Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council Asks Trump Team to Protect Free Data Plans

The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC) has given the President-elect Donald Trump transition team a to-do list of 12 telecommunication priorities for creating a more diverse media in terms of access, ownership, participation and procurement. In a memorandum to the Trump team, MMTC made the following asks:

1. Appoint and support Federal Communications Commission leadership that integrates diversity and inclusion into the regulatory rulemaking and public engagement processes.
2. Preserve the FCC’s Lifeline program and improve it to enhance marketplace competition and increase the number of eligible program participants.
3. Maintain free data programs that can preserve the affordability of mobile services, especially for economically vulnerable populations who are extremely sensitive to data costs.
4. Provide for multilingual emergency information in all radio markets.
5. Ban geographic redlining in broadband deployment to ensure ubiquitous access for all communities.
6. Engage the multi-stakeholder process to enhance consumer privacy and counter 'applications redlining in the online marketplace.
7. Work with State Public Utility Commissions and the FCC to ban predatory intrastate and interstate telephone rates charged to prisoners and their families.
8. Engage the FCC and the Department of Labor to address employment discrimination in all communications industries and, especially, the dismal EEO record of the high tech industry.
9. Extend FCC equal procurement opportunity enforcement to all regulatory platforms, and engage the General Accounting Office to ensure that federal agencies and departments consider diversity in procurement when choosing suppliers.
10. Encourage the FCC to adopt an Overcoming Disadvantages Preference that would define eligible entities for competitive authorizations and thereby increase ownership diversity.
11. Incentivize Secondary Market Transactions in commercial wireless spectrum by using tax incentives, auction bidding credits and other measures.
12. Create a 'Glide Path' for the Short-Term Survival and Long-Term Humane Decommissioning of the AM Band in a Manner that Preserves Minority Ownership.