Lauren Frayer

It is unconscionable that some states divert fees collected for legitimate and needed 9-1-1 communications capabilities to unrelated purposes, threatening the public's safety for short-term budget relief. After almost fifteen years of working on the problem, we are no closer to resolving it. I suggest that the appropriate policymakers must implement new measures to end this practice once and for all. This may require uncomfortable conversations with states or taking forceful actions, but the current mechanism of shame and hope isn't working.

Here are three non-mutually exclusive ideas for the FCC to increase the pressure and force states to end this despicable practice:

• Interstate Services Prohibition: The FCC maintains sole jurisdiction over interstate communications services and, as such, we retain the right to bar diverting states from imposing 9-1-1 fees on the interstate calls.
• Prohibit Collection and Remittance by Providers: For diverting states, the collection of funds above what will be spent directly on 9-1-1 services is by definition misleading to consumers. The FCC can prevent any providers from collecting such funds or requiring them to remit the funds to diverting states. As part of this effort, the FCC could also define what are inappropriate uses of 9-1-1 funds and ensure providers are held harmless in the process.
• Commission Advisory Committees: The ability to serve on Commission Advisory Committees is a privilege, not a right. As such, the FCC can and should exclude any person from a diverting state from participating on an advisory committee, and this can be done without losing valuable advice.

Speaking at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai blamed network neutrality for causing uncertainty in the broadband market and declared that “uncertainty is the enemy of growth.” However, many of the nation’s largest broadband providers have grown in the last two years.

Since Feb. 26, 2015, the day that the FCC voted to approve the neutrality rules, AT&T’s share price has increased by more than 20 percent, Comcast’s is up 26 percent. Verizon’s stock price is at the same level as it was, though it has fluctuated as much as 15 percent in either direction since then. Charter’s share price is up 40 percent, after the FCC allowed it to acquire Time Warner Cable and Bright House in 2016. The only major broadband provider whose stock has fallen dramatically in the last two years is CenturyLink, whose share price has sunk around 50 percent in that time.

In its most recent earnings report, Comcast — the nation’s largest broadband provider — noted that in 2016 year over year “capital expenditures increased 7.5% to $9.1 billion.” The lion’s share ($7.6 billion) of that $9.6 billion went to the company’s Cable Communications division, “primarily reflecting increased investment in line extensions, a higher level of investment in scalable infrastructure to increase network capacity and continued spending on customer premise equipment related to the deployment of the X1 platform and wireless gateways.” In case you were wondering, that $7.6 billion was an increase of 7.9% over the previous year.

Likewise, AT&T said it its most recent earnings that it spent $22.9 billion on capital investment in 2016, up from $20.7 billion in 2015.

President Donald Trump has withdrawn the nomination of Jessica Rosenworcel for another term on the Federal Communications Commission, leading to some speculation over how the White House plans to fill two vacancies on the commission.

The commission is split 2-1, with two Republicans and one Democrat. Rosenworcel, a Democrat, left the FCC at the end of 2016 after her tenure expired. President Barack Obama renominated her just weeks before he left office. The apparent expectation was that once President Trump took office, he would pair her nomination with a Republican choice and they would jointly go through the confirmation process. But Trump’s decision to pull her nomination has led to speculation that he would put forward another Republican and perhaps an independent or other Democrat more favorable to administration policy. In the past, the White House has deferred to Senate leadership in the selection of nominees from the opposing party. Democrats have already been vowing to push back if the administration tries to buck that tradition.

Vera Jourova spent months working with the Obama administration on a deal to protect Europeans from digital surveillance by US spies. With a new occupant now in the White House, the European Union’s privacy czar says she’s prepared to rip up the pact if the Americans don’t adhere to its terms.

“If there is a significant change, we will suspend” the accord, Jourova, the European Union’s justice commissioner, said. “I will not hesitate to do it. There’s too much at stake.” At the end of March the former Czech regional development minister will travel to Washington to meet with the administration of new US President Donald Trump on the privacy shield. Jourova said she’s hopeful she won’t have to suspend the pact, but conceded that Trump’s unpredictability has raised concern among European regulators.

[Commentary] If network neutrality goes away, you’ll almost certainly start paying more for all the many Internet-based services you depend on in your small business – VoIP (voice over Internet service), international calls, document storage, online payroll, e-mail newsletter service, your website hosting and credit-card processing. The reality is the Internet is now a critical backbone of our economy. It’s likely as critical to your business as electricity. For many companies, the Internet is now even more important than telephone services. It is appropriate to require Internet service providers, like electric companies, treat all customers equally in terms of quality of service.

