February 2016

[Commentary] Republicans on the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology are marking up that says little more than this: The Federal Communications Commission may not regulate the rates companies like Comcast charge for broadband Internet access. Why is the legislation needed when there’s practically no difference in the top-level talking points that both sides use when it comes to letting market forces determine the rates most Internet users pay for access.

But there are meaningful differences between the rate-setting power Congress granted the FCC in the laws on the books today—which are the same ones that Chairman Wheeler and the FCC have already chosen not to use—and the consumer-protection authority the newly proposed bill endangers. The FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order treats broadband like a communications service as Congress always intended—instead of treating it like a website for regulatory purposes. Contrary to the fibs and fabrications some lobbyists and lawmakers favor, this is exactly the right dividing line. The FCC has no business (and no authority for) regulating Internet content, but it does have a congressional mandate to ensure we have world-class broadband communications networks. The FCC’s reclassification of broadband provides a deregulatory, flexible and technology-neutral framework: it preserves absolutely essential principles, like the guarantees of universal, affordable, reasonable and nondiscriminatory telecommunications services. But the bill under consideration now endangers those very same principles. It doesn’t just take rate setting off the table, or cement in a new statute what the FCC has already decided to do by forbearing from Sections 203 and 205. It would prevent the FCC from assessing entire categories of unfair broadband-provider practices.

[Wood is the policy director for the Free Press Action Fund]

The Telecommunications Act was a watershed between the era of analog networks and the competition-enhancing, converged networks of the digital era. Its authors had a vision – the vision to enact flexible and sensible policies that would allow the bounteous effects of digital networks to benefit consumers by stimulating competition and innovation. But of course, neither the authors of the legislation – nor anyone – could have imagined the digital communications cornucopia that was to come.

The Telecom Act of 1996 was a kick in the pants that focused and accelerated trends that had been percolating in both Congressional and [Federal Communications Commission] policy debates. With the Telecom Act, Congress moved from percolating to a full boil the shift in policy to encourage competition rather than the previous micromanagement of scarcity. Then that boiling bucket was passed to [FCC Chairman] Reed Hundt and the FCC to implement; a prodigious lift that led to 84 implementation decisions in 18 months. Those of us today who operate in the shadow of the leaders who charted this new course have the incredible privilege of continuing what they started…. The Telecom Act recognized the importance of access to networks. The establishment of E-Rate connected America’s schools and libraries to the Internet. The creation of a Universal Service Fund to support access by those in high-cost areas as well as low-income Americans established as national policy that broadband connectivity must reach all Americans, regardless of location, means, or ability. And, of course, access to networks goes hand-in-hand with access on open, fast and fair networks.

[Commentary] Facebook board member Marc Andreessen recently tweeted, “Denying world's poorest free partial Internet connectivity when today they have none, for ideological reasons, strikes me as morally wrong.” This reaction was a surprise because it resorts to a moralistic line of argument rather than one that is based on data or any sort of empirical evidence. So what do the facts say?

Well, for starters, Free Basics is not some hypothetical proposal that can be judged only in theory — in India itself, it has been running for over a year! Given that Free Basics has already has a decent run, any argument that posits that it is beneficial in some meaningful manner should have been clearly demonstrable by now. Although India added 100 million Internet users in the last year, approximately 1 million use Facebook’s Free Basic. If Free Basics was even remotely the silver bullet that Marc and his acolytes claim it to be, it is difficult to dispute that this number should have already been higher by an order of magnitude. And the target audience of Free Basics was not India’s poorest who have never come online but far more so, students and millennials to whom the hook was about surfing for free.

[Sumanth Raghavendra is an entrepreneur at pitchdeck.io]

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, in which thousands of residents have been exposed to everything from cancer-causing chemicals to lead in their drinking water, dates back nearly two years. But the unfolding story had received scant coverage from the national media until recently, when Gov Rick Snyder (R-MI) declared a state of emergency for Flint. Why did it take so long for major national outlets to focus closely on the story, even as local outlets had been doggedly covering it for well over a year?

In interviews with Media Matters, media observers and the journalists who have been covering the story in Michigan cite a wide range of factors, including continued newsroom cutbacks, the complexities of a story that combines government mismanagement with detailed science, and competition from the presidential primary campaign, breaking news events, and click-bait like celebrity gossip.