The coronavirus is already exposing hard truths about the digital divide, but the Federal Communications Commission has the power to help. Nationwide this crisis means that we are going to explore the expansion of telework, telehealth, and tele-education. The FCC should immediately convene the country’s broadband providers to discuss what they are doing right now to provide service for Americans. We need to explore how we can facilitate public-private partnerships and consumer education campaigns to expand the reach of connectivity as quickly as possible at little or no-cost to Americans who are impacted by the coronavirus. Where data caps are in place, we need to explore how those limitations can be eliminated. We also need to understand how broadband providers will keep workers safe and keep their services running for Americans who will increasingly rely on broadband connectivity for work, healthcare, and education.

At the same time, the FCC should get to work to harness its universal service powers to meet this challenge. The FCC should work with health care providers to ensure connectivity for telehealth services are available for hospitals, doctors, and nurses treating coronavirus patients and those who are quarantined. In addition, as classrooms move online, the FCC should identify how it can use its authority to provide wi-fi hotspots for loan for students whose schools have closed their doors. We have an opportunity to confront this challenge head-on and we need to act with urgency.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai spoke with broadband companies and trade associations about ensuring Americans can remain connected to the internet as coronavirus spreads. Some of the ideas that came up in the talks included expanding discounted internet service tiers for low-income people, easing data limits and minimizing service interruptions for subscribers, one of the people said. The nation's internet service providers say they haven't seen big usage spikes yet, but the coming weeks and months could pose an unprecedented test of their networks' ability to withstand a massive and sustained surge in bandwidth needs. A wireless internet service provider that offers internet service to rural customers in Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming saw "holiday-level" usage this week, its chief executive said, and expects that to grow as schools shut down.

As schools and businesses ask people to stay home to reduce the spread of Covid-19 coronavirus, I wanted to share some thoughts about how I expect broadband Internet access networks will handle the change and increase in broadband traffic in residential areas. Our first reaction is that, as with so many areas with network effects, the rich will get richer. This is to say that historic inequities will be exacerbated — people that have been able to afford the high-quality networks will probably see very little disruption and those who have older networks may be effectively disconnected. Those on fiber optic networks probably won't notice major changes in demand. This is the easy one — it is why we have long believed that fiber optics should be the goal for the vast majority of Americans. Most modern cable networks should be also able to handle the demand — especially on the download end. In the upstream direction, the cable networks will have some challenges. Fixed Wireless networks will be all over the board. Urban and advanced fixed wireless networks will probably scale just fine. But in rural areas, many fixed wireless networks were constructed without the headroom for the expected increase in demand. DSL will be an unmitigated disaster in many places, especially where Frontier and Windstream are the monopoly. These networks may become unusable.

To enable social distancing, institutions including schools, governments, workplaces, and libraries are moving many of their daily functions online. The successes — and failures — of these efforts can tell us a lot about how tech policy is (or isn’t) working in America, and where it needs to go. The biggest hurdle is access to broadband at home. Without a stable connection, it’s difficult-to-impossible to work or attend classes remotely. And if your internet service provider can discriminate against certain kinds of traffic or services, teleworking and remote education software — from Zoom to bespoke remote connection setups — is completely at the mercy of your ISP. Plus, telehealth is increasingly understood not just as a way for people who are too far from a doctor to get help, but as a way for doctors to see more people quickly, and to reduce contamination risk. Vital, bandwidth-intensive services like telehealth shouldn’t need special deals with ISPs to avoid being throttled, or subject to discriminatory data caps. In short, the infrastructure has to be in place, it has to be affordable, and it has to be open.

Broadband availability data should improve with the March 10 passage of the Broadband DATA Act. The legislation now just awaits President Donald Trump’s signature before becoming law. Key provisions of the bill include:

• Requiring the Federal Communications Commission to collect granular service availability data from wired, fixed wireless, and satellite broadband providers.
• Establishing strong parameters for service availability data collected from mobile broadband providers to ensure accuracy.
• Permitting the FCC to consider whether to collect verified coverage data from state, local, and tribal governments, as well as from other entities.
• Creating a process for consumers; state, local, and tribal governments; and other groups to challenge FCC maps with their own data, and require the FCC to determine how to structure that process without making it overly burdensome on challengers.
• Establishing a crowdsourcing process that allows the public to participate in data collection.
• Strengthening enforcement against providers that knowingly or recklessly submit materially inaccurate broadband data.
• Requiring the FCC to use the newly-created maps when making new awards of broadband funding.

