Lauren Frayer

I hope this committee will take a holistic approach when reviewing possible technology solutions. The Commission has tried to maintain a principle near and dear to me of technology neutrality. Clearly, it is not economically feasible to drag fiber to every unserved location. Instead, it will take multiple technologies. While that may make your review that much more challenging, accepting and honoring this reality will best serve everyone in the long run.
A word of warning as you prepare to examine these issues and possible solutions.

At some point I am sure, someone will argue that one solution is just to throw money at the problem. In this case, the money they talk about comes from consumers in the form of higher service fees than are necessary. I will be extremely reluctant to consider any recommendation that proposes to increase costs on everyday Americans trying to survive in today’s economy.

Over the last several years, we’ve been lectured by many that the US position on Internet governance was no longer sustainable in the larger, global community. So-called experts claimed that the US’s minimal government involvement in Internet issues was no longer a prudent approach. These “experts” added that if the US just ceded on our sound principles a little bit, authoritarian governments of the world would end their continued effort to seek increased government regulation and control of the Internet. In other words, they sought an appeasement strategy.

We now have a recent case study of this exact approach, and it doesn’t seem to have worked. Instead, some foreign governments have renewed their disturbing calls for government involvement in the Internet via a number of forums. Accordingly, it’s time to reject appeasement, acknowledge the work ahead and redouble our efforts to quash these attempts using all appropriate means.

All three commissioners were in attendance April 21 as the Federal Communications Commission hosted the first meeting of the newly constituted Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, created by FCC chairman Ajit Pai. The BDAC is comprised of various stakeholders, and tasked with coming up with strategies for closing the digital divide and advancing Chairman Pai's Digital Empowerment Agenda. The committee will be expected to come up with two "model codes," one for cities and the other for states, those codes being guidelines for how to streamline broadband deployment while balancing the interests of government with the demands for better, faster and cheaper broadband.

The meeting came a day after the FCC took steps to streamline both wired and wireless broadband buildouts in terms of tower siting, pole attachments and access, and rights-of-way on federal land issues, as well as retiring legacy copper networks—and whether nets have to get FCC permission for the phase-outs—and promoting next-gen service like 5G. The committee will also consider whether the FCC should preempt state laws impeding broadband buildouts.

Whether you are discussing how to address the thorny issues of access to poles, ducts, or conduit, I ask that you think about the impact your decisions will have on consumers. And when you are debating franchising model codes, I ask you to think about the impact the contours of that code will have on consumers in the franchise area. In particular, I ask that you keep the following three points in mind:
First, never overlook the effects of your policy recommendations on ensuring low-income communities are not relegated to a second-class broadband future.
Second, make sure that the broadband services you recommend for deployment, are affordable.
Third, remember that one person’s regulatory barrier, is another’s vital consumer protection, and that one person’s intransigent municipality, is another’s carefullyconsidered protector of local interests.

High-speed broadband is an increasingly important gateway to jobs, health care, education, information, and economic development. Access to high-speed broadband can create economic opportunity, enabling entrepreneurs to create businesses, immediately reach customers throughout the world, and revolutionize entire industries. We propose and seek comment on a number of actions designed to accelerate the deployment of next-generation networks and services by removing barriers to infrastructure investment.

This Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Notice of Inquiry, and Request for Comment seeks to better enable broadband providers to build, maintain, and upgrade their networks, which will lead to more affordable and available Internet access and other broadband services for consumers and businesses alike. Today’s actions propose to remove regulatory barriers to infrastructure investment at the federal, state, and local level; suggest changes to speed the transition from copper networks and legacy services to next-generation networks and services; and propose to reform Commission regulations that increase costs and slow broadband deployment.

On April 20, the Federal Communications Commission voted to reinstate an obsolete loophole called the UHF discount that will allow broadcast conglomerates to exceed congressionally mandated national TV audience coverage limits. April 21, Sinclair Broadcast Group, the nation’s largest television station conglomerate, announced a $240 million deal to buy 14 television stations owned by Bonten Media Group.

