Lauren Frayer

Reps from both sides of the aisle renewed calls to update the National Broadband Map, which was initially created by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Federal Communications Commission but has languished since 2014 due to lack of funding. "We must accurately collect and aggregate data to update the National Broadband Map," said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) druing a hearing. The hearing covered legislation tied to President Trump’s plans to increase spending on the nation’s core infrastructure, and legislators generally argued that broadband networks should be expanded to unserved and underserved areas in the United States as part of that effort.

NTIA first released its national broadband map and broadband adoption survey results in 2011. Version 1.0 of the map, designed by Computech, showed broadband availability across the country, including the relative dearth of broadband access in rural areas. However, as noted on the map’s website, updates to the map stopped on June 30, 2014. “The Commission sought funding for FY 2016 to maintain and update the National Broadband Map, but this request was not granted,” the site stated. The map was updated with data from the NTIA’s State Broadband Initiative, and was created by the NTIA and the FCC. Interestingly, the NTIA largely managed to avoid the cost-cutting knife of President Trump’s federal budget.

[Commentary] The Holy Grail in cellular wireless broadband is a perfect substitute for fixed, wireline broadband. It’s already a substitute for some uses, meaning competition analysis should take into account this imperfect competition for policymaking purposes. But the technologies are not yet substitutes for most households. Verizon’s recent (re-)introduction of its unlimited data plan, however, suggests that day may be in sight. While history never provides a perfect analogy, let’s take a step back in time to the days of in-country roaming and long-distance wireless charges. (Like cavemen, we were in the 1990s!)
[Scott Wallsten is President and Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute.]

[Commentary] If President Donald Trump announces that North Korea launched a missile that landed within 100 miles of Hawaii, would most Americans believe him? Would the rest of the world? We’re not sure, which speaks to the damage that President Trump is doing to his Presidency with his seemingly endless stream of exaggerations, evidence-free accusations, implausible denials and other falsehoods.

The latest example is President Trump’s refusal to back off his tweet of three weeks ago that he had “found out that [Barack] Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory” on Election Day. He has offered no evidence for his claim, and a parade of intelligence officials, senior Republicans and Democrats have since said they have seen no such evidence. Two months into his Presidency, Gallup has President Trump’s approval rating at 39%. No doubt President Trump considers that fake news, but if he doesn’t show more respect for the truth most Americans may conclude he’s a fake President.

[Commentary] It’s a challenge to pick the worst of the furnace-hot verbiage spewing forth from the new Administration; there is just so much to choose from. But to me, one completely frightening statement stands out. It is “deconstructing the administrative state” as the stated purpose of the Trump team. If this statement doesn’t motivate citizens to action, what will? Translated into everyday English, the President, Steve Bannon, and their billionaire cabinet of corporate minions are telling us that their goal is to axe as much government as possible—except, of course, for the already-bloated military-industrial complex which would receive $54 billion more to entrench itself. A seemingly soothing “deconstruction” bromide cannot mask that the destruction of government as we have known it for more than a century is their real objective.

[In 2012, former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps joined Common Cause to lead its Media and Democracy Reform Initiative.]

This is the first in a series of posts about how different demographic groups in the US have fared in the digital age.

Roughly three-in-ten adults with household incomes below $30,000 a year don’t own a smartphone. Nearly half don’t have home broadband services or a traditional computer. And a majority of lower-income Americans are not tablet owners. By comparison, many of these devices are nearly ubiquitous among adults from households earning $100,000 or more a year. Higher-income Americans are also more likely to have multiple devices that enable them to go online.

Two-thirds of adults living in high-earning households have home broadband services, a smartphone, a desktop or laptop computer and a tablet, compared with 17% of those living in low-income households. And with fewer options for online access at their disposal, many lower-income Americans are relying more on smartphones. In 2016, one-fifth of adults living in households earning less than $30,000 a year were “smartphone-only” internet users – meaning they owned a smartphone but did not have broadband internet at home. This represents an increase from 12% in 2013. In contrast, only 4% of those living in households earning $100,000 or more fell into this category in either year.

As President Trump's Republican Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai moves to roll back a variety of Obama-era initiatives, the agency's sole remaining Democrat, Mignon Clyburn, is mounting a vigorous defense of the FCC's pro-consumer policies. During a wide-ranging interview, Clyburn vowed to continue fighting to advance net neutrality, as well as her other signature priorities, including expanding affordable broadband access for low-income and underserved communities, and addressing what she calls the "extreme market failure" that forces prison inmates and their families to pay wildly exorbitant phone rates just to stay in touch with their loved ones.

Warning that Senate Republicans are pushing for a vote on rolling back Federal Communications Commission broadband privacy regulations as early as March 23, Public Knowledge is trying to get supporters of the regulations to ask their Congresional members to push back. Apparently, a vote in the Senate is likely the week of March 20.

In this bulletin, we attempt to shed some light on the optimal design of Federal Communications Commission rules and practices for addressing interference disputes. Since spectrum licenses produce no benefits without large and mostly sunk investments in communications networks, our focus is on investment incentives. We argue that the Federal Communications Commission’s optimal interference policy would necessarily deal with different license holders differently when their sunk network investments vary.

We focus on sunk investments because if interference-causing repurposings are permitted and the significant sunk assets to provide services using spectrum are given short shrift, then the rational response of private parties is to curb investment. Put bluntly, regulatory policy towards interference concerns should favor those licensees with more “skin in the game,” with attention focused on actual capital investments in networks and not spectrum licenses alone. To provide context, we use the continuing saga of LightSquared Networks—a spectrum speculator now branded as Ligado—as a case study, though the analysis is in no way limited to the specifics of this ongoing proceeding.

CenturyLink and Frontier apparently see the current Federal Communications Commission administration as potentially sympathetic to their concerns about business data services regulation. The carriers asked the commission to grant them non-dominant business data service status, arguing that they do not dominate that market because they have ample competition. The move comes just a few months after the previous FCC administration in October attempted to impose FCC oversight on packet-based business data offerings and indicated plans to continue to regulate time- division multiplexing(TDM)-based business services from incumbent carriers such as CenturyLink and Frontier based on price cap regulation.

Technology advancements have increased the overall accuracy of automated face recognition over the past few decades. This technology has helped law enforcement agencies identify criminals in their investigations. However, privacy advocates and members of the Congress remain concerned regarding the accuracy of the technology and the protection of privacy and individual civil liberties when technologies are used to identify people based on their biological and behavioral characteristics. This statement describes the extent to which the FBI ensures adherence to laws and policies related to privacy regarding its use of face recognition technology, and ensure its face recognition capabilities are sufficiently accurate. In May 2016, DOJ and the FBI partially agreed with two recommendations and disagreed with another on privacy. FBI agreed with one and disagreed with two recommendations on accuracy. GAO continues to believe that the recommendations are valid.