Joshua Bleiberg

In 2012, 70 percent of schools lacked internet connections fast enough to support basic administrative and instructional needs (100 kilobytes per person), but now only 1.6 percent of school districts fail to meet that low bar. Despite this progress, the Federal Communications Commission is considering changes to the E-Rate program, which subsidizes internet access in schools across the country. The proposal would cap spending and potentially decrease the funding available to schools.

The underappreciated but critically important E-Rate program faces a fork in the road in 2017. Created during the Clinton administration, E-Rate originally intended to make it easier for schools to purchase dial-up internet connections. However, the program languished for many years while internet and education technologies improved by leaps and bounds. In 2014, the Obama administration revamped the program by nearly doubling the available funding and incentivizing the adoption of 21st-century technologies. The funding mechanism and presumably better E-Rate results portend a positive year for the program, though political uncertainty under a new administration signals there may be some rough waters ahead.

E-Rate does not receive funding from the standard congressional appropriations process. A 1996 law requires telecommunication companies to contribute to the Universal Services Fund, which in turn provides the funding for E-Rate and other programs. Overall, this arrangement is equivalent to a tax, but it’s insulated from the tumult of the congressional budgeting process. The unique funding mechanism decreases the likelihood that E-Rate would attract negative attention from congressional Republicans. However, the new Republican leadership at the Federal Communications Commission could choose to cut spending. Returning E-Rate funding to pre-Obama reform levels, but keeping most of the modernization reforms, would be compatible with the position of new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican. Pai has explained that his 2014 vote against the Obama E-Rate reforms was due to concerns about financial waste in the program rather than questioning the overall usefulness of the program.

[Commentary] In their recent paper “Databuse and a Trusteeship Model of Consumer Protection in the Big Data Era”, Benjamin Wittes and Wells Bennett argue we need to reconceptualize privacy.

Privacy has morphed into a notion that could describe a range of beliefs and precisely but captures none of the potential harms. Consumers care about privacy, “in proportion to whether it is used for our benefit or to our detriment and critically, how seriously to our detriment.”

The authors invoke the concept of databause. Databuse is a negative right that invokes companies to safeguard consumers from undesired harms that might result from the sharing of data. They argue for a trusteeship model where companies are responsible to serve as good stewards of the data consumers entrust to them.

The authors identify several attributes of a good data trustee:
Safely store private data
Never use data in a way that injures consumers
Disclose uses of data in an open and clear manner
To the greatest degree possible give users control over how their data is shared and used
Keep promises to consumers about data

[Commentary] In May, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) generated controversy with its ruling on privacy. The case involved a Spanish man’s grievance with Google over a search result for his name that linked to information outlining a 15-year-old bankruptcy proceeding. The ECJ ruled that Google, and other search engines, should be required to remove the information that is deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed”.

The ECJ held search engines responsible for the results delivered to its users. This ruling suggests that search engines can affect the reputation of an individual person, as opposed to functioning as a tool that enables users to access information across the Internet.

The ECJ acknowledges that this ruling will not deter potentially damaging information from being discoverable since the information will still exist on the Internet even if a search engine can’t link directly to the result. Would this type of ruling ever occur in the United States? It’s difficult to imagine a ruling like this to come from an American court, for the following reasons:

• One: Given the First Amendment, it would be difficult to justify limits on publication of digital material.
• Two: The United States and Europe have fundamentally different approaches to protecting privacy. In his recent paper Cameron Kerry describes the political and legal differences between the EU and the US.

Streaming video sites like Netflix and YouTube account for more than half of downstream Internet traffic. These tectonic shifts require new infrastructure investments to ensure quality and consistent delivery.

These changes also create opportunities for consumers across the economy in healthcare, education, and entertainment. The speed at which Internet services are evolving presents challenges for government regulators tasked with ensuring access to disadvantaged populations. It also strains a national broadband system that faces steep demands for faster Internet from consumers.

On May 2, 2014 the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings will host a panel of industry experts to address the future of digital content delivery in the United States, including a conversation on how the explosion of video streaming is changing how we consume content. Darrell West, Vice President of Governance Studies and Founding Director of the Center for Technology Innovation will lead a discussion on his findings and data from the forthcoming paper “Video Streaming and Content Delivery”.

Imagine a mobile application where you can share messages and photos with other users, but without an Internet connection.

These applications take advantage of mesh networking. In a mesh network devices use Bluetooth peer-to-peer connections and Wi-Fi networks to communicate “off the grid“.

Engineers originally developed the technology for the military. Over the years small scale projects have found varying levels of success but few have broken through to the mainstream.

The newest version of iOS has incorporated mesh networks into its operating system, which allows developers to create applications that take advantage of this technology without having to reinvent the wheel. Beyond messaging applications, mesh networks have the potential to make hard-wired Internet devices obsolete.

Mesh networking has a number of policy implications. Here are a few that TechTank will look out for in the future:

1. Natural Disasters
2. Promoting Democracy and Activism
3. Expanding Connectivity Benefits to Rural Areas

In 2014, the number of cellphones is expected to exceed the worldwide population. The usage of mobile devices has increased rapidly over the past several years.

Recently Cisco released their updated Visual Networking Index (VNI) survey, which includes data on the volume of mobile traffic. The Cisco VNI survey uses analyst projections, Cisco forecasts, and direct data collection. This forecast predicts that an even larger number of mobile phone subscribers will use more data than in previous years. Global usage is expected to increase exponentially.

Cisco predicts that worldwide monthly usage will reach 15.9 exabytes per month by 2018. 2013’s forecast predicted 1.6 exabytes per month missing by only 0.1 exabytes. They predict a future Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 61 percent. The estimated CAGR from the previous year was 66 percent. Despite this slow down increased numbers of subscriptions, usage of 4G devices, and higher numbers of people using bandwidth intensive applications like streaming video will drive up the volume of mobile data.

The United States held its position as the leader in mobile traffic and is projected to remain in that position until at least 2018. Currently the United States accounts for 24 percent of global mobile traffic. By 2018 that number is expected to decline to 17 percent. In 2018, the United States, China, India, Japan, and Korea are estimated to use the largest volumes of mobile data. By 2018 those five countries are predicted to use about half of all mobile traffic. The United States ranks near the bottom of the 25 countries for which data is available with a CAGR of 0.5.

Healthcare costs continue to rise in both China and the United States as procedures become more expensive and longer life expectancies leave a large portion of the population dependent on government healthcare.

At the same time, cellphone use and penetration are also growing in both countries; China and the US rank among the countries with the highest number of mobile phones per capita. With the proliferation of mobile technology, the mobile health industry presents many opportunities for improving healthcare globally.

mHealth technology can lower the price of health care, increase administrative efficiency, monitor and guide patient health, and help policy makers gather data on healthcare. However, there are many barriers preventing mHealth from reaching its full potential. How can we use mHealth to solve pressing healthcare concerns?

On March 13, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings will host an event to discuss mobile health in China and the United States.

[Commentary] To get actionable results, Big Data analytics designers must develop a theory of how students learn and map which data points allow for inferences about those skills.

Standards make big data analytics work because they support the creation of more rigorous models of student learning and enable larger big data systems. Improving efficiency also lowers barriers to entry which encourages greater competition and frees up analytics designers to innovate. Standards can serve as the base of such a model because they consist of skills and the appropriate sequence for acquiring those competencies.

[March 7]