September 2015

[Commentary] As tomorrow’s libraries gather insights on how materials are used, faculty will, in turn, receive real-time analytics about student engagement with materials and time-on-task. We can correlate students’ grades with use of the library and evaluate the content and usage patterns that lead to student performance.

This is the sort of student-level data that is increasingly being used in course dashboards, to provide aggregated data about student progress. The availability of this data provides powerful levers to personalize learning for students, to support faculty in improving student outcomes, and to enable institutions of higher education to communicate their value.

[David Kim is Founder and CEO of Ace Learning. Jeffrey Pomerantz is the author of a forthcoming book about metadata for MIT Press, and was formerly a tenured Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]

The Open Internet Civil Rights Coalition (OICRC) supports the Federal Communications Commission’s legal decision as well as its policy choice to reclassify mobile broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service. Absent full application of open Internet rules to mobile services, communities of color will be less able to rely on mobile devices to make childcare arrangements, receive health advice, access social services, participate in political debate, find employment, and engage with friends and family.

There is a broad consensus among civil rights groups about the importance of open Internet rules. Although one group, the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), has submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of Petitioners, MMTC does not disagree with the need for open Internet rules, including rules addressing paid prioritization, and did not dispute below that the FCC had the power to reclassify broadband Internet service under Title II. Instead it argued only that would have been a wiser policy choice to adopt such rules under the authority of Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. However, no party before this Court, including MMTC, has attempted to show that the rules MMTC supported could be adopted without employing Title II powers. To the extent that MMTC believes that open Internet rules will deter capital investment, the FCC has reasonably determined otherwise. MMTC is simply wrong in claiming that reclassification leads to “price regulation,” and ignores the fact that the Commission has forborne from such rules. Its policy concerns about extending Title II to mobile broadband are similarly unfounded. They are also inconsistent, as MMTC cannot reconcile its belief of the benefits of open Internet rules for fixed broadband (albeit under Section 706) with its opposition to such rules for wireless.

On Sept 16, Olga Ukhaneva, a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgetown Center for Businesses and Public Policy met with Jay Schwartz, Acting Deputy Division Chief of Telecommunications, Access Policy Division, Wireline Competition Bureau to discuss how the Federal Communications Commission could incorporate evaluation of the Lifeline program.

Dr Ukhaneva proposed that the FCC could use existing datasets, such as the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) administered by the Centers for Disease Control, to identify eligible criteria that are effective at targeting consumers who need financial assistance to get and maintain access to telecommunications services. The FCC could also use the NHIS to evaluate program efficiency and estimate number of households who gained access to telephone/broadband because of the subsidy.

Noting that it was not mounting a defense against a possible takeover, publicly traded Windstream Holdings Inc. of Little Rock (AR) announced that its board of directors had adopted a shareholders rights plan. The plan is designed to protect Windstream's valuable net operating loss carryforwards (NOLs) in case a shareholder took a bigger stake in the company and to deter a technical ownership change.

As of June 30, Windstream reported more than $1.2 billion in NOLs, which can be used to reduce its federal income taxes. If a Windstream shareholder holding more than a 5 percent stake increased its stake by more than 50 percent during a three-year period, a technical ownership change would occur and the company's ability to use the NOLs would be limited, it said. The plan gives shareholders the right to buy a preferred share for each common share held if a person or group takes 4.9 percent. Windstream said its board determined that the plan was "warranted and in the best interest of all shareholders due to the substantial size of the NOLs, the importance of these potential benefits for future cash flows, and the risk of Windstream experiencing an 'ownership change.'"