Op-Ed

[Commentary] For years politicians (both Republicans and Democrats), regulators, telecom providers, and just about anyone who uses a cellular phone or Wi-Fi have been saying that the US needs more radio spectrum for commercial two-way communications. Steps are being taken — for example, the Federal Communications Commission conducted an incentive auction to move radio spectrum from broadcasting to two-way communications. Another strategy would be to loosen regulatory controls on radio spectrum markets.

Current practice is a “rights to use” model. Since licensing is really about managing interference, licenses could deal with this directly with something like a “rights to interfere and rights to not be interfered with” approach. Company A’s license could read something like: “Don’t cause more than X interference in radio spectrum bands Y and Z without the agreement of Companies B and C.” So as long as A, B, and C are happy, the FCC would be happy, too.

[Mark Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.]

[Commentary] At first glance, tomorrow’s Open Meeting at the Federal Communications Commission seems rather mundane — particularly after last summer’s high-profile internet freedom proceeding. But hidden among the seven items on the agenda is an intriguing proposal to reform the way the Commission allocates toll-free numbers. While the issue is not as sexy as internet freedom, the proposal is intriguing because it embraces a market-based solution to a problem that has long vexed the agency — a solution that (in another context) Nobel laureate Ronald Coase suggested almost a half-century ago.

The Commission’s decision to adopt a market solution to the similar problem of allocating toll-free numbers shows how far it has moved in Coase’s direction. While more work remains to be done, market-oriented reforms have helped make the communications marketplace industry more efficient and more innovative, which ultimately benefits the American public. The toll-free number modernization proposal is another, momentous reform in the right direction.

[Daniel Lyons is an associate professor at Boston College Law School]

[Commentary] In April 2016, Verizon told Boston it was going to be spending $300 million to deploy FiOS, their wireline Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTP) service, to the entire city over the next six years. Unfortunately, what Verizon’s CEO told investors on September 13th, 2017, shows it has deceived the citizens of Boston and harmed Massachusetts.

[Bruce Kushnick is executive director of New Networks Institute]

[Commentary] It is more important than ever that we have accurate data on how broadband is deployed across the country. Yet many consider the Federal Communications Commission’s existing data to be inaccurate and unreliable.

With the FCC now having launched its 13th annual inquiry into the status of broadband deployment in America, it’s time to recognize we won’t get better deployment data from the commission until we take the politics out of broadband progress reports. While the vast majority of FCC staff are low-level, nonpartisan bureaucrats, bureau chiefs and the commissioners themselves are political appointees. Even without the threat of at-will removal, these appointees remain under strong pressure to toe the party line and adopt policies favored by the politicians who appointed them. Whether or not appointees are consciously aware of such political influence, recent FCC actions reflect an increasingly partisan agenda. If we want our telecom regulator to deliver accurate reports about the state of broadband deployment, we need to take the politics out of broadband progress reports. This means removing the “finding” from Section 706 that triggers further commission action and authority.

As Congress considers further telecom legislation — in the context of FCC reauthorization, net neutrality or a full-scale update to the Communications Act — it should re-examine Section 706 and consider implementing this fix. Maybe then we could finally trust the numbers the technocrats deliver.

[Tom Struble is a technology policy manager with the R Street Institute, a free market think tank]

[Commentary] Politicians, in theory, are supposed to be responsive to public outcry. When faced with an avalanche of blast emails from angry constituents, therefore, legislators generally are moved to act. In contrast, independent regulatory agencies are supposed to be (but admittedly often are not) apolitical and immune from such pressure. While it is true that administrative agencies must subject their actions to “public notice and comment” under the Administrative Procedure Act, regulatory agencies should not promulgate rules and regulations based upon the vox populi; rather, these agencies are charged with dispassionately implementing their respective enabling statutes as delineated by Congress based upon the plain text of the statute, the case law interpreting that statute, the economics, and the substantive record before them. If they fail in that task, then administrative agencies can be reprimanded by an appellate court for engaging in arbitrary and capricious behavior or, in very rare cases, be subject to congressional rebuke via the Congressional Review Act. If you want to rant, then have at it on Twitter. But if you want to file something in an official record and meaningfully participate in the regulatory process, then perhaps a few guidelines should apply.

