Lauren Frayer

In 2017, 21 women serve in the US Senate and 83 serve in the House of Representatives, comprising 19.4% of Congress. While this share is nearly nine times higher than it was in 1965, it remains well below the 51.4% of women in the overall US adult population. The share of women serving in state legislatures is slightly higher than at the national level. Some 24.8% of state legislators are women, up from 4.5% in 1971.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission and Congress are taking steps to weaken and eliminate the FCC’s privacy rules for broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and AT&T. The proponents of these efforts make two arguments - neither of which will leave consumers with the privacy protections they now have and deserve.

The first is that there should be one set of privacy rules for ISPs and so-called “edge” companies like Google and Facebook, and that these privacy practices should be overseen solely by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which currently has no legal authority over ISPs. I agree that one set of rules for the Internet ecosystem might be desirable, but why shouldn’t they meet the higher FCC standard that affords consumers more protection? And while the FTC is an important partner to the FCC on a variety of consumer protection and competition matters, including privacy, it lacks the ability to adopt rules - a critically important tool when it comes to protecting consumers.

The second argument is that even without the broadband privacy rules, the FCC can still protect consumer privacy under Section 222 of the Communications Act, which requires telecommunications carriers to protect the privacy of their customers’ information. But there is a more fundamental problem. If, as FCC Chairman Ajit Pai believes, that the FTC, and not the FCC, should have the legal authority to regulate the privacy practices of ISPs, why would his agency enforce Section 222 at all? Indeed, his colleague Commissioner Mike O’Rielly made clear in his dissent to the October privacy decision that he does not believe the FCC has that authority today.

Nobody should fall for this privacy shell game. The FCC’s broadband privacy rules are currently the best protection consumers have for their personal information online.

[Gigi Sohn is an Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government Fellow.]

Trumpism is slowly taking hold on your phone and computer, as the Federal Communications Commission starts chipping away at hard-fought protections on privacy and competition. These measures, put in place before President Donald Trump took office, had upset the phone and cable industries.

The new regime says consumers win if businesses face less regulation and have more incentives to invest. But consumer advocates worry these changes give broadband providers that own media businesses more power to favor their own services, among other things. The changes are small and easily overlooked. But they're the first shots in what could turn into a full-fledged war over Obama-era "network neutrality" rules, which were designed to keep phone and cable giants from favoring their own internet services and apps. Overturning these rules would also likely reverse a privacy measure meant to keep broadband providers from using and selling customer data without permission. "Death by a thousand cuts is a constantly overused cliche, but that's sort of what they're aiming for right now," said Matt Wood, the policy director of consumer group Free Press, referring to the Republicans now in power at the FCC.

Telecommunication industry insiders waiting for President Donald Trump to name a third GOP member of the Federal Communications Commission are focused on two possible contenders. Industry officials and telecom attorneys are pointing to Duke University economics professor Michelle Connolly and American Enterprise Institute scholar Roslyn Layton as likely candidates for the post.

The pair may have an edge over other possible picks because conservatives are interested in candidates with a strong grounding in economics. The Obama Administration’s FCC endured GOP criticism for allegedly not folding sufficient economic analysis into new rules and regulations. Sitting GOP Commissioner Michael O’Rielly called for the creation of an all-new FCC economics bureau in March 8 testimony for a Senate oversight hearing. Connolly, the FCC’s chief economist under former Republican Chairman Kevin Martin, holds a raft of Yale University economics degrees. Layton’s work with AEI and as a fellow in the Center for Communication, Media and Information Technologies at Denmark’s Aalborg University has touched frequently on the economics of technology and the internet. She advised the Trump team on the FCC during the transition.

[Commentary] Let the competition to build 5G broadband facilities begin! Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai in his early actions and speeches is returning the FCC to supporting the policies that delivered the most facilities-based broadband competition and private investment of any country in the world, and that also produced rapid deployment of at least five competitive broadband facilities to 95 percent of Americans in a little over a decade.

Chairman Pai and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly know that promoting facilities-based broadband competition proved highly successful before, and it can be as successful again in ensuring that America’s current lead in 4G LTE broadband deployment continues with strong 5G private investment and deployment going forward.

[Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests.]

The dairy farmer in Halcott (NY), a town about 140 miles north of New York City, was one of the first beneficiaries of an ambitious initiative to extend broadband to every household in the state by 2018 — no matter how rural or far-flung the address — which would make New York the first state to reach that high-speed internet milestone. For years, this town was like many isolated spots in New York and across the country, left sitting on the shoulders of the digital highway unable to access the broadband speeds that so many businesses and households count on. But now under a state-led program, towns like Halcott, with fewer than 300 residents, are getting wired, giving residents faster access to the internet and opening new opportunities for businesses. Under Gov Andrew Cuomo’s (D-NY) “Broadband for All” initiative, New York’s program is one of the most aggressive broadband expansions in the country, and is designed to help stem any losses a private company incurs through what is known as a reverse auction process.

Some Kansas City residents who have been waiting years for Google Fiber to install service at their homes recently received e-mails canceling their installations, with no word on whether they'll ever get Internet service from the company. While Google Fiber refuses to say how many installations have been canceled, a local broadcasting station said, "there is speculation the number of cancellations in the metro is as high as 2,700." "The company says it has slowed down in some areas to experiment with new techniques," such as wireless technology, the report also said. Google Fiber is still hooking up fiber for some new customers in parts of the Kansas City area.

One secret to longevity as a pundit is to issue predictions that can’t be easily checked. So here’s one for the time capsule: Two hundred years from now, give or take, the robot-people of Earth will look back on the early years of the 21st century as the beginning of a remarkable renaissance in art and culture. That may sound unlikely to many of us in the present. In the past few decades, we’ve seen how technology has threatened the old order in cultural businesses, including the decimation of the music industry, the death of the cable subscription, the annihilation of newspapers and the laying to waste of independent bookstores. But things are turning around; for people of the future, our time may be remembered as a period not of death, but of rejuvenation and rebirth.

Britain asked regulators on March 16 to investigate whether 21st Century Fox’s $14.3 billion deal to take full control of the British satellite television giant Sky would give the media mogul Rupert Murdoch too much control over the country’s media landscape. The takeover for the 61 percent of Sky that 21st Century Fox does not already own was agreed on in December and is the second such effort to combine the two companies since 2011. The latest attempt quickly raised a wave of criticism in Britain, where Murdoch already holds several media interests. Along with the investigation in Britain, the merger is expected to face a review by antitrust regulators in the European Union.

For the first time in 25 years, Congress conducted hearings in Feb to reauthorize the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). This Department of Commerce agency is tasked with advising the president on matters related to telecommunications and information policy. Consequently, its influence reaches the White House, either directly or through its sub-cabinet reporting structure. This makes NTIA a unique agency with two masters, able to speak on behalf of the executive branch or even the president himself under appropriate circumstances.

NTIA’s current budget appropriation is $39.5 million. This represents the tremendous bang for the buck that NTIA has delivered, as illustrated by these examples spanning several decades. The vital role that telecommunications and information plays in job creation and economic growth makes an easy case for why the agency should continue to receive sufficient financial resources. Equally important, the Trump Administration’s to-be-named NTIA Administrator should bring a zeal for keeping the agency both relevant to our times and important to the President’s own policy initiatives.