Sen Tom Udall (D-NM) joined Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in his call for a floor vote on the renomination of Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to the Federal Communications Commission. Sen Udall called for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to call up her nomination. "I urge Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to keep his commitment to Democratic Leader Reid and quickly confirm Jessica Rosenworcel to the FCC.”
In a procedural move that bypasses committee consideration, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has put a broadband rate reg-blocking bill directly on to the Senate calendar for a potential floor vote. The House recently voted along party lines (Republicans for, Democrats against) to approve the No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act (HR 2666), sponsored by Rep Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), which would prevent the FCC from regulating the monthly rates of broadband service or potentially after-the-fact via its enforcement authority.
The Majority Leader McConnell move came on the floor April 21. It does not guarantee a vote anytime soon, though it could be brought up for a vote at Majority Leader McConnell's discretion. And even if it is approved, almost certainly on close to a straight party line given the partisan division over the bill, President Barack Obama has pledged to veto it. Democratic lawmakers say it would gut the Open Internet order and the FCC's authority over consumer protections that implicate rates.
The Senate Commerce Committee has scheduled a mark-up April 27 on a pair of Federal Communications Commission-related bills, including the first FCC reauthorization in a quarter century. Mark-ups are committee business meetings during which bills are debated, amended and usually voted. The FCC Reauthorization Act of 2016 (S 2644), essentially re-establishes the agency. Among other things, it sets salaries, expenditures on the FCC's move to a new building, commissioners' terms of service, and calls for a study of the FCC's regulatory fee structure. The second bill is Sen Dean Heller's (R-NV) Federal Communications Commission Process Reform Act of 2015 (S 421). Among many other things, that bill would require the FCC to conduct economic impact studies of regulations, set minimum comment periods as a general rule, provide for sufficient note and comment on ex parte communications, publish the status of open rulemakings, publish the language of a rule before it is voted, give commissioners "adequate" time to review items before they are asked to vote on them, and set deadlines for acting on license applications.
The American Cable Association says it thinks the Federal Communications Commission's new set-top box proposal is an illegal overreach of its authority and warns the commission not to proceed, but adds that if it does, it should only apply that illegal proposal to larger multichannel video programming distributors, not its smaller members. ACA did not promise to sue the FCC if it does exempt smaller MVPDs from the proposal, but signaled that was the likely outcome.
ACA SVP Ross Lieberman said he wanted to make it clear that the FCC should not adopt the proposal, period. But that if it does, it could still achieve the notice of proposal rulemaking's goals by applying the regulations only to larger MPVDs. He pointed out that those larger players serve 93% of pay TV subs, which is more than enough to make a new technology self sustaining, and that those players were historically the ones to roll out new devices. Asked whether ACA was saying it was OK with illegal regulations so long as they were applied to larger MPVDs, Lieberman said no. "We're saying the FCC should not adopt its proposal. But if the FCC moves forward with what we believe is an unlawful proposal, it should only apply the unlawful proposal to larger MVPDs." He added that he was sure the larger MVPDs would then take the FCC to court.
It took Comcast more than a hundred and fifty pages to tell the Federal Communications Commission everything it thought was wrong with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal to "unlock" multichannel video programming distributor set-top box info to third-party navigation devices. And that was a lot, including that it exceeds FCC authority, is illegal, will increase consumer costs, endangers content protection, jeopardizes security, facilitates piracy, weakens consumer privacy protections, and creates an unworkable standards-setting process. That came in Comcast’s expansive comments at the FCC. Even the summary is close to a dozen pages, but the takeaway is that the proposal will produce some of the most expansive MVPD regulations every proposed.
Rather than simply meting a statutory directive (Sec. 629 of the Telecommunications Act) to make sure navigation devices are commercially available, Comcast says, the FCC is forcing MVPDs to unbundle their service and "provide new Commission-mandated standardized Information Flows” for free to third parties so that the third parties can create their own separate, derivative services..." That, says Comcast, runs counter to the plain language of that statute, as well as prior court and FCC interpretations and the legislative history. That plain language and history, says Comcast, is that Congress wanted to promote the availability or retail equipment to access an MVPD's services over the MVPD's network.
