Applying some speed pressure on AT&T and Comcast, Consolidated Communications has launched a 1 Gbps residential broadband service in the Houston (TX) area, a follow-up to its first 1-Gig launch in Kansas City in late 2014. CCI said its fiber-fed symmetrical 1-Gig service is available to qualified homes for $69.95 per month, when customers agree to a two-year contract. However, CCI isn’t saddling the service with construction or installation fees.
CTIA and PCIA are teaming up to fight a lawsuit by Montgomery County (MD) that seeks to toss out rules the Federal Communications Commission adopted Fall 2014 intended to speed up the deployment of wireless infrastructure. In a joint filing with the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the wireless industry's trade group and the main wireless infrastructure trade association said that the FCC was within its legal authority to change some legal definitions and make deploying network gear more streamlined. At issue is whether the FCC's interpretation of a statue is entitled to deference usually granted to federal agencies in interpreting laws in order to make rules.
The lawsuits also argue over whether the rules on infrastructure are constitutional exercises of federal power. As CTIA and PCIA note in their court filing, the FCC created new rules that interpreted and changed the definitions of "substantially change" and "base station," and established timeframes after which facilities applications that had not been acted upon would be "deemed granted." Montgomery County wants the FCC's actions set aside. CTIA and PCIA argued against that course of action, noting that the FCC's "authoritative interpretations of undefined statutory terms provide certainty, and the 'deemed granted' remedy ensures that reluctant State and local jurisdictions cannot thwart federal law through endless delay." Further, the lobbying groups argued that the FCC was within its rights and should be allowed to interpret terms that the law left undefined.
[Commentary] All carriers will need more spectrum to provide fast, reliable service. But spectrum is a limited resource, and purchasing and deploying it takes time. That’s why it’s critical to identify spectrum (especially holdings of government agencies, some 60-70 percent of useable spectrum) that could be repurposed for commercial mobile use. In the meantime, the next big opportunity to acquire spectrum will be the Federal Communications Commission’s incentive auction in 2016. If there is one takeaway from previous auctions that should be applied here, it is that rules that pick winners and losers before bidding begins compromise the auction.
A spectrum set aside has the potential to make AT&T and Verizon pay more for a smaller share of spectrum while T-Mobile and Sprint pay less for a greater amount. In effect this means that subscribers of AT&T and Verizon are being punished by the FCC for choosing a provider that makes more efficient use of its spectrum and network. Competition means there are winners and losers. It’s not the job of the regulators to compensate for poor management. Companies like Sprint, T-Mobile, and DISH doesn’t need subsidies. There’s enough cash flow to purchase spectrum and build infrastructure. Spectrum set asides do more than hurt competition; they shortchange all Americans who entrust the FCC to maximize the value of auctions for everyone. It’s time to draw the line: No more set asides for the FCC’s favorites.
[Roslyn Layton is a PhD Fellow at the Center for Communication, Media and Information Studies at Aalborg University in Copenhagen and a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.]
[Commentary] The first rule of Spectrum Club is… get spectrum as quickly as possible into the hands of someone who will put it to its highest-value use. So long as spectrum gets into the hands of firms that can effectively and quickly put it to use, the consumer benefits are roughly the same no matter who wins spectrum at auction. Conversely, delaying this process even by a few months -- for instance, by designing complex rules in an effort to maximize the revenue raised by an auction, or by jury-rigging the results to ensure politically favorable outcomes -- can have substantial costs for consumers.
The recent AWS-3 auction demonstrates what can go wrong when the FCC violates this first rule of spectrum auctions. Curiously, the pending Dish/T-Mobile merger presents the FCC with an opportunity to make things worse in an effort to correct its auction design mistakes.Sadly, political convenience and necessity often trump this first rule of spectrum auctions. Every day that passes without approval of this merger is a day that consumers are denied the benefits of increased competition and that consumers are unable to use the incredibly valuable AWS-3 spectrum.
[Gus Hurwitz is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law]
The on-demand economy has given rise to the on-demand worker. Startups like ride-hailing app Uber, courier service Postmates, cleaning services Handy and Homejoy, and grocery delivery app Instacart don’t hire employees. Instead, they act as marketplaces for labor, where every task is a separate transaction between a customer and a member of a distributed workforce. But a new wave of app-based service businesses are rejecting this workforce strategy.
Like their peers who dole out jobs by the gig, these apps empower customers to do everything from order lunch to get their laundry done with the push of a button. At the other end of their buttons, however, are actual employees who make the deliveries, do the cleaning, and run the errands, even if those tasks are doled out by apps.
