January 2016

NEWS FROM THE FCC MEETING

FCC BROADBAND REPORT
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
The Federal Communications Commission’s 2016 Broadband Progress Report concludes that broadband is not being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion. Here’s why:
While the nation has made significant progress in broadband deployment, 34 million Americans still lack access to broadband meeting today’s benchmark speeds of 25 Mpbs for downloads/3 Mbps for uploads.
A persistent digital divide has left approximately 40 percent of the people living in rural areas and on Tribal Lands without access to service at the FCC’s speed benchmark.
In addition, while connectivity for schools has greatly improved since the FCC began modernizing its E-rate program, 41 percent of schools have not yet met the FCC’s short-term goals for connectivity capable of supporting digital learning applications.
No satellite broadband service met that speed benchmark during the reporting period.
The report also determines that today’s communications landscape requires access to both fixed and mobile broadband services, which offer both distinct and complementary functions. However, because the FCC has not yet established a mobile speed benchmark, deployment of mobility is not reflected in the current assessment. The Report concludes that more work needs to be done by the private and public sectors to expand robust broadband to all Americans in a timely way. The FCC will continue working to accelerate broadband deployment and to remove barriers to infrastructure investment, in part by direct subsidies, and in part by identifying and helping to reduce potential obstacles to deployment, competition, and adoption.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-finds-nation-makes-progress-broadband-deployment-challenges-remain | Federal Communications Commission
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ONLINE FILING REQUIREMENTS
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
The Federal Communications Commission adopted rules to require cable operators, satellite television (DBS) providers, and broadcast radio and satellite radio licensees to post their public and political files to the FCC’s online public inspection file database. Specifically, the rules:
Require entities to upload to the online file only public file documents that are not already on file with the Commission or maintained by the Commission in its own database; the Commission will include in the online file documents already on file with the Commission;
Exempt existing political file material from the online file requirement and require that political file documents be uploaded only on a going-forward basis, consistent with the approach taken in the television transition;
Exempt cable systems with fewer than 1,000 subscribers from all online file requirements, as these systems have few public file requirements and are not required to maintain a political file;
Delay for two years the requirement to upload new political file material to the online file for cable systems with between 1,000 and 5,000 subscribers, similar to the approach taken toward smaller television stations in the television transition;
With respect to radio broadcasters, impose the online file requirement initially only on commercial stations in the top 50 Nielsen Audio markets with 5 or more full-time employees while delaying for two years all mandatory online public file requirements for other radio stations;
Permit entities that are temporarily exempt from part or all online public file requirements to upload material to the online file voluntarily before the delayed effective date of their online file requirement;
Permit entities that have fully transitioned to the online public file to cease maintaining a local public file, as long as they provide online access to back-up political file material via the entity’s own website if the FCC’s online file database becomes temporarily unavailable.
benton.org/headlines/online-public-file-expands-radio-cable-and-satellite | Federal Communications Commission
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EAS PROPOSAL
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
The Federal Communications Commission proposed rules to strengthen the Emergency Alert System (EAS), the national public warning system through which broadcasters, cable television providers, and other participants deliver emergency information, such as weather alerts, to Americans. The proposals are intended to improve EAS by facilitating involvement on the state and local levels, supporting greater testing and awareness of the system, leveraging technological advances, and enhancing EAS security.
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) adopted today by the Commission, aimed at promoting community preparedness and ensuring that the public receives the most effective alerts during emergencies, includes proposals to:
Encourage more strategic engagement in EAS at the state and local levels by streamlining, automating, and improving the utility of state EAS plans filed with the FCC;
Authorize state and local alert originators and EAS participants to conduct periodic “live” EAS tests, provided that steps are taken to prevent public confusion; and
Allow federal, state, and local governments to issue public service announcements using the EAS Attention Signal (i.e., sound), provided that they are presented in a non-misleading and technically harmless manner.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-proposes-strengthening-emergency-alert-system | Federal Communications Commission
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CHAIRMAN WHEELER HAMMERS 'NONCOMPETITIVE' SET-TOP MARKET
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
In a press conference following the Federal Communications Commission's public meeting, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler discussed the proposal he is circulating to the other commissioners on set-top boxes. Chairman Wheeler read e-mails from a widow and an angry cable customer to make his point that there was no competition in the set-top market. He said that contrary to pay-TV company assertions, his proposal changes nothing about the pay-TV business model but is instead "all about whether the standard for set-top boxes should be a closed standard or an open standard." Chairman Wheeler held up a chart from a filing on the issue by Public Knowledge and Consumer Federation of America to illustrate how the price of set-tops had skyrocketed (by 185%) while the price of computers and mobile phones had plummeted (80%), saying that was the difference between a competitive and noncompetitive market. Chairman Wheeler said that cable companies are inaccurately claiming that his plan is identical to a previous proposal for a CableCard replacement that was scrapped. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) has been calling Chairman Wheeler's proposal "AllVid," the name of the previous plan. AllVid was proposed in 2010 and could have required a second cable box, Chairman Wheeler said.
benton.org/headlines/chairman-wheeler-hammers-noncompetitive-set-top-market | Broadcasting&Cable | ars technica
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FCC AGENDA
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the November Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, February 18, 2016:
Promoting Diverse and Independent Programming: The FCC will consider a Notice of Inquiry that seeks comment on the current state of programming diversity and the principal obstacles that independent programmers face in obtaining carriage on video distribution platforms. (MB Docket No 16-XX)
Expanding Consumer Choice: The FCC will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that seeks comment on a framework for providing innovators, device manufacturers and app developers the information they need to develop new technologies to access video content. (MB Docket No. 15-64)
benton.org/headlines/fcc-announces-tentative-agenda-february-2016-open-meeting | Federal Communications Commission
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

