Lauren Frayer

A group of nonprofit municipal broadband providers -- all members of the American Cable Association -- support Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to reverse the classification of ISPs as common carriers under Title II, and told him so in a letter dated May 11.

The letter drew a swift and lengthy thank you from the chairman. "By returning to light-touch regulation of broadband service, the Commission will give Muni ISPs incentives to invest in enhancing our networks and our deployment of innovative services at affordable prices while still ensuring consumers have unfettered access to the Internet," they wrote. They also said the FCC's "overly broad and vague" general conduct standard rule and other parts of the Open Internet order was based on the "unwarranted assumption" that they have the incentive or ability to be anticompetitive. They said the FCC, in adopting the 2015 Open Internet Order ignored the evidence that they don't block or throttle or engage in paid prioritization and put them in the "straight jacket" of utility regulation and the constant threat of action under the "unknown and unknowable" general conduct standard.

[Commentary] A profound shift in the balance of power between content and distribution will be the necessary consequence of eliminating Title II’s governance of the internet. For better or worse, three sectors of the media landscape will be affected.

First, this is a boon to traditional cable operators who also serve as most people’s internet service providers, via coax, fiber or wireless spectrum—the incumbent multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs). They are content gateways through which consumers’ access, cost and quality of content engagement will be determined by the content originator’s metered internet terms, payable to the ISP/MVPD. Such cost-neutralization of carriage for the traditional MVPD represents enormous advantages over virtual MVPDs, an industry effectively created by the FCC in 2014 when it reclassified the definition of MVPD to exclude any physical distribution infrastructure. While virtual MVPDs may offer content access rivaling the incumbent MVPDs, they too would be subject to the costs of a metered internet, again, payable to the ISPs. No doubt, this would be a margin-crusher that would favor the incumbent MVPDs in a content price war. The FCC has yet to comment on how exactly this promotes competition. Finally, there are the programmers whose very existence depends on bundled carriage revenues. Without the ability to offset the neutralization of carriage revenue with robust monetization of audience, the elimination of net neutrality may very well thin the herd of linear programmers. Who’s got time for bad TV anymore?

In the end, Ajit Pai’s vision for an open and free internet will likely result in outcomes marginally favorable to consumers. Content distribution is democratizing at an unbelievable rate, while audiences continue to balkanize across platforms and devices. So while consumers will soon be able to price shop providers in earnest, diversity in programming itself may be the first casualty of a new, open and free internet.

[Randy Cooke is vice president of programmatic TV at video ad inventory marketplace SpotXchange]

Libraries in five states – Georgia, Maine, Nebraska, South Dakota and Washington – number among a total of nine projects awarded funding and support from the Gigabit Libraries Network (GLN) and San Jose State University’s School of Information (iSchool) to expand the Libraries WhiteSpace Project. Launched with grant funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Libraries White Space Project funds are awarded to libraries that have initiated projects in partnership with other community service organizations to explore and develop innovative uses for TV White Space (TVWS) spectrum to provide remote fixed and portable library broadband access points at new locations. The first of these is slated to open this summer, GLN and iSchool explain.

Australia, a wealthy nation with a widely envied quality of life, lags in one essential area of modern life: its internet speed. Eight years after the country began an unprecedented broadband modernization effort that will cost at least 49 billion Australian dollars, or $36 billion, its average internet speed lags that of the United States, most of Western Europe, Japan and South Korea. In the most recent ranking of internet speeds by Akamai, a networking company, Australia came in at an embarrassing No. 51, trailing developing economies like Thailand and Kenya.

The problem goes beyond sluggish Netflix streams and slurred Skype calls. Businesses complain that slow speeds hobble their effectiveness and add to their costs. More broadly, Australia risks being left behind at a time when countries like China and India are looking to nurture their own start-up cultures to match the success of Silicon Valley and keep their economies on the cutting edge. The story of Australia’s costly internet bungle illustrates the hazards of mingling telecommunication infrastructure with the impatience of modern politics. The internet modernization plan has been hobbled by cost overruns, partisan maneuvering and a major technical compromise that put 19th-century technology between the country’s 21st-century digital backbone and many of its homes and businesses.

