August 2017

Broadband for America – whose members include AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter, CTIA – The Wireless Association, Comcast, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), and USTelecom Association, representing ISPS opposed to Title II -- is telling the Federal Communications Commission that a study it commissioned found that – surprise! -- 69.9 percent (8,595,090) of the comments in the FCC network neutrality docket that were not either fake or unverifiable international comments favored repealing Title II classification, while only 29.5 percent (3,622,188) were against repeal.

The study was conducted by data analytics company Emprata. CEO Paul Salasznyk said that the study was "conducted in an independent fashion, forming our own conclusions using the publicly available data." The study found that of the 21.766 million comments assessed, more than 20.684 million "appear to be artificial, international filings, form letters, and duplicative submissions."

Emprata says more than 90 percent of the record-breaking 21 million comments are essentially pre-written form letters. The FCC received about 13 million comments that support the current net neutrality protections, according to the Emprata report, and it received about 8.6 million comments in support of Pai’s push for repeal. Once the form letters drafted by supporters and opponents are removed, the FCC more likely received about 1.7 million unique comments defending net neutrality rules, and about 24,000 unique comments backing Pai’s push to scrap them. In the eyes of net neutrality advocates, that might be something of a win. To be sure, these groups take great offense to the “form letter” label, arguing that it’s perfectly reasonable for web users to click a button and send a petition to their regulators — as millions seem to have done. Even if these comments are subtracted from the total, however, the data shows that Pai’s plan might be more popular with internet providers than with the masses.

In the hours after European antitrust regulators levied a record $2.7 billion fine against Google in late June, an influential Washington think tank learned what can happen when a tech giant that shapes public policy debates with its enormous wealth is criticized.

The New America Foundation has received more than $21 million from Google; its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt; and his family’s foundation since the think tank’s founding in 1999. That money helped to establish New America as an elite voice in policy debates on the American left. But not long after one of New America’s scholars posted a statement on the think tank’s website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google, Schmidt, who had chaired New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar. The statement disappeared from New America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later. But word of Schmidt’s displeasure rippled through New America, which employs more than 200 people, including dozens of researchers, writers and scholars, most of whom work in sleek Washington offices where the main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab.” The episode left some people concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors.

Those worries seemed to be substantiated a couple of days later, when Slaughter summoned the scholar who wrote the critical statement, Barry Lynn, to her office. He ran a New America initiative called Open Markets that has led a growing chorus of liberal criticism of the market dominance of telecom and tech giants, including Google, which is now part of a larger corporate entity known as Alphabet, for which Schmidt serves as executive chairman. Slaughter told Lynn that “the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways,” according to an email from Slaughter to Lynn. The email suggested that the entire Open Markets team — nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows — would be exiled from New America.

How fast is a broadband internet connection?

That question is at the heart of a controversy at the Federal Communications Commission. After a study about connection speeds in the US, the FCC decided that too few people had access to high speed internet. But that conclusion never sat right with the commission's Republicans, who argued that the agency set too high a bar in deciding what counts as broadband. Now that the GOP is in the majority at the agency, the FCC is considering new guidelines for gauging the availability and competitiveness of high speed internet. There's no specific proposal yet, but based on their past statements there's a good chance those same commissioners will vote to lower it. That could affect how much funding is available to expand broadband networks into rural or low income areas.

The issue hasn't received as much attention as the debate over net neutrality, but Roberto Gallardo , a researcher at Purdue University's Center for Regional Development, worries that lower standards would reduce the motivation of broadband providers to expand service into rural communities, which already lag behind urban areas in both speed and availability of high speed internet.

If the FCC decides that rural areas and poor neighborhoods have adequate coverage, future funding for internet infrastructure upgrades could receive short shrift, says Harold Feld, a senior vice president of the digital-rights advocacy group Public Knowledge.