Thursday, May 9, 2019
Headlines Daily Digest
Today: FCC Meeting and Centering Civil Rights in the Privacy Debate
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House Advances Bill to Increase Broadband Acces
Broadband
Wireless
Platforms
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The Case for the Digital Platform Act: Foreword by Tom Wheeler | Public Knowledge
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I Accidentally Write A Book On How To Regulate Digital Platforms | Harold Feld
Television/Radio
Elections
FTC Oversight/News
FCC
Security
Privacy
Journalism
Education
Company News
Stories From Abroad
Broadband
The House of Representatives passed H.R. 1328, the ACCESS BROADBAND Act, by voice vote. The bill, introduced by Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY), would establish the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The Office would hold regional workshops to share best practices and effective strategies for promoting broadband access and adoption. The bill would also require the Office to consult with any agency offering federal broadband support to streamline the application process and, to the greatest extent practicable, create one application that can be universal across the government. The new Office would be charged with coordinating broadband support provided by all the federal agencies that work on the issue, including the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Service.
A companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Sens Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Doug Jones (D-AL), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Similar legislation passed in the House in the 115thCongress but was never taken up in the Senate.
Better internet access is coming to 19 rural, economically disadvantaged counties in North Carolina thanks to nearly $10 million in grants. The Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) program provides matching grants to internet service providers and electric membership cooperatives that compete for funding to lower financial barriers that prevent high-speed internet service expansion in Tier 1 counties. Twenty-one applicants in 19 counties will receive a total of $9,855,026 in GREAT Grant funding to bring high-speed internet access to 9,800 households and more than 590 businesses, agricultural operations and community institutions like libraries, schools and hospitals. Of the 14 companies receiving grant funding, 11 are North Carolina-based small businesses, telephone cooperatives and an electric membership cooperative.
Despite spending hundreds of millions of state and federal dollars, Kentucky still lags behind other states in providing high-speed internet access to its residents. The state’s signature effort to catch up — an ambitious statewide broadband project known as KentuckyWired that was launched with bipartisan support five years ago — is well behind schedule and more than $100 million over budget. State officials estimate that a little over one-third of KentuckyWired’s more than 3,000 miles of fiber-optic cable has been installed. The state’s private sector partners don’t give the precise location of much of that cable. So far, Gov Matt Bevin (R-KY) has offered no solution to the boondoggle he inherited. State Auditor Mike Harmon conservatively estimates that Kentucky taxpayers over the next 30 years will be on the hook for $1.5 billion — 50 times what they were originally told the project would cost them.
During a hearing on the Federal Communications Commission's budget, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) called on the Senate to forge a new bill to enshrine net neutrality protections but appeared to back away from his earlier advocacy of the Obama-era open internet rules. Sen Kennedy once voted in favor of restoring those regulations, but he now sees “flaws” in that model. “I think we have more in common than we don’t,” he said. “We need to stop passing the buck and we need to pass a net neutrality bill.” But bipartisan consensus may prove elusive. All Senate Democrats except Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) back net neutrality legislation that cleared the House on partisan lines in April — and relies on the statutory approach Sen Kennedy now seems to reject.
Wireless
SHLB Coalition, CoSN, Mobile Beacon, SETDA, Voqal, and Hundreds of Signatories Petition the FCC to Save EBS
830 signatories representing educational institutions, rural operators, public libraries, nonprofit organizations, anchor institutions, individuals and public interest groups from 48 states and DC united in petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to ensure Educational Broadband Service (EBS) continues to serve its intended educational and public interest purposes. The signatories also ask the FCC to make new EBS licenses available for educational entities and Tribal Nations to connect their communities. The signatories emphasize that EBS is a critical tool for addressing the “homework gap,” or the systematic inequality arising from a student’s inability to access the Internet to complete homework.
EBS is currently the only licensed spectrum available for educational institutions to serve their communities. Twenty- three years ago, the FCC stopped issuing new EBS licenses, leaving 50 percent of the geography of the United States, primarily rural areas, without access to this portion of the 2.5 GHz band. The FCC is expected to reach a decision summer 2019 about how to make this spectrum available. It has sought comment on whether to give educational and Tribal entities the first opportunity to obtain this spectrum, or whether to proceed immediately to a commercial auction and eliminate the requirement that licenses be held by an educational or nonprofit entity.