Commenters flooded the Federal Communications Commission April 22, the deadline for initial input on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal to "unlock" multichannel video programming distributor set-top box info and share it with third-party navigation devices. "No demonstrable market problem exists to justify the kind of intrusive tech mandates proposed by the Commission," said the Free State Foundation. "And it highly doubtful that any conceivable benefit could outweigh the heavy costs that the Commission now ignores - costs which will initially be paid by MVPDs or program content owners, but will ultimately be paid by consumers. The Commission performed no cost-benefit analysis of its proposal prior to its Notice. Nor did it even seek input to conduct such an analysis." Agreeing that it was an unnecessary and counterproductive government attempt to enforce tech policy on an innovative space was California tech advocacy group CALinnovates.
The Writers Guild of America, West, weighed in strongly for the proposal. “For independent content creators, this translates into a great opportunity to reach our potential audiences because it will allow viewers to access the content of their choice – digital or traditional – from a single device that they own," the union said.
Regardless of which candidate wins the White House, Facebook will emerge as one of the big winners of the 2016 political season. Analysts project $1.1 billion in political ad revenue will to flow to digital platforms in this election cycle — quadruple the spending from the 2012 elections. Facebook and Google likely will scoop up as much as 85 percent of that revenue, with Twitter a distant third, according to Citi Research’s estimates.
Facebook has been preparing for this moment for a while, increasing the size of its government and politics team since the last presidential election and rolling out new features designed to aid political campaigns. The social network stands to reap anywhere from $300 million to $550 million, Citi estimates. (That may seem like a big number, but it’s just 2 percent of Facebook’s projected 2016 revenues.) We took a closer look at why political action committees and campaigns might find Facebook appealing, beyond the obvious: Its massive reach. For the record, 198 million Americans month use Facebook every month — more than the total number of registered voters in the US.
A tech sector initiative to secure Internet browsing for the entire web now covers millions of websites. The campaign, Let’s Encrypt, offers encryption certificates to websites, free of charge. As of April 21, Let’s Encrypt had issued two million certificates. Each certificate protects multiple websites. That’s “millions and millions of sites” now securing internet traffic, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights advocate behind Let’s Encrypt.
“This rapid adoption has already made Let's Encrypt one of the world's largest public certificate authorities by number of certificates issued,” EFF said.
A cross-section of the tech industry is backing the effort. The EFF, Firefox manufacturer Mozilla and researchers at the University of Michigan co-founded the project. Tech giant Cisco Systems and cloud services company Akamai then came on as founding co-sponsors. After the launch, Silicon Valley bigwigs such as Google and Facebook also joined as sponsors. Since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed a variety of US surveillance programs, Internet companies have worked to boost their security by implementing HTTPS, an encrypted version of basic HTTP, which is how all data moves around the Internet. While several prominent services, including major social networks and banking websites, now encrypt their traffic by default, the vast majority of websites do not. The EFF said “almost all” of Let’s Encrypt certificates are going to these websites that had “never supported” HTTPS.
The ultimate goal of Google Fiber remains a mysterious one. Does it plan to create a long-term, sustainable and profitable business, or is the plan to help to establish a workable game plan for municipal providers while also prodding other Internet service providers to accelerate their move to speeds of 1 Gbps and beyond?
Ruth Porat, the CFO of Alphabet, Google’s new parent company, offered some additional color on yesterday’s earnings call. “Like all of our access efforts, we’re really focused,” she said. “And our vision here is to create abundant and ubiquitous networks. We think there's a lot of opportunity to improve the experience that users have, and that's where the Fiber team is focused.”
[Commentary] The acceleration of technological changes in how the private sector delivers goods and services has raised expectations among citizens that government agencies can do the same – or even find ways to do better. In order to meet these expectations, it has become clear that government agencies must adapt to a cultural shift. They must adopt a new citizen engagement strategy involving technology, policy, programs, best practices, intra/interagency collaboration, customer-friendly interactions and mechanisms for feedback on service delivery. When it comes to improving customer experience, the federal government is finally paying attention.
For instance, there is a provision included in the fiscal 2016 spending bill directing the Office of Management and Budget to report on agencies’ progress in developing customer service standards and incorporating them into performance plans Even before this congressional nudge, federal agencies were taking steps to address citizen customer service. OMB is developing a customer service playbook that should be made public in 2016. The playbook could help create general standards to be applied across agencies, allowing for better and more universal interpretation of performance data in digital government. In addition, the General Services Administration has created 18F, an in-house “civic consultancy,” whose mission is to improve the public’s experience with government through technological innovation for a digital government.
[Teresa A. Weipert is executive vice president and general manager, Sutherland Government Solutions.]
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