Lauren Frayer

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the March Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, March 23, 2017. Continuing the Chairman’s pilot program, the FCC is publicly releasing the draft text of all six matters that are expected to be considered at the March Open Meeting, along with one-pagers describing each of these items in greater detail.

1. Advanced Methods to Target and Eliminate Unlawful Robocalls – The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Notice of Inquiry that would enable voice service providers to better protect subscribers from illegal and fraudulent robocalls. (CG Docket No. 17-59)
2. Promoting Technological Solutions to Combat Contraband Wireless Device Use in Correctional Facilities – The Commission will consider a Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would adopt rules to facilitate the deployment of technologies used to combat contraband wireless devices in correctional facilities, while seeking comment on additional proposals and solutions. (GN Docket No. 13-111)
3. Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Video Relay Service – The Commission will consider a Report and Order, Notice of Inquiry, Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and Order that would enhance service quality and propose a new provider compensation plan for video relay services. (CG Docket Nos. 10-51 and 03-123)
4. Cellular Service Reform – The Commission will consider a Second Report and Order, Report and Order, and Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would facilitate mobile broadband deployment, including LTE, promote greater spectrum efficiency, and reduce regulatory burdens and costs. (WT Docket Nos. 12-40, 10-112, 16-138)
5. Part 43 Reporting Requirements for U.S. Providers of International Services – The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that proposes to (1) eliminate the Traffic and Revenue Reports and (2) streamline the Circuit Capacity Reports. (IB Docket Nos. 17-55 and 16-131)
6. Channel Sharing by Stations Outside the Broadcast Television Spectrum Incentive Auction Context – The Commission will consider a Report and Order that would authorize channel sharing outside the context of the incentive auction and thus permit stations with auction-related channel sharing agreements to continue to operate if their auction-related agreements expire or otherwise terminate. (GN Docket No. 12-268; MB Docket No. 03-185; MB Docket No. 15-137).

The Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau seeks comment on a request for reconsideration by Free Press, 18MillionRising.org, AFL-CIO, American Library Association, Appalshop, Inc., Asian Americans Advancing Justice - AAJC, Center for Media Justice, Center for Rural Strategies, Color of Change, Common Cause, Common Sense Kids Action, Communications Workers of America, Fight for the Future, FOOTPRINTS INC, Generation Justice, Global Action Project, human-IT, Inclusive Technologies, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Media Mobilizing Project, MetroEast Community Media, Mobile Beacon, Monterey County Office of Education, NAACP, National Consumer Law Center, National Digital Inclusion Alliance, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Native Public Media, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Open MIC, Partners Bridging the Digital Divide, Public Knowledge, SPNN, The Benton Foundation, The Greenlining Institute, United Church of Christ, OC Inc., and WinstonNet, Inc. of the Bureau’s reconsideration of the Lifeline Broadband Provider designations.

Comments are due March 16, 2017. Reply Comments are due March 23, 2017.

(WC Docket Nos. 09-197, 11-42)

Today’s action by the Wireline Competition Bureau is a welcome step in the right direction. We strongly urge the Commission to move forward with implementing the modernization of the Lifeline program so that our nation’s most vulnerable are connected to the opportunities made possible by broadband. Every day that the FCC delays in implementing Lifeline is another day veterans, rural students, people with disabilities, and other low-income people are left waiting in the digital desert.

[Commentary] Unfortunately, current Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has announced his intention to take a "weed whacker" to network neutrality rules and to the legal authority on which they are based. He said, "I favor net neutrality, but I oppose Title II." This should fool no one — there's no net neutrality without clear FCC authority to protect consumers and competition in the broadband market. Right now, that authority is vested in Title II. Net neutrality is under assault. But repeal of the rules is by no means a done deal. Like the Affordable Care Act, Americans won't sit by and allow rules that have protected their ability to use the most important communications network in history to be taken from them. Whether the fight is at the FCC, Congress, or both, policymakers should brace for an enormous battle over the future of the internet.

[Gigi Sohn is an Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government Fellow and served as counselor to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.]

How would you like it? That's the short version of a defense offered by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Ca), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, as reporters questioned him about looking into contacts between members of President Trump's administration and Russian officials.

“Look, I'm sure some of you are in contact with the Russian Embassy,” Chairman Nunes told a group of journalists. “So be careful what you ask for here. ... Do you want us to conduct an investigation on you or other Americans because you were talking to the Russian Embassy? I just think we need to be careful.”