So use your small business voice and let Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, the FCC, and your senators and representatives know that you want – you need – to keep net neutrality for your small business.

[Rhonda Abrams is the author of “Entrepreneurship: A Real-World Approach,”]

The Federal Communications Commission recently gave mobile carriers the green light to expand zero-rating, a method of favoring online content by exempting it from data caps. At the same time, carriers have been competing to offer the best unlimited data plans—and without data caps, there’s no need for zero-rating. But that doesn’t mean zero-rating and similar free data offers are over and done with, because many customers are still going to buy cheaper, limited data plans.

AT&T and Verizon seemed reluctant to make unlimited data plans widely available until they faced competitive pressure to do so. Those two carriers have created new sources of revenue by seeking payments from companies that want to bypass data caps in order to reach more customers. AT&T and Verizon have also made their own video services more attractive by exempting them from caps. You can expect that to continue despite the rise of unlimited data and possibly accelerate because the FCC’s new Republican leadership intends to allow both paid and unpaid data cap exemptions.

Feb 26 was the two-year anniversary of the FCC’s Open Internet Order, the monumental victory that enshrined Net Neutrality principles in strong rules backed by Title II legal authority. On Feb 27, a coalition of racial justice leaders and open internet champions held a briefing to celebrate this important milestone — and to gear up for the fights ahead. As Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron noted, the story of winning Net Neutrality is the story of millions of people showing up to push policymakers in DC to do the right thing.

But some elected officials didn’t need pushing. Rep Maxine Waters (D-CA) understood from the first how important the open internet is for Black and Latinx communities in particular. “The Internet and social media have empowered individuals and communities all across this country to organize and mobilize in unprecedented numbers,” she said. “You have to ask yourself, who would benefit [from] any attempt to roll back internet freedoms?”

The White House Counsel's Office has concluded that senior adviser Kellyanne Conway acted “inadvertently” when she endorsed Ivanka Trump's clothing line, rebuffing a recommendation by the top federal ethics official that she be disciplined for an apparent violation of federal rules. Stefan C. Passantino, who handles White House ethics issues as deputy counsel to President Trump, wrote in a letter that his office concluded Conway was speaking in a “light, offhand manner” when she touted the Ivanka Trump line during a Feb. 9 appearance on “Fox & Friends.” At the time, she was addressing efforts by activists to persuade retailers such as Nordstrom to drop Ivanka Trump-branded items. “We concluded that Ms. Conway acted inadvertently and is highly unlikely to do so again,” Passantino wrote to Walter M. Schaub, Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, adding that Conway made the comments “without nefarious motive or intent to benefit personally.”

Passantino said he met with Conway and advised her that her remarks “implicated the prohibition on using one's official position to endorse any product or service.” “Ms. Conway has acknowledged her understanding of the Standards and has reiterated her commitment to abiding by them in the future,” he added.

ABC News President James Goldston has pledged to “stand with our colleagues who cover the White House" and "protest” if the White House does not operate with transparency, he said in response to a petition imploring the broadcasting company to take a stand over the White House’s decision to exclude news organizations from a press gaggle Feb 27. “We’ve expressed our concerns to the White House that it operates in a way that’s open, transparent and fair,” Goldston said. “And we will continue to stand with our colleagues who cover the White House and to protest when any government official fails to live up to those standards.”

Earlier, Goldston received a petition signed by more than 230 former ABC News executives, correspondents, producers and other former staffers calling on him to refuse to take part in White House briefings if news organizations are barred from attending.

Broadband got a lot of attention from the Senate March 1 at an infrastructure hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee, including calls from a transportation official to protect the connected-car spectrum cable operators are convinced can be shared with their Wi-Fi offerings. The almost three-hour hearing dealt with infrastructure broadly, including roads and bridges, but even the roadways issues dovetailed with broadband, including pitches for dig-once policies in which dark fiber or at least conduit are part of road projects.

The broadband provider witness, Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association, was busy during the hearing answering a host of broadband-related questions and offering her input on the best way to make broadband part of any infrastructure buildout. She said the best approach would be to work through the FCC's Universal Service Fund broadband subsidy program by fully funding it and targeting the money to people "who know what they are doing," a point she made repeatedly and which translated to the smaller operators she represents who already have broadband boots on the ground.