Allan Holmes

Facebook's lobbying influence — along with Mark Zuckerberg’s expected mea culpa — may be enough, privacy experts say, to blunt any talk of significant consumer privacy regulations meant to reign in Facebook and other tech giants, regardless of the angry bluster Zuckerberg endures on Capitol Hill both April 10 and 11. “I think it will be really interesting whether Republicans give Facebook a pass given Zuckerberg’s prostrate apology stance — ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Many local officials, engineers and wireless consultants contend that changes Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai advocates to limit local regulation of small-cell permitting, design, fees and other charges used to access cities’ public rights of way won’t do anything to close the digital divide.

Many people are worked up over so-called small cells, the next generation of wireless technology that telecommunications firms and cell-tower builders want to place on streetlights and utility poles throughout neighborhoods nationwide. The small cells come with a host of equipment, including antennas, power supplies, electric meters, switches, cabling and boxes often strapped to the sides of poles. Some may have refrigerator-sized containers on the ground. And they will be placed about every 500 or so feet along residential streets and throughout business districts.

In recent years, internet firms and their trade associations have spent lavishly to become some of the most powerful influencers in Washington, shaping a range of policies that extend from immigration to privacy to taxes. And that may be difficult to change.

Companies such as Alphabet Inc. (Google’s parent), Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and their trade groups such as the Internet Association spent $50.9 million on lobbying in 2015, more than four times what they spent in 2009, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public Integrity. Campaign contributions from these technology companies, many less than 10 years old, quintupled between 2009 and 2016. The investments reflect lessons sometimes painfully learned. Just a few years ago, America’s technology companies held a bemused disdain for Washington, which they saw as an anachronism in the emerging digital culture. But times have changed, and so have the stakes— as digital devices and apps have advanced to collect more of consumers’ personal information. So internet companies have turned their sights and pocketbooks on Congress and additionally have involved themselves on boards and committees that inform the agencies writing oversight rules.

AT&T executives say their purchase of Time Warner should yield a lot of “positives” for customers, including more content, better wireless access to programming and an attractive alternative to cable. But what the deal most likely won’t bring about is a cheaper price for television — and it just may increase the price for in-home internet, according to experts who track the media industry.

AT&T wants to marry its internet and wireless operations with Time Warner’s media businesses, which include HBO, CNN, Turner Broadcasting System and movie studio Warner Bros. AT&T said that the deal would provide “significant financial benefits,” including revenue and earnings growth, lower capital costs and savings of $1 billion within the first three years. Nowhere in the announcement did AT&T specifically mention how the proposed transaction could lower costs for consumers. The reason executives don’t argue that mergers will result in lower prices is because it doesn’t happen, said Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press. In fact, prices may very well go up.

When noncable internet providers — outlets like AT&T or Verizon — choose which communities to offer the fastest connections, they don’t juice up their networks so everyone in their service areas has the option of buying quicker speeds. Instead, they tend to favor the wealthy over the poor, according to an investigation by the Center of Public Integrity.

The Center’s data analysis found that the largest noncable internet providers collectively offer faster speeds to about 40 percent of the population they serve nationwide in wealthy areas compared with just 22 percent of the population in poor areas. That leaves tens of millions of Americans with the choice of either purchasing an expensive connection from the only provider in their area, typically a cable company, or just doing the best they can with slower speeds. Middle-income areas don’t fare much better, with a bit more than 27 percent of the population having access to a DSL provider’s fastest speeds. The Center reached its conclusions by merging the latest Federal Communications Commission data with income information from the U.S. Census Bureau.

City officials in Chattanooga (TN), petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to pre-empt a Tennessee law that bans the city from expanding its high-speed Internet network.

The Electric Power Board, which runs the network, has received requests to expand its broadband service to nearby communities, said Danna Bailey, the board’s vice president of corporate communications.

A state law passed in 1999, however, prohibits Chattanooga from offering Internet service beyond the area where it provides electric power. This restriction “frustrates” the intent of Congress, which is to ensure that every American has access to broadband, the petition said. The city asked the FCC to “pre-empt and declare unenforceable” the portion of the state law that prohibits the EPB’s broadband service from being offered outside its service area.

