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- FCC To Deny Public Knowledge Petition, Permit Carriers Blocking Political Text Messages | Public Knowledge
- The FCC’s plan to fight spam texts could give phone companies more power over messaging | Vox
FCC Announces Agenda & Participants For Articifial Intelligence Forum | Federal Communications Commission
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What will wake America up from its Thanksgiving day food coma? Here's the Federal Communications Commission’s December 2018 open meeting agenda:
- An order that would enable the FCC to move forward with an auction of the Upper 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands by the end of 2019.
- We’re making the Universal Service Fund a more efficient, effective way of distributing funding to close the digital divide by: First, we’re working to promote efficiency by moving away from simply telling rate-of-return carriers what their allowable costs and return on investment will be and toward setting broad goals for deployment and rewarding companies for being efficient in meeting those goals (what’s called an “incentive-based” model). Specifically, we’re offering rate-of-return carriers another opportunity to opt in to model-based support, which would give them a guaranteed revenue stream for a decade in exchange for meeting specified buildout requirements. Second, we’re ensuring support is sufficient by offering additional funding to carriers that currently receive model-based support and who agree to meet increased buildout requirements. We’re also increasing funding for carriers who do not receive model-based support. Third, we’re recognizing that rural Americans need and deserved high-quality services by increasing the target speeds for subsidized deployments from 10/1 Mbps to 25/3 Mbps. And fourth, we’re making the program more predictable by setting a new long-term budget for rate-of-return carriers who choose not to opt in to model-based support and ending arbitrary funding cuts.
- The FCC will vote on new rules to establish a single, comprehensive database that will contain reassigned number information from each provider that obtains phone numbers for use in America — specifically, North American Numbering Plan (NANP) US geographic numbers. The database will enable any caller to verify whether a telephone number has been reassigned before calling that number. These rules would reduce the number of unwanted calls consumers receive and enable businesses to make sure they are not wasting your — or their — time.
- A Declaratory Ruling that would instead classify wireless messaging as an “information service.” Aside from being a more legally sound approach, this decision would keep the floodgates to a torrent of spam texts closed, remove regulatory uncertainty, and empower providers to continue finding innovative ways to protect consumers from unwanted text messages.
- The 2018 Quadrennial Review, as it’s called, will begin with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking which seeks public input on the relevant rules, such as the Local Radio Ownership Rule, as well as several diversity-related proposals.
- An order to eliminate certain rules that require broadcast licensees to maintain and display copies of their licenses and other related materials in specific locations, such as at their transmitter sites. Now that licensing information is readily accessible online through the FCC’s databases, these rules are redundant and obsolete.
- The Communications Marketplace Report places essential information about mobile wireless, video, audio, wireline broadband, voice telephony, satellite, broadband deployment, and international broadband all in one place.
The Federal Communications Commission is planning to raise the rural broadband standard from 10Mbps to 25Mbps in a move that would require faster Internet speeds in certain government-subsidized networks. The FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF) distributes more than $1.5 billion a year to AT&T, CenturyLink, and other carriers to bring broadband to sparsely populated areas. Carriers that use CAF money to build networks must provide speeds of at least 10Mbps for downloads and 1Mbps for uploads. The minimum speed requirement was last raised in Dec 2014.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he's proposing raising that standard from 10Mbps/1Mbps to 25Mbps/3Mbps. "[W]'re recognizing that rural Americans need and deserve high-quality services by increasing the target speeds for subsidized deployments from 10/1 Mbps to 25/3 Mbps," Chairman Pai wrote. "[T]he program should support high-quality services; rural Americans deserve services that are comparable to those in urban areas." CAF (also known as the "high-cost program") is part of the Universal Service Fund, which is paid for by Americans through fees on their phone bills. The new 25Mbps/3Mbps standard will apply to future projects but won't necessarily apply to broadband projects that are already receiving funding. For ongoing projects, the FCC will use incentives to try to raise speeds. More money will be offered to carriers that agree to upgrade speeds to 25Mbps/3Mbps.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai proposed measures to reduce unwanted robocalls and prevent spam text messaging. First, he is calling on his fellow Commissioners to approve a reassigned number database. This database would help legitimate callers know whether telephone numbers have been reassigned to somebody else before calling those numbers so they can direct their calls to parties who asked for them rather than individuals who have subsequently obtained those reassigned numbers. Second, he is proposing to make clear that wireless providers are authorized to take measures to stop unwanted text messaging through robotext-blocking, antispoofing measures, and other anti-spam features. The draft Declaratory Ruling on text messaging would formally rule that text-messaging services are information services, not telecommunications services, thus allowing carriers to continue using robotext-blocking and anti-spoofing measures to protect consumers from unwanted text messages. This Declaratory Ruling would rule on a 2015 petition from masstexting provider Twilio and a 2007 petition from Public Knowledge. The reassigned numbers proposal would establish new rules in order to launch a database of reassigned numbers. This would help prevent accidental robocalls to numbers that are no longer assigned to consumers who signed up to receive those calls.
