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  2. July 2016

July 2016

NTIA Seeks Input on Community Connectivity Initiative Self-Assessment Tool

The Department of Commerce, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, invites the general public and other federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on the proposed framework for the community connectivity self-assessment tool. This framework is an element of the Community Connectivity Initiative, which is one of the commitments of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) through its work with the Broadband Opportunity Council, which President Barack Obama established to review actions the federal government could take to reduce regulatory barriers to broadband deployment, competition, investment, and adoption.

The Community Connectivity Initiative will support communities across the country with tools to help accelerate local broadband planning and deployment efforts. The community connectivity self-assessment tool will provide a framework of benchmarks and indicators on broadband access, adoption, policy and use, helping community leaders identify critical broadband needs and connect them with expertise and resources. Written comments must be submitted on or before August 29, 2016.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Thune puts heat on FCC Chairman Wheeler over press leaks

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) took to the floor to amplify his questions about whether Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler authorized a March leak about the commission’s activities. In March, a source told Politico that a deal had been reached between two Republican commissioners of the agency and Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn on reforms to the Lifeline subsidy program. The report prompted supporters of Wheeler's proposed reforms to lobby Commissioner Clyburn to forsake the deal. Chairman Thune used a portion of a floor speech to hit Chairman Wheeler for not directly answering whether he had personally authorized that leak.

“Now since Mr. Wheeler could have just said no if he did not actually authorize the leak of non-public information, that leaves only two possible conclusions,” Chairman Thune said. “One, that Chairman Wheeler did authorize the leak but is not confident in his roundabout interpretation of the rules and fears admitting to violating them. Or, second, Chairman Wheeler simply does not respect the legitimate role of Congressional oversight and believes and he is unaccountable to the American people.”

4 ways Clinton tech plan would destroy US tech leadership

[Commentary] There is much to worry about in Hillary Clinton’s technology and innovation agenda as it provides a blueprint for diminishing US leadership in tech. Here are some of the features that may sound like they promote technology and innovation, but in reality drain value from customers and industry. The Clinton plan:

  • Expands handouts to political allies: It will subsidize computer science teachers, provide grants to government schools for STEM education, subsidize more job training programs, fund business incubators, continue the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), and create a $25 billion Infrastructure Bank.
  • Increases government role in broadband: The plan will expand subsidies from the federal government to cities, regions, and states to invest in dark fiber, broadband in recreation centers and transportation centers, and free public WiFi. Of course these programs will be wrought with political favoritism and waste.
  • Makes empty promises of less regulation: The plan says that “localities may seek” (emphasis added) to streamline permitting processes, develop infrastructure maps and pursue “dig once” policies. It also says that Clinton would “challenge state and local governments to identify, review, and reform” barriers to new infrastructure competitors.
  • Promises an open Internet, but delivers a closing one: The plan supports the Obama administration’s efforts to hand over Internet governance to an entity where governments may be the most powerful stakeholders. It also strongly endorses net neutrality, which continues to grow into the major barrier to customers getting the Internet services they want.

[Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida and serves as its director of telecommunications studies]

Why treating the Internet as a public utility is bad for consumers

[Commentary] Open Internet advocates celebrated long and loud in June when a federal court upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s “net neutrality” rules that prohibit broadband-access providers from blocking websites or accepting payment to prioritize traffic. But consumers and businesses should look beneath the rhetoric to see larger dangers lurking in the FCC’s actions. The new limits and the uncertainty over how the agency will interpret them could seriously constrain future evolution of the Internet. But the bigger danger comes less in the rules themselves than in how the FCC finally got them past the courts.

To overcome explicit congressional limits on Internet regulation, and at the insistence of the White House, the FCC began this time by “reclassifying” broadband access as a public utility. The commercial Internet has become crucial in virtually everything from business and employment to civic engagement and social interaction. But there is a world of difference between essential services and public utilities. Food, clothing and shelter are also essential, yet none of them are regulated as public utilities. That legal designation, codified in the late 19th-century Progressive Era, has always been limited to a small class of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, gas and water, which shared unique economic features, including a need for universal availability and extremely high financial barriers for potential competitors. For the Internet, regulation as a public utility represents a dangerously poor fit.

[Downes is a project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy]

Is Facebook ready for live video’s important role in police accountability?

Facebook hoped that the raw immediacy of live-streaming might help coax its users to share more about their personal lives. On July 6, a woman in the passenger seat of the car where Philando Castile lay dying, shot in the arm by a Minnesota cop during a traffic stop, used Facebook Live to show the world the shooting’s gory aftermath.

hen Facebook introduced Facebook Live, it was likely anticipating safe viral moments like Chewbacca Mom or the Buzzfeed watermelon explosion. Instead, Facebook found that livestreaming is a lot more than that. Like real life, livestreaming can have a light side and a dark side. It also has a long history of use as a powerful medium for accountability. This is what Diamond Reynolds did on July 6. Reynolds’s video disappeared from Facebook the night of July 6, before reappearing with a warning that it showed “graphic” imagery. Facebook later said that the video was temporarily taken down because of a “technical glitch” without explaining further. But the sudden loss of access raises questions about whether Facebook is ready to judge which raw, visceral moments that its users broadcast may stay on the site, and which will go. As Facebook’s users continue to stream their varieties of experience through Live, the company is going to have to make decisions about which of these the world can – or can’t – see, particularly when those experiences contain both graphic imagery and vitally important information. Reynolds’s stream is an example of this, and of its power: it transformed how the story of Castile’s death – and her grieving of his death – is told. Her perspective from inside that car became that of her viewers, and she relied on no one else to tell it.

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