The Broadband DATA Act seems to reflect lessons learned from previous broadband data collection efforts. For example, the decision to strengthen enforcement against providers that submit inaccurate data likely stemmed from an embarrassing situation in 2019 when a small internet service provider over-reported the number of people to whom it could provide service by about two million – a reporting error that the FCC passed through into its annual broadband progress report. And the plan to establish strong parameters for service availability data likely stemmed from another embarrassing situation: The FCC proposed to cancel plans for a mobility fund that would have covered some of the costs of bringing LTE to unserved areas because it had no way of accurately determining target areas. Several carriers said their coverage was broader than it actually was – and a challenge process yielded similarly unreliable information.

As our country continues to manage the COVID-19 emergency, we recognize that our company plays an important role in helping our customers stay connected – to their families, their workplaces, their schools, and the latest information about the virus – through the Internet. We also know that for millions of low-income Americans who don’t have Internet service at home, this uncertain time is going to be even more difficult to manage. As schools and businesses close and families are encouraged, or even mandated, to stay home, Internet connectivity becomes even more important. Effective March 16, Internet Essentials is making two changes:

1. We will make it even easier for low-income families who live in a Comcast service area to sign up by offering new customers 60 days of complimentary Internet Essentials service, which is normally available to all qualified low-income households for $9.95/month.

2. Also, we are increasing Internet speeds for the Internet Essentials service from 15/2 Mbps to 25/3 Mbps for all new and existing customers, which will be the speed of the service going forward. In this way, we will ensure that Internet Essentials customers will be able to use their Internet service for all their increased needs as a result of this health crisis.

The Federal Communications Commission announced the conclusion of bidding in Auction 103, which made 3,400 megahertz of millimeter-wave spectrum available in the Upper 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands. The auction had a total of $7,558,703,201 in net bids, with 28 bidders winning a total of 14,142 of 14,144, or more than 99.9%, of available licenses. “The successful conclusion of Auction 103—the largest amount of spectrum offered in an auction in US history—is one more significant step the FCC has taken toward maintaining American leadership in 5G,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. “A critical part of our 5G FAST plan is pushing more spectrum into the commercial marketplace. [In 2019], the FCC auctioned the 28 GHz and 24 GHz bands. All told, those two auctions and this one have made available almost five gigahertz of high-band spectrum for commercial use. To put that in perspective, that is more spectrum than is currently used for terrestrial mobile broadband by all wireless service providers in the US combined. Auction 103 was a tremendous success, and we look forward to building on this positive result with the 3.5 GHz auction, which is scheduled to begin on June 25, and the C-band auction, which is scheduled to begin on Dec 8.”

Auction 103 offered licenses made available, in part, because existing 39 GHz licensees committed to relinquish their 39 GHz spectrum usage rights in exchange for incentive payments determined by the bidding in Auction 103. The incentive payments for existing licensees totaled $3,084,172,898, leaving net proceeds for the auction of $4,474,530,303.

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? Will they step up? One alternative would be for platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (all owned by Facebook), as well as video platforms such as YouTube (owned by Google), to quit exploiting our differences and deliver political messages just as broadcasters do: the same message to all. The social media companies could also offer free time to the major candidates for broadcast-to-all messages. Looking to social media to confront coronavirus’ impact on political discourse would require the companies to walk away from the formula that has made them rich. Since social media is largely unregulated, there is no government body that can require them to act in the public interest. The Federal Communications Commission should exercise its authority over broadcasting while also using the bully pulpit to encourage social media platforms to follow that lead.

[Tom Wheeler served as the 31st Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013-2017.]

Lawmakers are debating ways to prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation from abusing its surveillance authority again. While they’re at it, they have an obligation to address their own privacy transgressor, Rep. Adam Schiff. That’s the gist of a pointed letter from Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, which landed at the House Intelligence Committee. Chairman Schiff spent months conducting secret impeachment hearings. His ensuing report revealed that he’d also set up his own surveillance state. Rep Schiff issued secret subpoenas to phone carriers, to obtain and publish the call records of political rivals. Targets included Rudy Giuliani and another attorney of the president, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee (Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)) and a journalist (John Solomon). Impeachment is over, but Commissioner Carr hasn’t forgotten this abuse of power, and his letter calls for answers and reform.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai maintains that the Trump administration hasn’t sought to exert its will over the decision-making of the commission, an independent agency not subject to executive command. “Not the case,” Chairman Pai told the House Appropriators Committee during a hearing. That’s apparently despite President Donald Trump occasionally reaching out to the agency chief, as he did in 2019 on a coming C-band airwaves auction. The Senate Commerce Committee, meanwhile, heard from Chase Johnson, the administration’s nominee for FCC inspector general, during another hearing. Johnson told lawmakers he expects that the hardest part of the job will be “prioritization [of] investigations” and to “intelligently pick where you use your resources.” Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) warned “it could potentially get tense with Chairman Pai,” and Johnson said the key will be doing “work that is unimpeachable.” Johnson will require a Senate vote before assuming the IG post.