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  2. September 2017

September 2017

Chairman Pai Announces New Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee Chair and New Member

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has made two appointments to the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC). First, Chairman Pai has appointed BDAC member Elizabeth Bowles to serve as Chair of the BDAC. Bowles is President and Chairman of the Board of Aristotle, Inc., an Arkansas-based wireless Internet service provider. In addition, the Chairman has appointed Larry Hanson, a member of the BDAC’s Model Code for Municipalities working group, to serve on the BDAC. Hanson represents the City of Valdosta (GA) where he is city manager.

Announcing Appointment of 6 Additional members to FCC's Consumer Advisory Committee

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai hereby appoints six additional members to the Consumer Advisory Committee for a term beginning September 1, 2017, and ending October 21, 2018, or, when the Committee terminates, whichever is earlier:
Consumer Technology Association – Julie Kearney (primary representative)
Digital Policy Institute – Barry Umansky (primary representative)
Kyle J. Hildebrand – (serving individually as a subject-matter expert, Special Government Employee)
T-Mobile – Luisa Lancetti (primary representative)
William Rinehart – (serving individually as a subject-matter expert, Special Government Employee)
Wireless Internet Service Providers Association – Alex Phillips (primary representative)

The Nation issues editor’s note on story questioning whether the DNC was hacked

After an extensive review, the Nation has issued an editor’s note concerning an Aug 9 article that raised questions regarding a consensus finding of the U.S. intelligence community that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was hacked by Russian actors seeking to tilt the playing field in the 2016 presidential election.

“Former NSA experts say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system,” reads the subhead on the story, which was written by Patrick Lawrence, a contributing writer for the magazine. In her note to readers, which now sits atop the Lawrence piece, Nation Editor and Publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel writes, “We believe it is important to challenge questionable conventional wisdom and to foster debate—not police it. Focusing on unreported or inadequately reported issues of major importance and raising questions that are not being asked have always been a central part of our work.”

Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force Announces Webinar to Discuss Proposals put Forth in the Connect America Fund Phase II Auction Comment Public Notice

On August 4, 2017, the Commission released the Connect America Fund Phase II (CAF II) Auction Comment Public Notice, seeking comment on detailed proposals for conducting the Phase II reverse auction designated as Auction 903. While many of the pre-auction and bidding procedures and processes proposed for this auction are similar to those used in other Commission auctions, the proposals include some new procedures and processes. To facilitate public input on the proposals, the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force announces that the Wireless Telecommunications and Wireline Competition Bureaus will host a webinar about the proposed auction process on September 11, 2017, from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET.

Unions Unite Against Sinclair/Tribune

Various unions have lined up against the Sinclair/Tribune merger, concerned, among other things, that the meld's synergies will mean job losses. Asking the Federal Communications Commission to deny the $3.9 billion merger were the Communications Workers of America, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians and The News Guild.

"A merger between Sinclair and Tribune would reduce viewpoint diversity and competition, harm localism, and reduce jobs," the unions told the FCC in asking it to deny the application for license transfers. "Sinclair has been a leader in joint service and shared service agreements," they told the FCC. "These agreements result in fewer stations producing news, less time devoted to local news, and also fewer broadcast station employees and journalists. The primary cost-saving in these models is the reduction of employees through the elimination of locally-originated programming at one or more of the affected stations by duplicating (or triplicating) the same programming."

Alphabet Wraps Up Reorganization With a New Company Called XXVI

Alphabet Inc. is forming a new holding company designed to finalize its evolution from Google, the web search giant, into a corporate parent with distinct arms in far-flung fields like health care and self-driving cars. The new entity, called XXVI Holdings Inc., will own the equity of each Alphabet company, including Google.

The new structure legally separates Google from other units such as Waymo, its self-driving car business, and Verily, a medical device and health data firm. Google co-founder Larry Page announced Alphabet two years ago to foster new businesses that operate independently from Google. Technically, however, those units, called the "Other Bets," were still subsidiaries of Google. The new structure, unveiled Sept 1, enables the Other Bets to become subsidiaries of Alphabet on the same legal footing as Google. Google is also changing from a corporation to a limited liability company, or LLC. This won’t alter the way the business pays taxes, Johnson said. The switch is partly related to Google’s transformation from a listed public company into a business owned by a holding company.

The Monopolies that No One Is Talking About

Leaving aside the discussion for a minute on whether tech platforms like Google and Amazon actually might meet the definition of a monopoly under our nation’s antitrust laws (a precise and economically rigorous definition usually left to the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, or the federal (and sometimes state) court system), we seem to have forgotten about an important part of the digital ecosystem and whether it has a monopoly problem. It’s the one that’s hiding in plain sight and the evidence is in your mailbox (or inbox) every month when you get your cable bill.

Why does is matter if cable internet service providers have market power? When companies monopolize they may hurt consumers because they no longer have the incentives to compete on price or service, with the unsurprising result that even while profits for companies increase consumer satisfaction plummets and prices continue to rise.

The Guardian view on Google: overweening power

[Commentary] Neither Google, nor Eric Schmidt, told New America to fire Barry Lynn or his colleagues. They did not have to. Academics fill an intellectual gap that regulators often don’t have time to fill themselves. They supply the knowledge that politicians either don’t possess, or have no time to ponder. Whether it’s because the whole system is increasingly marketised and reliant on corporate funding, or just that big corporates have switched on to this as a way to pursue their agenda, the pressure on experts to alter their testimony to serve the interests of business is only going to increase.

Silicon Valley is subtler, too. If you control the research that happens, you change the entire tack of the conversation. Furthermore, you change the perception of reality itself. If the academics arguing that modern platform monopolies cause damage to the competitive landscape are drowned out by hundreds more funded by technology firms arguing that everything is fine, they look like a lunatic fringe no matter how strong their arguments.

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