Sinclair is also reported to be in negotiations to buy stations owned by Tribune Media Co., a move that would put Sinclair 30 percentage points over the national broadcast ownership cap, if not for the FCC’s move reinstating the UHF discount. The vote came following press reports by Bloomberg News that Chairman Pai had conducted meetings with Sinclair executives days after the Nov. 8 presidential election. Chairman Pai was subsequently tapped by the Trump administration to lead the agency that oversees broadcast ownership limits. Free Press CEO and President Craig Aaron said, “This is a scandal. Sinclair has been boosting Trump and wooing Pai for months — and it’s paying off in the form of the looser limits Sinclair has long sought on how many TV stations the company can own. Sinclair has a track record of taking over stations, gutting news departments and airing conservative propaganda produced far from the local community."

Britain postponed on its regulatory review of 21st Century Fox’s proposal to take full control of the British satellite television giant Sky until after the country’s general election in June. The delay comes amid calls for British regulators to consider Fox’s handling of sexual harassment cases in the United States, which recently led the company to dismiss Bill O’Reilly, its highest-profile news anchor.

The regulator, the Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is reviewing the potential effects of a merger on media competitiveness and is testing whether the combined company would be “fit and proper” to hold a broadcasting license. The government cited the shifting political timetable as the reason for the delay.

Canada is taking a much stronger stand against data cap exemptions than the United States. In the US, the Federal Communications Commission's new Republican leadership signaled that it won't enforce network neutrality rules against zero-rating, the practice of favoring certain Internet content by exempting it from customers' data caps. The FCC made that clear when it rescinded a determination that AT&T and Verizon Wireless violated net neutrality rules by letting their own video services stream without counting against customers' data caps while charging other video providers for the same data cap exemptions.

Canada is also taking a case-by-case approach to zero-rating instead of banning it outright. But April 20, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) ordered changes to one carrier's zero-rating program and announced that it will enforce stricter guidelines for determining whether zero-rating programs are discriminatory. Zero-rating "generally gives an unfair advantage or disadvantage to certain content providers and consumers," CRTC said in an announcement. The group said that it is "strengthen[ing] its commitment to net neutrality," and it also published detailed guidelines and its decision against Videotron, a telecom whose "Unlimited Music" program exempts certain online music providers from data caps of subscribers with certain mobile data plans.

A Media Matters analysis of morning shows on cable news networks from January 1 to March 31 found that white men make up an overwhelming percentage of guest appearances on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC's morning shows. The study found that black, Latino, Asian-American and Middle Eastern voices are critically underrepresented, and women make up only a quarter of guest appearances. Guests on cable morning shows were overwhelmingly white. Black, Latino, Middle Eastern, and Asian-American guests were routinely underrepresented on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC’s morning shows. On MSNBC, 89 percent of guests who appeared on Morning Joe during the time period were white. Of all the guests who appeared on Fox & Friends, 85 percent were white. And 83 percent of guests who appeared on CNN’s New Day were white. Additionally, white men comprised 72 percent of total guest appearances on MSNBC's Morning Joe, 66 percent of all guest appearances on CNN's New Day, and 65 percent of guest appearances on Fox & Friends.

The week of April 10 the world lost the most important tech pioneer whom hardly anyone has heard of: Bob Taylor. When I asked Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt to tell me about Taylor—Schmidt worked in Taylor’s Silicon Valley computer science lab as a graduate student—Schmidt said, “Bob Taylor invented almost everything in one form or another that we use today in the office and at home.”

In 1961, as a project manager at NASA, Taylor directed funding to computer scientist Douglas Engelbart, who used the money, in part, to invent the computer mouse. Five years later, at Arpa (now Darpa), Taylor kick-started the internet when he convinced his boss to invest $500,000 of taxpayer money to build a computer network. That network was the Arpanet, precursor to the internet. In 1972, Taylor midwifed the birth of the modern personal computer at Xerox PARC. But just as important as these innovations: Taylor built one of the greatest teams in the history of high-technology and kept it together for years.