Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Headlines Daily Digest
New Benton Research Groups To Tackle Critical Broadband Questions
Don't Miss:
Why Leading with Digital Equity Matters
Harold Furchtgott-Roth: Don't Renew the FCC's Failed COVID Subsidy
Congress owes it to Americans to fund the Affordable Connectivity Program
Digital Equity
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Sample Category
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Congress is considering new, non-emergency spending programs that would exacerbate the federal deficit. Some of these programs have a demonstrable history of not working as intended or espoused. Consider the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The program is scheduled to end soon. With the support of the White House, a $7 billion spending bill has been introduced in the Senate to provide additional funding for ACP through the end of the year. Before the COVID pandemic, the rollout of broadband service in America was widely viewed as a success and largely achieved without federally-appropriated funds. That perception changed with COVID. Initially passed in 2021, ACP had a budget of $3.7 billion to help families, often confined to their homes, pay for broadband connections during the COVID pandemic. Our broadband networks were built with private funds and services are eagerly purchased with private funds. To believe in the necessity of ACP is to believe in the myth that the private sector has failed, and that, consequently, the American economic experiment has failed.
[Harold Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Kirk Arner is a legal fellow at the Hudson Institute.]
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During the Covid pandemic, there was concern that some households would lose internet access. In the end-of-the-year omnibus spending bill in 2020, Congress created the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program (EBBP). The EBBP was temporary at first, but of course, government programs don’t stay temporary. It was made into a non-emergency program in the bipartisan infrastructure law in the summer of 2021. The name was changed to the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). There was no broadband emergency. But Congress invented one to create a new welfare program whereby the federal government pays the internet bill for millions of households. Now, over 20 million households are enrolled in the ACP. For most of them, the $30 per month subsidy covers all or most of the household’s internet bill. The ACP is set to run out of funding in April, and Congress should let it. It’s a bad program that deserves to die.
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Members of the Communications Workers of America—who build, maintain and support our nation’s communications infrastructure—have seen firsthand the need for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) in our cities, suburbs and rural areas. We are committed to ensuring equitable access to reliable high-speed internet service and ensuring that the $65 billion investment in broadband buildout from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) fulfills the “jobs” part of this critical legislation. That means creating good jobs for workers across states throughout the country, with fair wages and benefits that will lift up more families. Besides being a lifeline for low-income households, the ACP is key to the success of the IIJA’s broadband investments. As providers evaluate building connections in unserved and underserved areas, they consider the economics of ongoing service to that area. If more Americans can afford internet service, there is more reason to build out to those areas—and more good jobs created to build and support new connections. But without the ACP, internet service providers will have less incentive to build high-speed broadband in areas that need it most—and we put at risk the IIJA’s historic investment in closing the digital divide. Frankly put, it would be a massive mistake to curtail the very program that is helping to make broadband universally affordable at a time when cost is one of the biggest barriers facing households across the nation.
[Claude Cummings Jr. is president of the Communications Workers of America.]
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This Digital Equity Plan for Older Adults and People with Disabilities in San Francisco details an extensive investigative and strategic planning process aimed at enhancing digital equity for San Francisco's older adults and people with disabilities. The primary goals of this Plan are to describe the digital equity barriers and needs of San Francisco's older adults and people with disabilities, as well as the organizations that serve them. The broader vision underpinning these goals is to ensure that these populations have full and equitable access to digital technology and its benefits, allowing them to participate and thrive in the City’s connected community.
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In the wake of the FCC's December decision to change its rules on pole attachments, industry groups and utility companies are continuing to give their input. The proposed reforms, detailed in the Commission's third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, aim to streamline dispute resolution processes and enhance transparency to facilitate the expansion of broadband infrastructure. The FCC also requested feedback on its proposal. While many support the reform broadly, both industry groups (comprising telephone companies and cable companies) and utility companies (often the pole owners) submitted recommendations to the Commission this week regarding its proposed rule changes around large pole attachment orders, self-help and use of contractors, among other things.
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Maine is the first state in the country to have its Digital Equity Plan approved by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). This is a major accomplishment in that this represents the first statewide Digital Equity Plan to ever be developed for our state (and the first tied to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—also known as Bipartisan Infrastructure Law). And, it is fitting that our Digital Equity Plan can now be put into motion ahead of any infrastructure deployed through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Digital equity is at the root of our foundation and at the peak of our roofline. And make no mistake, the structure of our building is not made up of two separate pillars: digital equity and digital infrastructure. Our building is constructed (using trusses sourced from Maine woods) with interconnected digital equity and digital infrastructure nodes. One cannot support the structure without the other. We need a digital equity lens in our policies, programs, and practices, to sustain the surge of infrastructure investment we will soon receive.