CAMPERS NEED WI-FI, TOO
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Alex Byers, Kate Tummarello]
Members of Congress want President Obama to recommend “a significant funding increase” for broadband in U.S. national parks, according to a new letter sent by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) and four colleagues. The Members largely hail from the House Natural Resources Committee. While the National Park Service has already committed to offering free public Wi-Fi in all park visitor centers by the end of 2016, the lawmakers want more resources to keep the connectivity push alive. Better service in the parks “can have the ancillary benefit of improving connectivity in neighboring communities,” they write. Of course, the final word on funding comes from congressional appropriators, since the president’s fiscal year 2017 budget won’t be treated as much more than a lame-duck wish list.
benton.org/headlines/campers-need-wi-fi-too | Politico | read the letter
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REGULATION BY NARRATIVE
[SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute, AUTHOR: Bret Swanson]
[Commentary] Former Federal Communications Commission Chief Economist Tim Brennan called the agency’s 2015 Open Internet Order an “economics free zone.” That was a nice way of saying the new regulations were driven by a narrative, not by real analysis. Stories are powerful. Narratives are easy. Evidence and analysis are boring and difficult. Lots of people and groups have their own stories, and they often conflict. So when a government agency wants to overhaul the way it regulates firms and industries, it’s supposed to do the hard work of analyzing data and economics and, yes, even the law. The net neutrality story appeared to end happily for those hailing the new policy, now subject to a legal challenge in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. But if you thought this story was nearing its conclusion, think again. The next narratives have already begun, and they are as free of economics as the previous decade’s worth of net neutrality arguments were. One of the chief storytellers of the net neutrality saga, Susan Crawford, says that the great Title II victory was meaningless. Despite getting everything she and other activists wanted and more in a policy triumph that was supposed to solve any problem imaginable on the Internet, Crawford now says that when it comes to broadband, “Winter is coming.” It’s the regulatory ratchet effect. Pocket the victory and then demand more.
[Swanson is president of Entropy Economics LLC, a strategic research firm]
benton.org/headlines/regulation-narrative-part-i-how-turn-internet-monopoly | American Enterprise Institute | AEI video
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INTERNET BUNDLE
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Dieter Bohn]
[Commentary] Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook have defended net neutrality and fought the bundle. But, deep inside the software that powers their empires, they're each creating a different kind of bundle. We might be winning (or at least aren't losing) the fight against the Comcasts and Time Warners of the world, but these tech giants could be quietly undercutting us as we blithely use their gadgets and software to do our internet things. The bundle is already here, it came from places we haven't been watching closely enough, and it has many names. There's more than enough doomsaying about the issues related to Instant Articles, Internet.org, and Binge On. Instead, I'd like to take a minute to doomsay what could become the other opponents to the kind of free, transparent, and open internet we all want: Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Facebook M, and Google Now. These intelligent assistants are great. I use them every day and expect I will continue to use them for, well, ever. But there's a problem that's built into them: they only seem to work with certain parts of the web and — here's the real rub — certain apps.
benton.org/headlines/internet-bundle-already-here-and-its-bot | Verge, The
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FREE BASICS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Geoffrey Manne]
[Commentary] Internet content and service providers are poised to offer an economically and socially transformative service to millions of people in developing countries: low-cost access to the Web. That is, if regulators and self-proclaimed consumer advocates don’t stop them. Net neutrality advocates complain that zero-rated services offer consumers an “impoverished” Internet—one where companies like Facebook designate which parts of the Web users can access. Critics further contend that zero-rating harms consumers by allowing Internet service providers to favor preferred content over new competitors. These charges are without merit. Free Basics is an open platform, and any service that meets its guidelines can participate. Zero-rating is a common business model throughout the economy—think “loss-leader.” Web services and ISPs often offer free or low-cost tiers that give new users basic access. From there users may purchase more services or data. But even when they don’t, the initial constraints are regularly relaxed or removed entirely as competitors challenge the markets created by free services. The real choice for the poorest users isn’t between Internet nirvana and Free Basics; it’s between Free Basics and no Internet at all.
[Manne is the founder and executive director of the International Center for Law & Economics]
benton.org/headlines/when-free-web-access-bad-thing | Wall Street Journal
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PRIVACY/SECURITY