This paper explains why most nations refused to endorse key United States 5G spectrum allocation proposals at the International Telecommunication Union’s 2015 World Radio Conference. US representatives underestimated the time needed for consensus building, despite increasing demand for wireless video and the evolving Internet of Things. Other contributing factors include US support for treating spectrum like property, use of “incentive auctions” to clear broadcast television spectrum with unprecedented speed and enough existing wireless spectrum allocations in most nations. The paper concludes that the US cannot expect faster frequency reallocations, particularly when it and other nations pursue matters having little to do with spectrum optimization. The paper offers recommendations on best practices for improving the consensus building process.
To the challenges posed by the power of digital platforms, we need a “Digital Platform Act” to create an agency specifically charged to regulate digital platforms on an ongoing basis. An expert agency over digital platforms can analyze and study the market to determine when regulation or enforcement are needed, including if:
- Dominant digital platforms should be required to offer interconnection to competitors through open APIs to break down network effects that lock in users.
- Dominant digital platforms should be prohibited from self-preferencing and some types of discrimination. An agency can monitor and enforce this through “black-box testing,” protecting details of proprietary algorithms.
- There should be restrictions on acquisitions by dominant digital platforms, including non-horizontal acquisitions usually less scrutinized by antitrust agencies.
- Certain platforms that collect data from competitors (or potential competitors defined broadly) should be limited in how they can use their competitor’s data.
The House Appropriations Committee has proposed to increase funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, approving the recommendation of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, which in April approved a funding boost of $50 million (or about 15%) to $495 million for fiscal year 2022. The subcommittee also approved full funding of $20 million for interconnection and infrastructure, which the full committee also approved. The subcommittee was mum on funding for the Ready to Learn grant program through the Department of Education, which provides early learning education for low-income children, but the full committee has approved a $2 million-plus increase for RTL to $30 million.
The bill now goes to the full House for consideration.
Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Mark Warner (D-VA) reintroduced the Honest Ads Act to help prevent foreign interference in future elections and improve the transparency of online political advertisements. Sen Graham carries on the bipartisan legacy of the bill from the late Sen John McCain (R-AZ). The Honest Ads Act ensures that political ads sold online are covered by the same rules as ads sold on TV, radio, and satellite. The Act:
- Amends the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002’s definition of electioneering communication to include paid Internet and digital advertisements.
- Requires digital platforms with at least 50,000,000 monthly viewers to maintain a public file of all electioneering communications purchased by a person or group who spends more than $500.00 total on ads published on their platform. The file would contain a digital copy of the advertisement, a description of the audience the advertisement targets, the number of views generated, the dates and times of publication, the rates charged, and the contact information of the purchaser.
- Requires online platforms to make all reasonable efforts to ensure that foreign individuals and entities are not purchasing political advertisements in order to influence the American electorate.
Companion legislation is led in the House by Reps Derek Kilmer (D-WA) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and has 26 Democratic and Republican cosponsors.
FTC Oversight
FTC Testifies Before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee On Its Work to Protect Consumers and Promote Competition
The Federal Trade Commission testified before the House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce about its efforts to effectively protect consumers and promote competition, while anticipating and responding to changes in the marketplace.
Testifying on behalf of the FTC, Chairman Joseph Simons and Commissioners Noah Joshua Phillips, Rohit Chopra, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, and Christine Wilson said the FTC is committed to using its resources efficiently to protect consumers and promote competition through law enforcement, policy and research, and consumer and business education. FTC law enforcement actions have helped return more than $1.6 billion to consumers during fiscal year 2018. The testimony notes that the FTC has expanded its focus on privacy to reflect the growing collection, use, and sharing of consumer data in the commercial marketplace. Under Section 5 of the FTC Act and other authorities granted by Congress, the Commission has aggressively pursued privacy and data security cases in myriad areas, including children’s privacy, financial privacy, health privacy, and the Internet of Things. The testimony notes, however, that there are limits to the FTC’s Section 5 authority. The testimony urges Congress to enact privacy and data security legislation, enforceable by the FTC, which would grant the agency civil penalty authority, targeted APA rulemaking authority, and jurisdiction over non-profits and common carriers. The FTC has brought more than 65 data security cases and 60 general privacy cases, the testimony states.
Chairman Simon said that he does not want Congress to give his agency broad rulemaking authority, targeted instead on privacy. To better protect privacy, he said the FTC needs 1) rulemaking authority; 2) civil penalty authority—currently it can only try and make consumers whole for losses, not penalize the conduct responsible; and 3) jurisdiction over nonprofits and common carriers.
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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