[Commentary] At its most fundamental level in the context of the digital ecosystem, interoperability is the ability to transfer and render useful data and other information across systems, applications, or components. As a concept interoperability is central, and yet often invisible, to many parts of a highly interconnected modern society. The fact that someone can make a seamless international telephone call without thinking about things like “signaling standards” or transoceanic cables, and can send and receive the same e‐mail on a phone or in a browser regardless of device manufacturer or Internet service provider, is a tribute to ICT interoperability.
But as interconnected as things currently are, they will grow dramatically more so thanks to the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT). This new technology will not only create new forms of interactions with end-users, but connect devices to one-another. As such, IoT is built primarily on a single concept: interoperability. In order for a car, a jet engine, a parking meter, or a pill bottle to send and receive important data, it needs to be able to seamlessly connect to other systems and networks in ways that are meaningful and secure. For that reason it is critical to develop a shared understanding how interoperability functions, the potential costs and benefits of increased levels of interoperability, and the variety of approaches for encouraging interoperability.
[Urs Gasser is the Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University]
[Commentary] “If you use Facebook to get your news,” Caitlin Dewey wrote recently in The Washington Post, “please—for the love of democracy—read this first.” Dewey’s central claim is that since most millennials now get their news from Facebook, and Facebook has an algorithm that dictates what we see based in part on our biases, millennials in particular will not get a full picture of the news. Even worse, these algorithms are controlled by giant corporations out to make money, and seem completely unaccountable to the public interest. But many current arguments about the dangers of algorithms tend to simplify how they work.
First, algorithms are made by people, meaning they are often more sophisticated than we might think; this built-in human influence also offers a layer of quality control that is often ignored. Second, a good algorithm will show you what you want to read, but it will also continually refine its suggestions, introducing new content that lies outside your immediate interests.
[Nikki Usher is an assistant professor at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs]
Millions of people will be able to see a doctor on their smartphones or laptops for everyday ailments once the nation's largest drugstore chain and two major insurers expand a budding push into virtual health care. Walgreens said June 10 that it will offer a smartphone application that links doctor and patients virtually in 25 states by the end of 2015. That growth comes as UnitedHealth Group and the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurer Anthem prepare to make their own non-emergency telemedicine services available to about 40 million more people by 2016.
The extent of the care a patient receives can vary by state. Some regulators prevent a doctor from using a telemedicine visit to write prescriptions for controlled substances or abortion-inducing medicines. Some states also require a doctor to have an established relationship with a patient, which might include a physical or mental exam, before allowing them to do a telemedicine visit.
Amazon.com faces a probe into its e-book contracts with publishers as the European Union’s Antitrust Commissioner Margrethe Vestager added to her growing list of fights with US technology companies. EU regulators said the world’s biggest online retailer may be squeezing out rival distributors of e-books by insisting that publishers can’t give them better terms. “We’re not actually targeting US companies -- we don’t have a geographic bias,” Vestager said. “This just reflects that there are many strong companies in the US that influence the digital market elsewhere.” The e-books probe is Amazon’s latest clash with the EU after it was embroiled in an investigation into tax loopholes for multinationals including Apple.
Since taking office in November, Vestager has also sent Google a formal antitrust complaint for shutting out rival search engines and started a clampdown on possible barriers to e-commerce and digital content including Hollywood studios’ pay-TV deals. The EU’s antitrust watchdog said the Seattle-based company includes clauses in its contracts that “require publishers to inform Amazon about more favorable or alternative terms offered to Amazon’s competitors” and to “ensure that Amazon is offered terms at least as good as those for its competitors.” Amazon, now the largest distributor of e-books in Europe, helped pioneer the market with the introduction of the Kindle device in 2007.
Promoting digital inclusion and closing the ‘digital gap’ between a handful of highly industrialized economies and the world’s many emerging markets and developing economies will require an innovation-oriented mindset that seeks out new approaches to regulation as well as to traditional challenges such as infrastructure funding, service delivery, and taxation of information communication technology (ICT) goods and services, according to delegates at ITU’s Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR-15), which was held at the Stade de l’Amitié in the Gabonese capital, Libreville.
The GSR, world’s largest specialized gathering of ICT regulators and policy specialists from the public and private sectors, was chaired in 215 by Lin Mombo, President of Gabon’s ICT regulator, the Autorité de Régulations des Communications Electroniques et des Postes (ARCEP). The event was co-hosted by ITU and ARCEP, under the patronage of His Excellency Mr Ali Bongo Ondimba, President of Gabon. The event welcomed around 400 senior international policy makers from over 60 countries, representing the world’s information and communication technology regulatory authorities and leading tech companies. Strategies to accelerate digital inclusion to leverage the growth potential of emerging economies and developing markets were a key focus of discussions.
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