Gov performance

After high-tech phone network outages hit major US cities in 1991, the Federal Communications Commission chartered an advisory group to help the agency troubleshoot emerging technology issues. Yet instead of helping solve problems, this industry-dominated group has at times been a barrier to strengthening the security of America’s communications. 

The Federal Communications Commission seeks comment on establishing a cap on the Universal Service Fund and ways it could enable the FCC to evaluate the financial aspects of the four USF programs in a more holistic way, and thereby better achieve the overarching universal service principles Congress directed the FCC to preserve and advance. While each of the constituent USF programs are capped or operating under a targeted budget, the FCC has not examined the programs holistically to determine the most efficient and responsible use of these federal funds.

There are several serious problems with the Federal Communications Commission's 2019 Broadband Deployment Report, but here’s the one we’re most concerned about: The FCC majority has chosen, once again, to ignore the critical issues of broadband cost and affordability in its analysis of “whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.” The cost of broadband Internet service, and households’ ability to pay that cost, are important determinants of broadband access.

On April 2, 2019, a dozen Members of Congress wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai expressing concern that the FCC's draft 2019 Broadband Deployment Report "may contain serious data inaccuracies that would undermine the validity of its findings." "We note that the FCC has already issued an apparently erroneous press release, dated February 19, that seems to reflect these inaccuracies.

The 2020 Census is different from past surveys in two important ways.

The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration will submit to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for clearance a proposal for voluntary collection of broadband availability data. In the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, Congress directed NTIA to update the national broadband availability map in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission and the states. Congress directed NTIA to acquire and display available third-party data sets to the extent it is able to negotiate its inclusion to augment data from the FCC, other federal

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) wrote a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai asking if he would like to correct his testimony delivered to the House Commerce Committee at an oversight hearing May 15. Warning FCC Pai that “lying to Congress is a federal crime,” Rep Eshoo wrote there existed a “chasm” between what Chairman Pai told the committee and what Rep Eshoo herself heard from other FCC officials following the meeting.

My topic for this afternoon: How difficult it is for regulators to predict how technology will develop and transform markets, and why that difficulty demands humility from our regulators. This is a particularly important lesson for the Federal Communications Commission, which stands at a unique crossroads between technology and innovation. Regulators are not good futurists.  And what predictive powers regulators have are weakening as technological progress quickens and becomes even less predictable.

As expected, the Democratic leaders on the House Communications Subcommittee used the Federal Communications Commission oversight hearing to hammer FCC Chairman Ajit Pai over policies and actions with which they strongly disagree. In his opening statement, Chairman Mike Doyle (D-PA) said Chairman Pai had yet to explain to Congress or the American people what it was doing about mobile carriers sharing real-time geolocation data. He also slammed the inaccurate and deeply flawed broadband deployment data, old and faulty business broadband data, and warned the FCC not to act on a USTelecom forb