Today there are nearly 900 rural co-ops still providing their communities with electricity. A DIY success story! Now history repeats itself—with broadband. Thirty-nine percent of rural Americans had no access to home broadband in 2016 (compared with 4 percent of folks in urban areas), because big telcos say it’s too expensive to build affordable fiber-optic broadband in the countryside. Residents have to make do with dialup or Wi-Fi from a library. So co-ops are solving the problem again.
Verizon and the City of Boston (MA) signed updated agreements to accelerate Boston’s plan to be one of the most technologically advanced cities in the nation. Building on the relationship formed in 2016, Verizon will expand its local wireless network, bring Fios Internet and TV to the city’s remaining neighborhoods not covered in the original franchise agreement, and collaborate with Boston on Smart Communities solutions. The company also announced further plans regarding its long-term lease of more than 450,000 square feet for its technology workforce at The Hub on Causeway. These new wireless network enhancements will double Verizon’s original $300 million investment focused on building a 100% fiber-optic network across Boston announced in 2016. Other highlights include:
- Accelerated small cell network deployment to significantly enhance 4G LTE wireless coverage; lays foundation for future 5G network
- Fios fiber network expansion to remaining Boston neighborhoods
- $1 million donation to the Boston Digital Equity Fund
Democratic group Priorities USA is trying to improve the way Democrats compete digitally in elections. In addition to spending about $50 million on digital ads this cycle, the group ran experiments behind the scenes to create a new playbook for liberal groups as they rush to catch up with GOP advantages online. The goal was to bridge the gap with Republican campaigns, which have spent a higher percentage of their election money online in recent cycles. While Democrats narrowed the gap this cycle, Democrats still believe they were outspent digitally — even in a year when Democratic money flooded the political system. An analysis by Priorities of outside groups estimated that Democrats spent $86 million online this cycle, compared to $115 million for Republicans.
What does the Federal Trade Commission need to grapple with a force like Facebook?
- Fundamentally, the FTC needs privacy authority that extends beyond deception or murky unfairness to accord companies’ data practices with consumer preferences and reasonable expectations. The net result should be that Facebook collects a lot less about what its users do off of the service.
- Any new privacy statute will be relatively high level, so the FTC must also be given the authority to promulgate clarifying rules to adapt to evolving technology and business practices. In order to provide more certainty for both companies and consumers, the FTC should have the same rulemaking capacity possessed by other government agencies.
- Stronger enforcement will play a key role as well — and the FTC should be given the ability to obtain civil penalties (and for all violations of Section 5 while we’re at it).
- Finally, the FTC needs a massive infusion of staff and budget to support its mission.
[Justin Brookman is the Director, Consumer Privacy and Technology Policy, for Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports.]
Both companies have long preferred to be vague on the details of their arrangement in which Google pays Apple to be the default search engine on its Safari internet browser. Some $4 billion a year is the most conservative view among analysts who have taken a stab at estimating these payments. Rod Hall of Goldman Sachs believes the true number is closer to $9 billion. Whatever the exact figure, it is a lot considering that Apple CEO Tim Cook frequently likes to criticize the advertising-driven business models of his Silicon Valley neighbors. The implication that Apple takes Google’s money with one hand while making the internet giant’s life harder with the other is an interesting one. Google still seems to deem the relationship valuable enough to keep paying up. The company has cited “changes in partner agreements” as the main reason its distribution traffic acquisition costs have jumped 45% so far in 2018. For Google, something in this deal still clicks.
When Winterset (IA) Community Schools launched its one-to-one device program, staff celebrated the milestone. But then parents and students began to complain that they didn’t have sufficient Wi-Fi at home to access the online assignments students were expected to complete after school hours. They had Chromebooks, but no connection.“And we said, ‘That’s not acceptable here. We’ve got to figure out a way to fix that,’” said Susie Meade, the superintendent of Winterset Community Schools. As she began thinking about ways to help Winterset students get home internet access, Meade recalled hearing about a district that had tapped local businesses to allow students to come in after school hours and use their Wi-Fi for free. “And I thought, ‘Well, we could do that,’” she says. More than a dozen businesses—coffee shops, restaurants, bakeries, bookstores, libraries and grocery stores, to name a few—opened their doors to students. Next, she found a graphic design agency that created and printed window decals for the businesses to display for students. The decal features Winterset’s logo and school colors—black and yellow—and says “Wi-Fi” in big, bold letters. Since the Oct 2017 launch, Meade has had no parents complain or share with her that their kids don't have access at home.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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