply to the old telephone services provided by incumbent local exchange carriers. Those rules saddle carriers with tariffs, rate regulation, required cross-subsidization, and other requirements inspired by 19th century railroad regulation.” He highlighted the century-old Kingsbury Commitment, a historic deal in which “the federal government essentially blessed a telephone monopoly in exchange for one company, one system, universal service.”

In his remarks, Commissioner Pai recognized states as leaders in “clearing out this regulatory underbrush.” He also offered two ideas for what states should be doing now:

They should be proactive in reducing regulatory barriers to infrastructure investment.
They should make it easier to use the Internet for innovative, over-the-top business models.

Markup of Federal Communications Commission Process Reform Act

House Commerce Committee
Tuesday, December 10 -- Opening Statements only -- 4:30 pm
Wednesday, December 11 -- Full Committee Markup -- 12:30 pm
http://energycommerce.house.gov/press-release/look-ahead-committee-annou...

Read more about Full Committee Markup of Federal Communications Commission Process Reform Act

The Columbus Compact

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler returned to Ohio State University this week to deliver the first of what he promises to be a series of speeches that will articulate his regulatory philosophy. There is great symbolism in returning to his alma mater, he said, because “the dateline of my first speech sends a more powerful message than anything you’ll find in the transcript.” He wanted to stress, not just in his words, but in his presence, that the American people is the FCC’s constituency. “That how we connect determines how jobs are created and lives are lived. And that your FCC believes its mission is as integral to the prosperity of the Ohio Valley as Silicon Valley.” The Chairman characterizes himself as “the public’s advocate in the midst of an historic revolution.” So let’s pause to parse out what he sees as the FCC’s role in the revolution.

Chairman Walden: Telecom Update Not a Cash Play

House Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman and House National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) put the kibosh on the idea that the new Republican push to rewrite the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is a thinly veiled attempt to shake down companies for campaign contributions.

During a press call on the push, Chairman Walden said he and full Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) were serious about the effort. "You can file that one away in the trash can," he said. "We've talked about updating these laws every year since I've been around here. We're starting a process to do that, and we're very serious about having a process to do hearings, to do white papers, to allow everybody to have a chance to participate." While Chairman Walden said it was too early to say what is in and out of a telecom law redo, he did say that both retransmission consent and network neutrality are likely topics. "I'm not going to prejudice all of that," he said when asked if it was time to jettison retransmission consent. "We know it's one of the big issues and it's going to get attention." On net neutrality, Chairman Walden added: "How net neutrality quote-unquote is considered will be part of that update."

The Path to a Successful Incentive Auction

Since my arrival at the Commission, I have spent more time working on the Broadcast Television Spectrum Incentive Auction than any other single issue.

There are several key ingredients to fulfilling our instructions from Congress and making the incentive auction a success. First and foremost, we absolutely must make fact-based policy decisions in an open and transparent manner. Beyond the policy issues, however, we must also exhaustively test the operating systems and the software necessary to conduct the world’s first-of-a kind incentive auction. This includes ensuring that such systems are user-friendly to both broadcasters and wireless carriers who will participate.

I believe we can conduct a successful auction in the middle of 2015. To achieve that goal, there will be a number of important milestones along the way. The Task Force will provide more details about the timeline and milestones in a presentation at the January 2014 Commission meeting. This plan includes presenting policy recommendations in a proposed Report and Order for the Commission’s consideration in early 2014. The Commission would then vote on the R&O in the spring of 2014. Concurrent with determining the rules of the road for the auction, another important aspect of the project plan will include developing the actual procedures for how the auction will be conducted. In the second half of 2014 the Task Force plans to release an Auction Comment Public Notice and a Procedures Public Notice that will provide additional details and seek comment on how the specific parts of the auction will actually function.

80 percent of schools lack sufficient Internet

Needed to keep a school building running these days: Water, electricity -- and broadband.

Technology is changing the way students are taught -- and tested. But there's a catch: Most of it is occurring in schools that have rich connectivity to the Internet. Although nearly every school has Internet access, classrooms frequently are not connected or the connections are super slow. The hurdle is limited capacity inside schools to transmit data, or bandwidth. "It's the backbone. We have to actually think not just about the sustainability of the current traffic, we're talking about exploding traffic," said Raj Adusumilli, assistant superintendent for information services in the Arlington Public Schools in northern Virginia. "When schools and teachers have access to reliable Internet connections, students can discover new skills and ideas beyond the classroom," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, said in a statement. Funds from Big Tech philanthropy projects Start Up: Education and the Bill Gates Foundation are expected to be used to provide technical expertise to schools and use competition to help drive costs down. Today, about 80 percent of schools have Internet capabilities that are too slow or isolated to places like front offices and computer labs, said Richard Culatta, director of education technology at the Education Department.