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order on cybersecurity, an order long awaited by the cybersecurity community. Drafts of the executive order have leaked since the first days of the Trump administration. The cybersecurity executive order contains suggestions that are, by and large, considered good ideas by experts, including holding agency heads accountable for cybersecurity.

A common criticism in the Senate is that the US lacks of a guiding strategy for cyber defense, beyond making ad hoc decisions. It's a complaint that dogged the Obama administration and was beginning to catch up to the Trump administration as well. The executive order begins the process of developing one, and within 90 days a bevy of agencies will produce options for development. Agencies will now follow the National Institute for Standards and Technology framework. The guidelines were developed to be adaptable to any organization and are currently popular in the private sector.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order that sets up a commission to review his controversial allegations of widespread voter fraud, along with reports of voter suppression. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity will be led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), who has aggressively pursued allegations of voter fraud in his state.

About a dozen other election officials representing both parties will fill out the commission, which will deliver a report to the president in 2018, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. Sanders said that the commission will review policies and practices that enhance or undermine confidence in the integrity of federal elections, including improper registrations, improper voting, fraudulent registrations, fraudulent voting and voting suppression. The commission will not just focus on the 2016 general election but also systemic issues over the years.

The Federal Communications Commission’s most recent report on media ownership, released May 10, revealed that women own just 8.6 percent of the 11,919 broadcast stations in this country. Across the board, deregulation and other actions since the Act was passed, have led to increased media consolidation and fewer opportunities. The result: women and minority media ownership remain at shockingly low levels. Despite the disheartening statistics I have already shared, many are still advocating to eliminate the few rules that remain in place that currently prevent the concentration of station ownership into the hands of a few large media conglomerates...and this effort is on a fast track of becoming a reality...

I believe there are concrete actions that the FCC can take to promote a more diverse media landscape. My office recently released an action plan known as #Solutions2020, where we outlined several steps designed to enhance digital inclusion and encourage more opportunities for women and underrepresented entrepreneurs.

Defending the First Amendment: I think you will find the current Commission to be a great partner in the effort to ensure a free press, primarily by not intervening in the area.

"Fake News” Definition & Use: But moving on to a more active controversy at the moment, it has been argued by some that urgent action must be taken to rid our media and society from the plague of “fake news.” However you want to define the “problem,” we need to be looking closer at certain highly suspect solutions being proposed and implemented.

Questionable Policing by Online Companies: Asking people to think critically about the effect of algorithm skewing is far afield from imposing government edicts and false remedies for broadband providers.

Free Market Remedy: So what is a proper solution? It should come as no surprise to anyone that, if fake news is indeed such a big problem, I would recommend a more free market approach to solving it.

President Donald Trump says he thinks CNN's Chris Cuomo looks like a "chained lunatic" on television. CNN's Don Lemon is "perhaps the dumbest person in broadcasting" and CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert is a "no-talent guy" who talks "filthy." Those were just some of the comments President Trump offered over dinner May 8 when asked about the media he consumes as President of the United States. But he did little to hide his frustration, explaining that he had been surprised that the journalistic criticism had gotten worse after the campaign.

He also said he had been working on tuning out news that is critical of him. "Washington Post, New York Times, they’re really, really dishonest," he said, before directly addressing the TIME reporters he had invited for dinner. "You people are quite dishonest in all fairness." He said he used to watch MSNBC's Joe Scarborough but no longer does. He also claimed to have helped CNN president Jeff Zucker, an old friend and business colleague, get his job at the network.

The local television landscape in the US has undergone major changes in recent years, as a wave of consolidations and station purchases have made some broadcast media owners considerably larger. In 2004, the five largest companies in local TV – Sinclair, Nexstar, Gray, Tegna and Tribune – owned, operated or serviced 179 full-power stations. That number grew to 378 in 2014 and to 443 in 2016. If approved by regulators, Sinclair’s acquisition of Tribune would bring its total to 208, by far the largest among the media companies. As of 2016, these five companies owned an estimated 37% of all full-power local TV stations in the country, as identified in a Pew Research Center analysis of BIA Kelsey data.