press release

Eight bold solutions to critical social problems were named semi-finalists in 100&Change, a global competition for a single $100 million grant from MacArthur. The proposals include 1) providing libraries and learners free digital access to four million books, 2) educating children displaced by conflict and persecution, and 3) providing virtual access to specialist medical care for underserved US patients.

1) The Internet Archive would expand libraries’ ability to deliver on their role as great equalizers, providing access to books and other resources to those who might not otherwise be able to afford them, regardless of geography. The Internet Archive would enable libraries to unlock their analog collections for a new generation of learners, enabling free, long-term, public access to knowledge. The project will curate, digitize, and make available in digital form four million books to any library that owns the physical book. The Internet Archive would start with the books most widely held and used in libraries and classrooms. The scale of the project will reduce digitization costs by 50 percent or more. The Internet Archive has prototyped this model for more than six years, digitizing 540,000 modern books originating from 100 partners and lending them to the public in a process that mirrors the way libraries traditionally lend physical books.

2) The International Rescue Committee and Sesame Workshop would develop and deliver multi-media content to meet the critical educational needs of children affected by conflict. The partnership would provide learning opportunities for refugee children, as well as their parents and caregivers, in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, enabling them to grow and thrive. The new educational content would feature the trusted and recognized Sesame Street Muppets—adapted to reflect and mitigate the adverse effects of experiences of refugee children and their parents. Multiple digital delivery platforms plus printed materials would be used to reach the largest possible number of children and their families. The project will tap extensive distribution networks reaching refugee and host communities via schools, community centers, social protection programs, and health clinics. The initiative would create programs and culturally relevant content for children, as well as tools to help parents and caregivers more effectively engage with them to build resiliency and support learning. It will establish an evidence-based model that can be adapted and redeployed by other organizations to reach millions more children in crisis.

3) Led by the Human Diagnosis Project, Specialty Net is an alliance of the nation's physician societies, licensing boards, and academic institutions that aims to close the specialty care gap for the nation's uninsured and underinsured. Specialty Net is an open, online system that seeks to provide public health and safety net institutions low-cost access to specialty care expertise. Specialty Net would engage 100,000 volunteer specialists to provide electronic consultations to three million patients in the U.S. safety net system over the next five years. Researchers at Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of California, San Francisco, are currently validating the system’s technology performance, cost, outcomes, and educational and training value. Patients would receive the specialty care they need, without having to wait or pay out of pocket. Specialists would receive credits toward their medical education, ongoing licensing, and maintenance of certification requirements. Each patient helped will add to an online system that combines collective intelligence with machine learning, helping to close the safety net specialty care gap and, ultimately, deliver this expertise globally.

The Atlantic Council, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Voice of America (VOA) held an official introduction and discussion about the new Russian-language TV network, Current Time. Known as “Настоящее Время” in Russian — a term that connotes “current,” “real,” and “true,” Current Time is a 24/7 digital network, providing Russian-speaking audiences with accurate and independent local, regional, and international news. Current Time connects Russian speakers in more than ten strategic countries with each other and the world, on digital platforms, social networks, satellite, and cable TV. RFE/RL and VOA launched Current Time to provide audiences with an alternative to the Moscow-controlled media and provide a reality check on disinformation.

Tens of millions of people in the US rely solely or in part on public libraries to access Internet. Libraries are crucial in connecting communities. With TV WhiteSpace technology people can connect beyond library walls. The “Beyond The Walls” Awards will provide five $15,000 grants to libraries for the most innovative proposals to use TV WhiteSpace (TVWS) technologies to enable new library hotspots in the service of their communities.

TVWS uses the unused spectrum in the TV bands. It can deliver broadband to a hotspot miles away, even passing through trees, buildings or other obstructions. Installing TVWS hotspots can improve your community’s resilience by adding another communication capability for disaster preparedness. The first round of applications will be considered on a rolling basis with March 6 as the first round cutoff. If your library meets the necessary criteria, we will work with you to put together a project plan. Winners will be announced at the end of April 2017. The application will open February 6, 2017. You will be able to edit your answers at any time.

Federal Trade Commission Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen announced that she has appointed Thomas Pahl, a partner at the Washington, DC law firm of Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, to be the Acting Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Pahl is rejoining the FTC, having served in a number of different roles starting in 1990, including management stints in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection as Assistant Director in the Division of Advertising Practices and the Division of Financial Practices. He also advised top agency officials on consumer protection matters.

For three years, he advised Reagan appointee and FTC Commissioner Mary Azcuenaga. And he later served for four years as an attorney advisor for Republican FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle. Pahl previously served a detail to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee under the leadership of Chairman Orrin Hatch, focusing on antitrust and consumer privacy issues. Pahl also has worked as an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, and is a member of the Federalist Society. More recently, Pahl has worked on consumer financial protection issues (especially credit reporting and debt collection issues) as a partner at Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, and on debt collection issues at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai circulated an order appointing Commissioner Michael O’Rielly to serve as the chairman of the Federal State Joint Board on Universal Service, the Federal-State Joint Board on Jurisdictional Separations, and the Federal-State Joint Conference on Advanced Services.

The Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service was established in March 1996 to make recommendations to implement the universal service provisions of the Communications Act. This Joint Board is comprised of FCC Commissioners, State Utility Commissioners, and a consumer advocate representative. The Federal-State Joint Board on Jurisdictional Separations was established in June 1980 to make recommendations with respect to any amendment of the Commission’s rules governing the jurisdictional separation of common carrier property and expenses between interstate and intrastate operations. This Joint Board is comprised of FCC Commissioners and State Utility Commissioners. The Federal-State Joint Conference on Advanced Services was convened in 1999 as part of the Commission’s ongoing efforts to ensure that advanced services are deployed as rapidly as possible to all Americans and serves as a forum for an ongoing dialogue among the Commission, state regulators, and local and regional entities regarding the deployment of advanced telecommunications capabilities. The Joint Conference is comprised of FCC Commissioners and State Utility Commissioners.

