Friday, May 24, 2019
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The Digital Divide Could Hurt the Count of Latinos in the Census
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Broadband Monopolies Are Acting Like Old Phone Monopolies
Republicans make alleged conservative bias top priority at election security hearing
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The 2020 Census is different from past surveys in two important ways. It is the first time that the Census Bureau will offer an online response option, and could be the first time in decades that a question about respondents’ citizenship will appear. The National Latino Commission on Census 2020 and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials released a report that explores the challenges posed by the intersection of these new factors. Though the online response option is meant to make it easier to respond to the Census, leaders of the Latino community are skeptical that it will achieve its goals. The report says the focus on online participation will likely “depress the response rate of immigrants—Latinos in particular—as well as of the elderly and rural residents.”
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai visited East Central Electric Cooperative in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, to discuss how a recent FCC investment will help connect rural Oklahomans to high-speed internet service. East Central is receiving $22.2 million to deploy gigabit connections to over 7,700 locations in rural Oklahoma. “I’m pleased that East Central Electric Coop will help close that divide by using FCC support to connect rural Oklahomans,” said Chairman Pai. “Gigabit-speed connections will give Oklahoma residents and small businesses all the economic and social benefits of broadband, such as telemedicine, precision agriculture, online education, and entrepreneurship.”
“We’re honored to host Chairman Pai at the cooperative to share how we are bringing broadband to our member-consumers because of the funds awarded through the recent Connect America Fund auction held by the FCC,” said Tim Smith, General Manager of East Central Oklahoma Electric Cooperative.
Reps. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and Collin Peterson (D-MN) introduced the Rural Broadband Network Advancement (RBNA) Act, which would invest in expanding broadband access in rural areas. The bill would establish a new program at the Federal Communications Commission that would collect Network User Fees from edge providers (Netflix, AmazonVideo, etc.) based on the data transported over the last mile of networks. User fees would then be invested by the rural broadband providers to help build, maintain and operate robust broadband networks in high-cost rural areas. All rural broadband providers would be eligible for the program if they provide broadband access in high-cost rural areas to fewer than 100,000 customers within a state and provide the speeds required by the FCC.
The million-plus veterans who live in rural America without broadband at home are the target of a new program. Microsoft and its partners will work with the Department of Veteran Affairs to provide “capital, technology expertise and training resources” to bring broadband access to underserved rural communities with veterans in need. Microsoft has devoted considerable attention to rural broadband and the new program joins at least two other ongoing Microsoft rural broadband programs. Veterans in target communities are “facing higher rates of unemployment, longer drives to reach the nearest clinics and medical centers and lower levels of educational attainment compared to their urban counterparts,” said Microsoft Head of Technology and Corporate Responsibility Shelley McKinley. “Connectivity has the potential to improve this reality.”
Broadband Monopolies Are Acting Like Old Phone Monopolies. Good Thing Solutions to That Problem Already Exist
The future of competition in high-speed broadband access looks bleak. A vast majority of homes only have their cable monopoly as their choice for speeds in excess of 100 mbps and small ISPs and local governments are carrying the heavy load of deploying fiber networks that surpass gigabit cable networks. Research now shows that these new monopolies have striking similarities to the telephone monopolies of old. But we don’t have to repeat the past; we’ve already seen how laws promoted competition and broke monopolies. In the United States, high-speed fiber deployment is low and slow. EFF decided to look into this problem, and we now have a research report by the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic (TLPC) on behalf of EFF that details the history of our telecom competition policies, why they came into existence with the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and the Federal Communications Commission’s mistakes—starting in 2005—that eroded the law and has given us a high-speed broadband access monopoly that disproportionately impacts low income and rural Americans.
The Senate passed the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act (S 151) by a 97-1 vote. The bill would give the Federal Communications Commission civil fining authority of up to $10,000 per call for those who "intentionally flout" telemarketing restrictions. That could add up given that, by some estimates, spam calls make up over 40% of all calls. The legislation would also give regulators more time to find scammers, increase penalties for those who are caught, promote call authentication and blocking, and help coordinate enforcement to increase criminal prosecution of illegal robocallers. It would also extend the statute of limitations for taking action against illegal robocalls from one year to three.
I commend the US Senate for passing the TRACED Act and Sens John Thune (R-SD) and Ed Markey (D-MA) for leading this bipartisan effort. The TRACED Act would help strengthen the FCC’s ability to combat illegal robocalls, and we would welcome these additional tools to fight this scourge. Further powers like increased fines, longer statutes of limitations, and removing citation requirements which obligate us to warn some robocallers before penalizing them, will significantly improve our already strong robocall enforcement efforts. I also welcome the Act’s provisions that would increase coordination with state Attorneys General. This is a vital partnership in the fight against unwanted robocalls and one we already are working hard at. It’s important that federal and state partners work together—and engage productively with private stakeholders—to address this important consumer protection priority.
Chairman Pai's Response to Senators Regarding the "Rate Floor" Rule in the Universal Service High Cost Program
On April 10, 2019, Sens John Thune (R-SD) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai in support of eliminating the Universal Service Fund High-Cost program's rate floor rule and ending the federal mandate that increases telephone rates for rural Americans. The senators called the rule "inherently flawed and unnecessary." On May 6, Chairman Pai wrote back to say that the FCC had eliminated the rule. "consider this a big win for rural Americans—we repealed a defacto federal government mandate that increased rates paid by rural Americans."
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has recommended the agency approve T-Mobile’s $26 billion acquisition of Sprint, following a set of new commitments from the companies. Now, all eyes now turn to the Department of Justice to approve or reject the deal to create the “New T-Mobile.”
Head of NOAA says 5G deployment could set weather forecasts back 40 years. The wireless industry denies it.
What if, suddenly, decades of progress in weather prediction was reversed and monster storms that we currently see coming for days were no longer foreseeable? The toll on life, property and the economy would be enormous. Yet the government’s science agencies say such a loss in forecast accuracy could happen if the Federal Communications Commission and the US wireless industry get their way. Both the FCC and the wireless industry are racing to deploy 5G technology, which will deliver information at speeds 100 times faster than today’s mobile networks. But scientists have found this technology could interfere with critical satellite data used in weather forecasting, pitting the interests of science and safety against a pressing national priority.
Neil Jacobs, the acting head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Congress that 5G interference could set the accuracy of weather forecasts back 40 years. CTIA, the trade group representing the US wireless communications industry, unleashed a scathing rebuttal of the Jacobs’ assertion. “It’s an absurd claim with no science behind it,” wrote Brad Gillen, CTIA’s executive vice president.
Google, Facebook, and Twitter executives came to Capitol Hill to testify about election security. Instead, they faced a grilling about whether their platforms are biased against conservatives. A string of Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee skipped questions about how the companies were tackling disinformation campaigns or preventing Russians from purchasing political ads on their platforms in the run-up to the 2020 election. They were more interested in whether Facebook and Twitter were “shadow-banning” -- quietly blocking or restricting -- conservatives’ accounts on their platform. The technology executives vehemently denied that they engage in shadow banning. There is no evidence that the platforms have been systematically biased against one political party.
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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