In some districts, particularly rural ones, cost is a huge factor in getting access to lines that would bring broadband into schools. To buy the equipment and install Wi-Fi costs an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 per school and to run fiber optics into the school can cost tens of thousands more per mile, said Evan Marwell, CEO of EducationSuperHighway.

US Telecom's McCormick: Network Neutrality Rules Have Had No Effect

US Telecom President Walter McCormick says that he has seen no impact from the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality rules either on his members or on competition.

In an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators series, McCormick was asked whether he thought the DC Circuit would overturn the rules. He said he was not sure, but that in any event he thought the industry had, for a decade, been operating in "complete conformance" with the FCC's open Internet principles, including not blocking or degrading. He said that given the amount of competition today, "no company is going to change the terms of service for its consumers."

President Obama plans new limits on NSA surveillance

President Barack Obama said that he'll be reining in some of the snooping conducted by the National Security Agency, but he did not detail what new limits he plans to impose on the embattled spy organization.

"I'll be proposing some self-restraint on the NSA. And... to initiate some reforms that can give people more confidence, " President Obama said. The President insisted that the NSA's work shows respect for the rights of Americans, but he conceded that its activities are often more intrusive when it comes to foreigners communicating overseas. "The NSA actually does a very good job about not engaging in domestic surveillance, not reading people's e-mails, not listening to the contents of their phone calls. Outside of our borders, the NSA's more aggressive. It's not constrained by laws," President Obama said. The President pointed to an outside panel he set up in August to look into how the government was collecting surveillance data in the era of 'big data.' The five-member group is set to deliver its final report to Obama by Dec 15.

The United States Releases its Second Open Government National Action Plan

The Obama Administration released the second US Open Government National Action Plan, announcing 23 new or expanded open-government commitments that will advance these efforts even further.

Among the highlights of the second National Action Plan:

“We the People”: The White House will introduce new improvements to the We the People online petitions platform aimed at making it easier to collect and submit signatures and increase public participation in using this platform.
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Modernization: The FOIA encourages accountability through transparency and represents an unwavering national commitment to open government principles. Improving FOIA administration is one of the most effective ways to make the U.S. Government more open and accountable. We announced five commitments to further modernize FOIA processes, including launching a consolidated online FOIA service to improve customers’ experience, creating and making training resources available to FOIA professionals and other Federal employees, and developing common FOIA standards for agencies across government.
The Global Initiative on Fiscal Transparency (GIFT): The United States will join GIFT, an international network of governments and non-government organizations aimed at enhancing financial transparency, accountability, and stakeholder engagement
Open Data to the Public: Over the past few years, government data has been used by journalists to uncover variations in hospital billings, by citizens to learn more about the social services provided by charities in their communities, and by entrepreneurs building new software tools to help farmers plan and manage their crops.
Participatory Budgeting: The United States will promote community-led participatory budgeting as a tool for enabling citizens to play a role in identifying, discussing, and prioritizing certain local public spending projects, and for giving citizens a voice in how taxpayer dollars are spent in their communities.

Netflix's War on Mass Culture

[Commentary] Given all the faces you see glued to computers, tablets, and cell phones, you might think that people watch much less television than they used to. You would be wrong. According to Nielsen, Americans on average consume nearly five hours of TV every day, a number that has actually gone up since the 1990s. That works out to about 34 hours a week and almost 1,800 hours per year, more than the average French person spends working. The vast majority of that time is still spent in front of a standard television, watching live or prescheduled programming. That’s why, should Netflix and the other streamers even partially succeed at redefining the network as we know it, the effects will be so profound.

In fact the company has embarked upon a venture more radical than any before it. With no standard daily cultural diet, we’ll tilt even more from a country united by shows like “I Love Lucy” or “Friends” toward one where people claim more personalized allegiances. The baby-boomer intellectuals who lament the erosion of shared values are right: Something will be lost in the transition. At a deeper level, a country already polarized by the echo chambers of ideologically driven journalism and social media will find itself with even less to agree on. However, community lost can be community gained, and as mass culture weakens, it creates openings for the cohorts that can otherwise get crowded out. Certainly, a culture where niche supplants mass hews closer to the original vision of the Americas, of a new continent truly open to whatever diverse and eccentric groups showed up. The United States was once, almost by definition, a place without a dominant national identity. As it revolutionizes television, Netflix is merely helping to return us to that past.

Benton

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