June 2014

The Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau announces the commencement of the Connect America Phase II challenge process for price cap territories.

The Bureau also provides resources to assist parties in making challenges.

The Bureau encourages providers, state commissions, local governments, and any other interested parties to participate in the challenge process. The Bureau has released a list of census blocks that have been deemed initially eligible for Phase II support.

This list consists of census blocks that are: (1) shown as unserved by an unsubsidized competitor; (2) “high cost” according to the adopted Connect America Cost Model, which means that the census block has a calculated average cost per location above $52.50 and below $207.81; and (3) located in price cap territories.

Parties have until August 14, 2014, 45 days from the release of this Public Notice, to file before the FCC a challenge to the inclusion or exclusion of particular census blocks on the list. Challenges may only be based on the first criterion: whether the block is served by an unsubsidized competitor. Challengers may argue either that census blocks served by an unsubsidized competitor were improperly included on the list, or that census blocks unserved by an unsubsidized competitor that are otherwise eligible were improperly excluded from the list.

At the end of the 45-day challenge period, the Bureau will review the challenges received, then issue a public notice indicating which challenges have provided sufficient evidence to make a case that the Bureau’s initial determination regarding the status of a census block should be changed from served to unserved or vice versa.

After the close of the response period, the Bureau will make its final determination as to whether the challenged census blocks will be treated as served or unserved by an unsubsidized competitor for the purposes of Phase II and will issue the final list of census blocks eligible. That final list will be used for making an offer of Phase II model-based support to price cap carriers.

[Commentary] Facebook scared some of its privacy-conscious users by revealing that it performed a scientific study on manipulating the emotional content of users' News Feeds.

Since the study came to light, the company has been accused of acting unethically -- even illegally -- by subjecting its users to an experiment without notice or consent. While the implications of the study are a little frightening, Facebook's study might actually have been a responsible thing to do. Some of the professors who did help with the study are with universities that are federally funded and subject to the Common Rule of the Institutional Review Board, which regulates how human subjects are used.

This makes the whole issue less clean-cut. Facebook did not have to publish the results the way it did, in a publicly available scientific journal.

Dr Nita Farahany, director of Duke University's master program in bioethics and science policy, points out that Facebook's experiment may not qualify as human subject research. "Facebook’s 'research' falls into a relatively new and under-theorized category of threats to individual autonomy," Farahany told Ars. "Advertisers attempt to manipulate human emotions through advertisements, A/B testing, subtle changes in wording all the time. And they attempt to measure the effects of those differences. Is this different?"

The Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau proposes a specific methodology for calculating the reasonable comparability benchmark for fixed broadband services.

In the USF/ICC Transformation Order, the Commission required that as a condition of receiving Connect America Fund support, recipients must offer voice and broadband services in supported areas at rates that are reasonably comparable to rates for similar services in urban areas.

The methodology proposed here would result in a broadband benchmark that ranges from $68.48 to $71.84 for services meeting the current broadband performance standard of 4 Mbps downstream/1 Mbps upstream, with the specific benchmark depending on the associated usage allowance. The Bureau also announces the posting of the fixed broadband services data collected in the 2013 urban rate survey.

The first approach calculates the average using a subsample of observations based solely on download speed, without regard to usage or upstream speeds.

The second approach calculates the average by identifying the subset of observations that meet or exceed a minimum service level, and then for each provider that is captured in that sub-sample, computing the average based on the lowest rate offered by that provider that meets or exceeds the specified service level.

The third approach uses a simple weighted linear regression model that takes into account the impact of three dimensions of service on rates: upload speed, download speed, and usage allowance, if any.

We seek comment on survey proposals applying the aforementioned approaches.

Within the two very different Philadelphia communities of affluent Chestnut Hill and low-income Kensington, there are two places remarkably similar in the resources they provide: the local public libraries.

Each has been retooled with banks of new computers, the latest software and speedy Internet access.

Susan Neuman, a professor of early childhood and literacy education at NYU, and Donna Celano, an assistant professor of communication at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, spent hundreds of hours in the Chestnut Hill and Badlands libraries, watching how patrons used the books and computers on offer. The two were especially interested in how the introduction of computers might “level the playing field” for the neighborhoods’ young people, children of “concentrated affluence” and “concentrated poverty.”

They undertook their observations in a hopeful frame of mind: “Given the wizardry of these machines and their ability to support children’s self-teaching,” they wondered, “might we begin to see a closing of the opportunity gap?” Many hours of observation and analysis later, Neuman and Celanano were forced to acknowledge a radically different outcome: “The very tool designed to level the playing field is, in fact, un-leveling it,” they wrote in a 2012 book based on their Philadelphia library study. With the spread of educational technology, they predicted, “the not-so-small disparities in skills for children of affluence and children of poverty are about to get even larger.”

This is not a story of the familiar “digital divide”-- a lack of access to technology for poor and minority children. This has to do, rather, with a phenomenon Neuman and Celano observed again and again in the two libraries: Granted access to technology, affluent kids and poor kids use tech differently. They select different programs and features, engage in different types of mental activity, and come away with different kinds of knowledge and experience. The unleveling impact of technology also has to do with a phenomenon known as the “Matthew Effect”: the tendency for early advantages to multiply over time.