FTC ANNOUNCES SIGNIFICANT ENHANCEMENTS TO IDENTITYTHEFT.GOV
[SOURCE: Federal Trade Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
For the first time, identity theft victims can now go online and get a free, personalized identity theft recovery plan as a result of significant enhancements to the Federal Trade Commission’s IdentityTheft.gov website. The new one-stop website is integrated with the FTC’s consumer complaint system, allowing consumers who are victims of identity theft to rapidly file a complaint with the FTC and then get a personalized guide to recovery that helps streamline many of the steps involved. The upgraded site, which is mobile and tablet accessible, offers an array of easy-to-use tools, that enables identity theft victims to create the documents they need to alert police, the main credit bureaus and the IRS among others. In 2015, the FTC received over 490,000 consumer complaints about identity theft, representing a 47 percent increase over the prior year, and the Department of Justice estimates that 17.6 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2014. The updated website provides a range of new features designed to make the recovery process as easy as possible for consumers. It now walks consumers through a simplified step-by-step checklist that is tailored to the specific type of identity theft they are facing. The advice consumers receive is not generic, but instead customized for their individual needs.
benton.org/headlines/ftc-announces-significant-enhancements-identitytheftgov | Federal Trade Commission | FTC blog
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA

MICROSOFT’S INFLUENCE IN IOWA
[SOURCE: MSNBC, AUTHOR: Alex Seitz-Wald]
The campaign of Sen Bernie Sanders (D-VT) is raising questions about the involvement of Microsoft in the Iowa Caucuses, now just five days away, and has built an independent system to check the official results. For the first time this year, Microsoft partnered with the Iowa Democratic and Republican Parties to provide a technology platform with which the parties will run their caucuses. The software giant created separate mobile apps for each party, which officials at hundreds of caucuses across the state will use to report out results from individual precincts to party headquarters for tabulation. The arrangement has aroused the suspicions of aides to Sanders, whose regularly warns that corporate power and the billionaire class are trying to hijack democracy. Pete D’Alessandro, who is running the Iowa portion of Sanders’ campaign, questioned the motives of the major multinational corporation in an interview with MSNBC: “You’d have to ask yourself why they’d want to give something like that away for free.” The Sanders campaign has built their own reporting system to check the results from the official Microsoft-backed app. It has trained its precinct captain on using the app, which is designed to be as user friendly as possible, and the campaign will also staff a hotline system as further redundancy.
benton.org/headlines/sanders-camp-suspicious-microsofts-influence-iowa-caucus | msnbc
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HUFFPO TO PUBLISH ANTI-TRUMP EDITOR'S NOTE WITH ALL TRUMP COVERAGE
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Peter Sterne]
The Huffington Post has started appending an editor’s note to the bottom of posts about Republican presidential contender Donald Trump, calling him a "racist," a "liar" and a "xenophobe," and reminding readers of his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. “Note to our readers: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.,” reads the note, which was added to an article about Trump’s feud with Fox News published Jan 27. The note also includes links to prior coverage of Trump's comments. A Huffington Post spokesperson said that the note will be added to all future stories about Trump. “Yes, we're planning to add this note to all future stories about Trump," the spokesperson said. "No other candidate has called for banning 1.6 billion people from the country! If any other candidate makes such a proposal, we'll append a note under pieces about them.”
benton.org/headlines/huffington-post-publish-anti-trump-editors-note-all-trump-coverage | Politico
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

DHS WANTS BETTER SOCIAL MEDIA SCREENING TECHNOLOGY
[SOURCE: nextgov, AUTHOR: Mohana Ravindranath]
The Department of Homeland Security wants businesses to present their cutting-edge social media analytics services -- especially technology that could enhance criminal investigations, traveler screenings and situational awareness. In a new request for information, DHS said it is looking for open source analytics tools that can make internal operations more efficient and reduce costs through "advanced analytic automation,” across the department, all while using “privacy, civil rights and civil liberties-protecting analytic methods.” Respondents have until Feb. 9 to submit descriptions of their analytics capabilities, including geospatial processing, foreign and spoken language processing, and keyword, image and video analysis, among other elements.
benton.org/headlines/dhs-wants-better-social-media-screening-technology | nextgov
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CONTENT