Chattanooga (TN) officials plan to ask the federal government to allow it to expand the super-fast Internet service it offers city residents, a move that will likely unleash a torrent of lobbying and lawsuits by telecommunications companies that have spent years convincing states to curb city-run networks.

The city’s Electric Power Board, which operates a fiber-optic Internet service that competes with companies such as Comcast and Charter Communications, will petition the Federal Communications Commission in the next couple of months to pre-empt the Tennessee law that prohibits the city from expanding the network, Danna Bailey, vice president of corporate communications for the EPB, said.

“We continue to receive requests for broadband service from nearby communities to serve them,” Bailey said. “We believe cities and counties should have the right to choose the infrastructure they need to support their economies.” The move by Chattanooga will be a first salvo in an effort by municipalities and the FCC to reverse the laws in 20 states that ban or severely restrict local governments from offering Internet service to residents.

[Commentary] Sprint Corp and T-Mobile USA, which only weeks ago were arguing that the government should increase competition in the wireless market by allocating new airwaves to smaller companies like them, are switching sides and looking to join the giants through a merger.

Sprint’s plan to buy T-Mobile for $32 billion is aimed at making the combined company a more formidable competitor to giants Verizon Communications and AT&T, which together claim 68 percent of US wireless subscribers, respectively. The purchase of T-Mobile would almost double Sprint’s market share to about 30 percent.

Just recently, T-Mobile and Sprint succeeded in convincing the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that smaller wireless companies had a shot a buying valuable new wireless airwaves by limiting how much Verizon and AT&T can buy at an auction in 2015. Now the rules that Sprint and T-Mobile fought for may come back to hurt them.

Adding T-Mobile’s spectrum holdings with Sprint’s may put the combined company over the limit that bars it from bidding on the reserved portion of spectrum, which comprises prime frequencies that can travel long distances and penetrate buildings. The Sprint purchase of T-Mobile “certainly would impact the combined company's ability to bid,” Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, an advocacy group in Washington, DC, that supports the spectrum limits, said. Jeff Silva, an independent telecommunications analyst in Washington, DC, agreed that the merger could make Sprint too big to bid on the reserved frequencies. “That means they won’t get as much spectrum,” he said.

The purchase would also eliminate T-Mobile, the one company that has put pressure on carriers to lower prices. In the last year T-Mobile has cut prices, eliminated two-year contracts and roaming charges, and offered to pay early termination fees for customers who switch from a competitor. Since the company began offering the promotions in the second quarter of 2013, the number of its subscribers increased 11 percent to 49 million compared with a 3.2 percent growth to 122 million for Verizon and a 7.5 percent increase to 116 million for AT&T during the same period, according to data compiled by Strategy Analytics, a technology consulting firm.

Comcast offered Internet Essentials shortly before its last big acquisition, when it bought NBC Universal in 2011.

To ease federal approvals of the transaction, the company promised that it would offer low-priced Internet connections and computers to low-income families. But the Federal Communications Commission, which approved the merger, didn’t set any participation requirements, or metrics to define success.

Now the cable and broadband giant, wants to buy Time Warner Cable, and again in an attempt to show regulators the deal is in the public interest, is offering to extend the program indefinitely and offer it to all Time Warner's customers too. The deal, if approved, will give Comcast control of about 40 percent of US Internet users.

The program makes for good public relations, but its real impact on the persistent problem of low-broadband adoption rates among the poor is negligible and is a weak substitute for a national strategy, advocates say. Of the 7.2 million low-income people in Comcast’s service area, only 2.6 million are eligible for Internet Essentials, according to data compiled by the Center for Public Integrity.

The program requires the participant’s household to include a child who is eligible for the federal school lunch program. Of that 2.6 million, only 300,000, or 12 percent, have signed up since Internet Essentials was launched in 2011. The low participation rate suggests that relying on merger conditions to make private companies provide what has become an essential tool to participate in society may not be the best approach to bridge the digital divide.