Tom Wheeler

The rapid pace of digital technology means companies can move rapidly to advantage themselves by exploiting consumers and eliminating potential competition. Congress has traditionally created new expert agencies to oversee new technology platforms. Whether the Interstate Commerce Commission (railroads), Federal Communications Commission (broadcasting), Federal Aviation Administration (air transport), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (finance), or any other of the alphabet agencies, the precedent is clear: new technologies require specialized oversight.

America’s broadband providers have stepped up with the ‘K-12 Bridge to Broadband” to help meet the needs of millions of low-income American students who are unable to get on the internet so they can go to class from home. The new program will do two things the Trump Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has failed to do. First, it will identify households with students that have broadband passing their door but have chosen not to subscribe.

There are almost three times as many Americans without a broadband subscription in blue urban areas than in red state rural areas. The Trump Federal Communications Commission, by focusing its attention on rural areas with a lack of access (i.e., those unable to get broadband) is dealing with only part of the digital divide. The larger part of the digital divide is adoption; those Americans who may have broadband available, but don’t or can’t use it. Here are three solutions the Trump FCC could pursue if they really were dedicated to making the digital divide their “number one priority.”

The digital marketplace is wide-reaching, complicated and self-reinforcing. The systems developed to oversee an earlier time are burdened by industrial era statutes and decades of precedent that render them insufficient for the digital present. In the absence of federal oversight, the dominant digital companies have made their own rules and imposed them on consumers and the market. Just as industrial capitalism operated—and thrived—under public interest obligations, so should internet capitalism be grounded in public interest expectations.

It was the “Wizard of Oz” in digital format as the four titans of Big Tech testified via video before the House Antitrust Subcommittee. Just like in the movie, what the subcommittee saw was controlled by a force hidden from view. The wizard in this case—the reason these four companies are so powerful—is the math that takes our private information and turns it into their corporate asset. It is the 21st century equivalent of Rockefeller’s 20th century monopoly over oil. Unlike industrial assets such as oil, data is reusable. Data is also iterative, as its use in a product creates new data.

“I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about,” President Donald Trump said in a 2020 Oval Office exchange. One of those powers is his authority to shut down radio, television, both wireless and wired phone networks, and the internet. It is not a big step from using the power of the government to threaten free expression to actually doing something to curtail that expression. All it takes is a unilateral “proclamation by the President” of the existence of a “national emergency.”

We have incorporated the internet as a critical part of our personal and professional lives. This is not going to change. The COVID-19 crisis has sped us forward to a paradigm shift in which we rely on the internet to bring economic and social activity to us—rather than us going to them. Yet, tens of millions of Americans do not have access to or cannot afford quality internet service. The United States has an internet access problem, especially in rural areas. The existing program to extend broadband has become a corporate entitlement for incumbent telephone companies.

The connectivity and services built by information capitalists have become too important to be left any longer without public participation in determining the rules they follow. Critical nature of these digital services warrants public interest representation in decisions about their practices. Here are four ideas to incorporate public participation in establishing the rules for the critical services of the information era:

Between Jan 29 (shortly after COVID-19 appeared in the US) and March 26 there was a 105% spike in people active online at home between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm. So why hasn’t the internet ground to a halt? The answer lies in the lessons of Mother’s Day and freeway traffic jams.

If we have to suspend or otherwise modify political campaigning because of coronavirus, social media will become even more important and the fissures it creates even more painful. We should expect the platform companies such as Facebook and Google to step up to this national emergency—but can we?