[Spiwak is the president of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies]

[Commentary] For 23.4 million rural Americans – roughly the population of New York City and Los Angeles and Chicago and Houston and Philadelphia and Phoenix and San Antonio and San Diego, combined –access to quality broadband internet remains out of reach. We need innovative solutions to bridge this gap and bring broadband access to rural America.

Until now, the biggest hurdle to expanding rural broadband access has been the cost- and resource- prohibitive nature of building out wired connectivity in remote areas with small populations. However, attention has shifted to an innovative new concept that leverages a resource that we already have. A resource that has been patiently waiting to be used: TV white spaces (TVWS). These so-called white spaces are large blocks of spectrum that were designed as buffer spaces between television channels. Today, these spaces remain available and unused by traditional broadcast TV stations. Innovation and infrastructure are expensive. But innovation for the sake of rural broadband - through an available, unused resource that helps talented Americans fulfill their potential - is worth every penny.

[Yack is the Chief Operations Officer at Colorado Technology Consultants]

[Commentary] The more people learn about the frenzied Big Media-Wall Street rush to consolidate our communications ecosystem into a playground for monopolists-on-the-make, the more they dislike what they see. For example, a recent poll shows two-thirds of us are opposed to competition-busting transactions like AT&T and Time Warner, almost equally divided among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Less well-known until recently is the Sinclair-Tribune proposal currently pending at the Federal Communications Commission. Sinclair is already publicly bragging that it will get the FCC nod of approval in the months just ahead. I have called Sinclair “the most dangerous company most Americans have never heard of.” Already the country’s largest local TV station owner (173 stations now, 215 post-merger), Sinclair has an insatiable appetite for more.
[Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps joined Common Cause to lead its Media and Democracy Reform Initiative]

[Commentary] Current Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has recently proposed creating a Bureau of Economics and Data. I have no small amount of instinctive sympathy for his proposal, having myself been part of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s then-new Economic Policy Office, now called the Economic Analysis Group, at the beginning of my career. The Office’s goal was to preserve the ability of economists to make policy calls apart from pressures from the lawyers to evaluate cases on the basis of courtroom success.

Nevertheless, while Chairman Pai’s interest in forming a similar organization within the FCC is understandable, as is the support his proposal has received, I do not believe that a such an office of economics is the right fix for the FCC, and may do more harm than good.

[Tim Brennan is a professor of Public Policy and Economics and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He recently served as Chief Economist at the FCC.]

[Commentary] Every day a new front emerges in Big Tech’s battle against fake news. Signs of trouble reared their head during the election, when hyper-partisan misinformation began materializing on Facebook. Months later it became known that many of these sites had been weaponized in a larger misinformation campaign spearheaded by external players, including the Russian government.

While they make head nods toward trying to fix the misinformation problem, the tech giants refuse to own up to these issues–citing the privacy of their clients and their own proprietary ad systems. While it may seem noble that the big tech companies are taking up the charge, their current attempts will likely produce little effect. The problem rests in the very advertising systems these companies created. No amount of content tagging or ad category de-incentivizing is going to stop the beast unless a bigger upheaval begins to take root.

[Cale is a Brooklyn-based reporter.]

[Commentary] During her news briefings the week of Sept 11, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has repeatedly suggested that former FBI director James B. Comey may have broken the law and should be investigated. To be clear, this “prosecution from the lectern” is not illegal. It’s probably a sign of the times that it doesn’t even seem particularly surprising. But it should be deeply disturbing.

The president, of course, is the head of the executive branch and the attorney general’s boss. But when it comes to criminal prosecution, there is a long-standing norm of Justice Department independence. Presidents typically don’t interfere with or comment on criminal investigations. This norm is central to our commitment to the rule of law. It reduces the danger that criminal prosecution may be used for political ends. Presidents typically avoid even the appearance of using the justice system to punish political foes or help political allies. That’s banana-republic stuff — it’s not supposed to happen here. Sanders’s accusations from the lectern are simply one symptom of a much larger problem. Anyone who cares about the integrity of the criminal justice system has reason to be concerned by the behavior of this administration.

[Randall D. Eliason teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School.]