Reps Jared Huffman (D-CA), Mark Pocan (D-WI), and Rick Nolan (D-MN) introduced the New Deal Rural Broadband Act of 2017, an ambitious plan to connect every American home, business, and school to high-speed, reliable broadband internet that is based on Roosevelt’s New Deal rural electrification model. The legislation would expand access to broadband internet in rural communities in Huffman’s North Coast congressional district, and across the nation, through increased investments in broadband infrastructure, improved programs to support tribal communities in broadband development, and the establishment of a new Office of Rural Broadband Initiatives to better coordinate all Federal rural broadband deployment programs.

The New Deal Rural Broadband Act would:
Establish a new Office of Rural Broadband Initiatives to coordinate and centralize all Federal rural broadband programs;
Authorize $20 billion for new broadband infrastructure focused on rural communities and those without adequate access;
Authorize a new Tribal Broadband Assistance Program to support tribal communities in broadband deployment;
Improve and modernize the Telecommunications Loan and Loan Guarantee Program to increase eligibility, allow greater flexibility, and break down federal agency broadband “silos”;
Authorize the Rural Utility Service (RUS) to offer broadband grants in addition to loans and loan guarantees to provide small communities with the seed funds needed to compete in loan applications or develop commercially attractive proposals and increase overall (RUS) broadband investment from $25 million to $50 million annually; and
Establish an inventory of Federal and State assets on which a broadband facility could be constructed and;
Provide land management agencies with cooperative agreement and fee retention authority for telecommunications rights-of-way to leverage public lands for broadband deployment

Rep Doug Lamborn (R-CO) released the following statement following his introduction of two bills, HR 726 and HR 727, to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and National Public Radio (NPR): "Republicans and the new Administration need to demonstrate that we take our fiscal responsibility seriously. American taxpayers do not want their hard-earned dollars funding superfluous government programs just because that is the way things have always been done. That’s why I have reintroduced two pieces of legislation to permanently defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio. CPB received $445 million during Fiscal Year 2016, and this money could be put to better use rebuilding our military and enhancing our national security.”

The House Communications Subcommittee, chaired by Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), held its first hearing of the 115th Congress with a holistic examination of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). In her testimony, Meredith Attwell Baker, President and CEO at CTIA and former Acting Administrator at NTIA, discussed the importance of NTIA’s role moving forward, stating, “There are limited additional opportunities for the FCC to make more spectrum available on its own. That is why NTIA’s role is so important – more so than ever before. … In light of the extraordinary value of spectrum to private and public entities, NTIA must have the prominence and resources to perform its critical tasks.”

John M.R. Kneuer, President and Founder of JKC Consulting and former NTIA Administrator, noted NTIA’s role when it comes to cyber defense and security, commenting, “By providing the perspective of industry into the inter-agency process, NTIA can help bridge the gap between the executive branch interests with national and homeland security responsibilities and key private sector interests so that they all support our collective cyber-defenses."

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the February Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, February 23, 2017:

Universal Service Reform – Mobility Fund; Connect America Fund – The Commission will consider a Report and Order adopting rules to provide ongoing support targeted to preserve and advance high-speed mobile broadband and voice service in high-cost areas that the marketplace does not otherwise serve. (WT Docket No. 10-208, WC Docket No. 10-90)
Connect America Fund, ETC Annual Reports and Certifications – The Commission will consider a Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration that (1) resolves a number of issues raised in the Phase II Auction Order FNPRM, including the adoption of weights to compare bids among service performance and latency tiers, and (2) considers several petitions for reconsideration for decisions made in the Phase II Auction Order. (WC Docket Nos. 10-90, 14- 58)
Authorizing Permissive Use of the ‘Next Generation’ Broadcast Television Standard – The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that proposes to let television broadcasters use the “Next Generation” broadcast television transmission standard associated with recent work of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC 3.0) on a voluntary, market-driven basis. (GN Docket No. 16-142)
Revitalization of the AM Radio Service – The Commission will consider a Second Report and Order that would relax the siting rule for an FM fill-in translator rebroadcasting an AM broadcast station. (MB Docket No. 13-249)
Small Business Exemption From Open Internet Enhanced Reporting Requirements – The Commission will consider an Order granting a five-year waiver to broadband Internet access service providers with 250,000 or fewer broadband connections from the enhanced reporting requirements adopted in the 2015 Title II Order. (GN Docket No. 14-28)
Comprehensive Review of the Part 32 Uniform System of Accounts – The Commission will consider a Report and Order that would streamline and eliminate outdated accounting rules no longer needed to fulfill the Commission’s statutory or regulatory duties. (WC Docket No. 14- 130)

Verizon Communications announced it has completed the $1.8 billion purchase of XO Communications’ fiber-optic network business. Verizon’s purchase and integration of XO’s fiber network will help the company extend its suite of high-quality network services to its enterprise and wholesale customers. In addition, it will help the company in its plans to densify its cellular network, and to deploy new 5G technologies.

Integration of all XO operations and facilities is expected to commence immediately. The company expects to achieve significant synergies by incorporating XO’s fiber assets as part of its current network operations. Verizon anticipates the transaction will deliver in excess of $1.5 billion in operating and expense savings in net present value. In addition to the fiber transaction, Verizon has entered into an agreement to lease certain wireless spectrum from former XO affiliate NextLink Wireless. Verizon has an option, exercisable under certain circumstances, to buy NextLink.