[Maggie Drummond Bahl - Director of Strategic Partnerships, Maine Connectivity Authority; Jenna Ingram - Communications Manager, Maine Connectivity Authority; Andrew Butcher - President, Maine Connectivity Authority]
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The $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program is top of mind right now, as states kick off their challenge process to figure out which locations need to be covered by BEAD projects. Tarana Wireless hosted a webinar to address questions for internet service providers. Gabriel Moran, government affairs and policy associate at Tarana, said a lot of the discussion surrounding the BEAD program has “overlooked and sometimes [misunderstood] the significance of the steps that make up the pre-bid process.” Moran explained in the conversations Tarana’s had with provider, “many folks have indicated they do not intend to submit project bid applications as part of the BEAD program.” Moran said that this is understandable, but that providers should still participate in the BEAD challenge process, calling it an opportunity “to help prevent any sort of BEAD overbuild from threatening [a provider's] network. It’s also an opportunity for provider “to capitalize on offensive growth opportunities that frankly, may no longer exist after the BEAD program is finished.”
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The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society announced two new fellowship cohorts for our Marjorie & Charles Benton Opportunity Fund. The Equitable Broadband in Urban America Research Group and the Policies, Plans, and Promises Research Group bring together researchers to work independently, but collaboratively on pressing broadband issues. We are excited about a research group model. We want to support not just the work these fellows will do but also help create a space where these talented researchers can share approaches and insights, building a community of practice. The Equitable Broadband in Urban America Research Group is a multi-city, multi-methods project that will offer actionable insights into how broadband in urban America can be improved and how state and federal policymakers, local governments, and digital equity champions can continue to build digital equity in these communities. With funding made available through BEAD and the Digital Equity Act, the federal government has charged states with leading the work of crafting plans to make those investments a reality. The Policies, Plans, and Promises Research Group will conduct comparative policy analyses to understand how states are approaching specific issues critical to ensuring equitable broadband.
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At the Munich Security Conference, leading technology companies pledged to help prevent deceptive AI content from interfering with the 2024 global elections in which more than four billion people in over 40 countries will vote. The “Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections” is a set of commitments to deploy technology countering harmful AI-generated content meant to deceive voters. Signatories pledge to work collaboratively on tools to detect and address online distribution of such AI content, drive educational campaigns, and provide transparency, among other concrete steps. Participating companies agreed to eight specific commitments:
- Prevention: Researching, investing in, and/or deploying reasonable precautions to limit risks of deliberately Deceptive AI Election Content being generated.
- Provenance: Attaching provenance signals to identify the origin of content where appropriate and technically feasible.
- Detection: Attempting to detect Deceptive AI Election Content or authenticated content, including with methods such as reading provenance signals across platforms.
- Responsive Protection: Providing swift and proportionate responses to incidents involving the creation and dissemination of Deceptive AI Election Content.
- Evaluation: Undertaking collective efforts to evaluate and learn from the experiences and outcomes of dealing with Deceptive AI Election Content.
- Public Awareness: Engaging in shared efforts to educate the public about media literacy best practices, in particular regarding Deceptive AI Election Content, and ways citizens can protect themselves from being manipulated or deceived by this content.
- Resilience: Supporting efforts to develop and make available defensive tools and resources, such as AI literacy and other public programs, AI-based solutions (including open-source tools where appropriate), or contextual features, to help protect public debate, defend the integrity of the democratic process, and build whole-of-society resilience against the use of Deceptive AI Election Content.
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The good news is UScellular ended 2023 with 114,000 fixed wireless access (FWA) customers. The bad news? The company lost about 53,000 postpaid phone customers, exacerbating a string of previous losses. Besides competing with the Big 3 mobile carriers, UScellular, a regional wireless carrier, is grappling with the rise of cable companies in wireless. “The thing that has driven the slowdown in gross adds is a pretty simple equation and it’s been the expansion and rise of the cable wireless players,” UScellular President and CEO Laurent Therivel said. A few years ago, cable had essentially zero market share in UScellular’s markets. It now sees cable competing in about two-thirds of its footprint. And while the wireless market share of the cable companies—led by Comcast and Charter Communications—is still only about 3 to 4 percent, their share of the gross adds is a lot larger.
The United States, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom Announce Extension of Agreement on the Transition from Existing Digital Services Taxes to New Multilateral Solution Agreed by the G20/OECD Inclusive Framework
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On October 8, 2021, a historic agreement was reached between over 130 countries of the G20/OECD Inclusive Framework on a two Pillar package of reforms to the international tax framework.In support of that agreement, in a joint statement on October 21, 2021, the United States, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom announced the terms of a political compromise on the transition from existing Digital Services Taxes to the new multilateral solution and to continuing discussions on this matter through constructive dialogue. In light of the continuing multilateral negotiations at the G20/OECD Inclusive Framework, and consistent with our continued commitment to working together to reach consensus, the United States, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom have announced an extension of the political compromise set forth in the October 21, 2021 joint statement through June 30, 2024 consistent with the revised timeline.
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), Grace Tepper (grace AT benton DOT org), and Zoe Walker (zwalker AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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