THE BIG MYTH FACEBOOK NEEDS EVERYONE TO BELIEVE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Caitlin Dewey]
[Commentary] How can you possibly impose a single moral framework on a vast and varying patchwork of global communities? If you ask Facebook this question, the social-media behemoth will deny doing any such thing. Facebook says its community standards are inert, universal, agnostic to place and time. The site doesn’t advance any worldview, it claims, besides the non-controversial opinion that people should “connect” online. Facebook has modified its standards several times in response to pressure from advocacy groups – although the site has deliberately obscured those edits, and the process by which Facebook determines its guidelines remains stubbornly obtuse. On top of that, at least some of the low-level contract workers who enforce Facebook’s rules are embedded in the region – or at least the time zone – whose content they moderate. The social network staffs its moderation team in 24 languages, 24 hours a day.
In response to recent criticism that Facebook has mishandled takedown requests from users in the Middle East, Facebook’s policy director for the region assured users that “all reports are assessed by teams of multilingual, impartial and highly trained people” – including native speakers of Hebrew and Arabic, who presumably understand the region’s particular issues. And yet, observers remain deeply skeptical of Facebook’s claims that it is somehow value-neutral or globally inclusive, or that its guiding principles are solely “respect” and “safety.” Facebook will never make everyone happy, of course; nor does anyone suggest it should. But in a better world, the largest social network would at least admit that it’s not an impartial, value-neutral observer. After all, every single thing Facebook does reshapes the public space of its users.
benton.org/headlines/big-myth-facebook-needs-everyone-believe | Washington Post
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OWNERSHIP

FCC & CHARTER SLAPPED WITH $10 BILLION RACIAL DISCRIMINATION LAWSUIT BY BYRON ALLEN
[SOURCE: Deadline, AUTHOR: Dominic Patten]
You might feel like you’ve read this one before – and you have, kind of. Less than a month after Byron Allen got AT&T and DirecTV carriage deals after charging them with racial discrimination in a $10 billion lawsuit, he’s got some new targets. On Jan 27, both the Federal Communications Commission and Charter Communications were sued for $10 billion in federal court by Allen’s Entertainment Studios and the National Association of African-American Owned Media for “racial discrimination in contracting for television channel carriage.” “President Obama and the Democratic Party have completely excluded the African-American community when it comes to economic inclusion,” Allen said. “Everyone talks about diversity, but diversity in Hollywood and the media starts with ownership. African-Americans don’t need handouts and donations; we can hire ourselves if white corporate America does business with us in a fair and equitable way.” And that includes the FCC, according to Jan 27’s lawsuit. “A driving purpose of the Federal Communications Act and the First Amendment is to ensure the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse sources,” the jury seeking complaint (says of the Obama Administration body). “Yet the FCC has done nothing to protect the voices of African-American-owned media companies in the face of increased media consolidation,” it adds, noting the proposed $55 billion merger of Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable. “Instead, the FCC works hand-in-hand with these merging television distribution companies to enable and facilitate their Civil Rights violations. The FCC’s apparent standard operating procedure is to obtain and accept sham diversity commitments from merger applicants, in excess of its statutory duties.”
benton.org/headlines/fcc-charter-slapped-10-billion-racial-discrimination-lawsuit-byron-allen | Deadline
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

HOW FREE BASICS IS SOLD
[SOURCE: BuzzFeed, AUTHOR: Caroline O'Donovan, Sheera Frenkel]
A BuzzFeed News survey of mobile operators around the globe — the companies that actually implement Free Basics — found that in several markets local telecoms largely see Free Basics as a way to give themselves an edge over competitors. While the grand idea might be an initiative to get people online for the first time, these telecoms view and market Free Basics as an alluring offering for digitally savvy but cash-strapped consumers.
benton.org/headlines/heres-how-free-basics-actually-being-sold-around-world | BuzzFeed
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January 2016

January 29, 2016 (News from the FCC Meeting)

FCC Announces Tentative Agenda for February 2016 Open Meeting

The danger the FCC can’t see in its new video proposal

Thinking outside the cable box

Since When Is Free Web Access a Bad Thing?

Trump’s Solo Act Failed to Upstage Fox News Debate

Sen Bernie Sanders Tops His Rivals in Use of Outside Money

Cox urges FCC to block Nexstar-Media General merger

Politico Will Lose Its Co-Founder and 4 Others

Nexstar Responds to Cox Merger Challenge