A journalist's contacting the Russian Embassy — presumably in the course of reporting on National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — is not even remotely comparable to what Flynn and Sessions did. It is just plain silly for Chairman Nunes to suggest that it is.

As the CEO of Connecting for Good, a nonprofit in Kansas City, Esselman helps several thousand households at low-income housing projects in the city get free access to the internet. His group has provided such services since 2012, in addition to conducting computer training sessions for poor and working-class Kansas City residents. Now it wants to expand its reach, having recently applied for a federal program called Lifeline, which provides a monthly subsidy of $9.25 to low-income Americans to allow them to get online. But the Trump administration just made it harder for the new program, which launched in December, to have an impact.

Ajit Pai, the newly appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has announced a review of the program and blocked most of the already-vetted companies from participating in Lifeline, which could make it difficult for tens of thousands of low-income Americans to get online. The move shocked broadband access proponents in both parties, who have long argued that helping low-income and rural Americans get internet access is essential to educating young people and training the workforce of the future.

President Donald Trump's newly-installed Federal Communications Commission chief moved to halt a key policy protecting online privacy and data security on March 1, in what public interest advocates called the latest Trump-era attack on FCC consumer safeguards. The data security rule was approved in 2016 by the Obama-era FCC as part of a suite of privacy safeguards designed to give consumers more power over how Internet service providers use their personal information.

The full privacy package, which is now on the Trump FCC's chopping block, requires ISPs to obtain "opt-in" consent from consumers before they use or sell sensitive personal information, including browsing activity, mobile app data, and emails and online chats. Consumer advocates say the FCC's data security rule, along with the broader privacy policy, is necessary at a time of increasing cyberattacks against internet users. The FCC's action drew a strong rebuke from the agency's lone Democratic commissioner and other public interest advocates.

Over four days in early August, Donald Trump gave interviews to four TV stations in Ohio, Florida and Maine, and to the Washington bureau of a national TV chain. The interviews were a coup for the stations, which eagerly promoted their “one-on-one” encounters with the GOP nominee. They were also an effective way for Trump to target voting blocs in key states, particularly since he had begun limiting his national media exposure largely to friendly interviewers on Fox News. The most striking thing about the interviews, however, may be that one company was behind all of them: Sinclair Broadcast Group.

The Maryland-based company is the nation’s largest owner of TV stations, with 173 in 81 cities nationwide, including those that interviewed Trump in August. The Washington bureau was Sinclair’s, too; it provided its interview with Trump to Sinclair’s many stations for their newscasts. Sinclair, which has drawn criticism for favoring conservative candidates before, says it had no special arrangement with Trump’s campaign and that it didn’t favor him at the expense of his main rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton. It also said it offered equal time to Clinton and solicited interviews with her throughout the campaign, but her managers responded less enthusiastically than Trump.

The House Science Committee approved a bill designed to encourage federal agencies to adopt cybersecurity framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The committee approved the bill largely along party lines, despite opposition from Democratic Reps to provisions in the bill requiring NIST to evaluate and audit federal agencies’ adoption of the cybersecurity and technology guidelines.

Rep Ralph Abraham (R-LA) introduced the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, Assessment, and Auditing Act of 2017 recently, couching it as a response to recent high-profile cyber breaches like those at the Office of Personnel Management and IRS. The legislation would direct NIST to develop metrics for evaluating federal agencies’ cybersecurity and submit an initial assessment and regular audits to Congress on cybersecurity measures put in place by federal agencies. It would also set up guidance for federal agencies to incorporate the NIST cyber framework and establish working groups in the federal and private sectors to help public and private entities use the framework.

The House Communications Subcommittee is postponing its planned March 8 Federal Communications Commission reauthorization hearing at which all the commissioners had been expected to testify. The hearing was scheduled to deal with budget issues, spectrum auctions and FCC process, among other things.

Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has said her priorities are reauthorization of both the National Telecommunications & Information Administration and the FCC. Her first oversight hearing was on NTIA. “I’m looking forward to having new FCC Chairman Pai and Commissioners O’Reilly and Clyburn testify before the subcommittee,” said Blackburn in announcing the hearing in Feb. “It will provide our members the opportunity to learn more about the final stages of the broadcast incentive auction, Chairman Pai’s agenda, and FCC reauthorization.” That hearing was to have been one of two hearings with the FCC commissioners, the other being a Senate Commerce Committee oversight hearing, which is still scheduled for 10 a.m. on March 8.