Internet/Broadband

As CenturyLink rolls out new ‘price for life’ services and invests in its network to improve internet speed to nearly 700,000 people in Colorado, it’s also trying a new approach to bringing broadband to areas that lack it — public-private partnerships with local communities. The company has been negotiating partnerships with some Western slope communities and at least one on the northern Front Range to expand its fiber-optic network into areas it previously considered uneconomical to do so.

The approach resembles one used in Centennial by Mississippi-based Ting Inc. in partnership with the south-metro area suburb's municipal government. The company has been polling Centennial neighborhoods to find where the strongest demand for services exists, with the aim of announcing this fall where it will build high-speed lines to homes. CenturyLink, the main local landline phone company in most of the state, receives Federal Communication Commission subsidies for providing internet service in qualified rural areas.

AT&T met with staff from the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition and Wireless Telecommunications Bureaus and the Office of General Counsel on September 25, 2017 to discuss arguments made in the open internet proceeding regarding the Administrative Procedure Act. AT&T discussed its white paper it says addresses arguments by Title II proponents that the APA imposes various substantive and procedural obstacles to restoration of a Title I regime for broadband internet access.

AT&T claimed nothing in the APA requires the FCC to identify any post-2015 change in factual circumstances as a basis for restoring a Title I regime, to issue a new notice of proposed rulemaking to specify the metrics to be used in a cost-benefit analysis of Title II regulation, or to stall this proceeding pending a new round of comments on the significance or not of informal complaints made public in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

The Senate majority is charging forward with plans to vote to reconfirm Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai for another five years. Rehiring Pai to head the agency that oversees US communications policies would be a boon for the phone and cable companies he eagerly serves. But it would hurt everyone else who needs this agency to put our communications rights before the profits of monopoly-minded media giants. In the coming days, senators have the opportunity to intervene on the public’s behalf and fire Pai. Here are five reasons they should do so:
1. Net Neutrality Lies
2. Widening the Digital Divide
3. Sinclair Quid Pro Quo
4. First Amendment Fail
5. Assault on Online Privacy

On the floor of the Senate, Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) said, "At every turn, [Federal Communications Commission] Chairman Pai choses corporate interests over consumers." He told his colleagues that the FCC now stands for "Forgetting Consumers and Competition" under Chairman Ajit Pai. He also said he would outline who is getting a big piece of the FCC pie under Pai. He even used a visual aide, an FCC logo divided into Pai wedges he moved from the "consumer" side of his chart to the "corporation" side.

Sen Markey tied his opposition to Pai's proposal to roll back Title II classification of broadband internet access service and repealing network neutrality rules. Markey said Pai was in the thrall of big media to the detriment of consumers. But he also pointed to Pai’s actions on Lifeline, broadband privacy, the Sinclair-Tribune merger, E-rate and more as reasons to deny him a seat on the commission, which were other pieces of the pie he moved to the "corporation" side in his own version of a Senate Ted Talk.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) took to the Senate floor to oppose the nomination of Ajit Pai for a new five-year term on the Federal Communications Commission. His remarks came just before a planned cloture vote on debate on the nomination.

Sen Wyden’s opposition is rooted in Pai's proposal to roll back Title II classification of broadband internet access service and eliminating network neutrality rules. Sen Wyden has been one of the Hill's most vociferous critics of that proposal. Sen Wyden said Chairman Pai had worked long and hard to undermine net neutrality, which he said was folks getting a "fair shake" online. Sen Wyden also took aim at broadband providers, saying their commitment to "voluntary" net neutrality was bogus. He said there was as much likelihood that they would do so voluntarily as that his nine-year-old son would voluntary limit himself to one desert. "It just isn't going to happen." He said Chairman Pai sides with the big cable companies over small businesses and consumers. The senator said Chairman Pai had signaled he was blowing up the internet's level playing field by saying he would take a weed whacker to regulations. He said the debate was not over Google and Oracle, but about start-ups and small businesses wanting to grow.

While broadband internet access has increased over time, there remains a digital divide in access to and adoption of high-speed internet. Closing this gap must be a priority, and will take a substantial federal investment to do. There are still 34 million residents that do not have at least one broadband provider in their community. While nearly all of Connecticut has access to high-speed internet, more than one third of Mississippi’s residents lack access. At local levels, the disparities get larger. In more than 200 counties, no one has access to broadband internet. Congress must prioritize rural broadband expansion in any national comprehensive infrastructure plan debated in the 115th Congress.

Further, Congress needs to work on closing the gap in at-home internet usage. All Americans can benefit from having the internet in their homes, giving them better access to educational, health, and career-related resources. Bridging this gap will require improving competition to bring consumer costs down and expanding efforts to subsidize home broadband subscriptions.

The internet is global. So the approach to internet governance should be global as well, right? Not exactly.

The internet, as a network, is decentralized, which makes it inherently difficult to govern. It belongs to everyone, but is owned by nobody. This speaks to a question that’s been around for decades—one centered around how we might govern the technical aspects of the internet. Jovan Kurbalija, director of the DiploFoundation and head of the Geneva Internet Platform, spoke to these very issues at a New America event. “Global governance sounds logical, but when you really dig into the digital policy, you see that the impact of the internet is very local, given the social, economic, political, and cultural context,” Kurbalija said.

After a weekend when Americans took to social media to debate President Trump’s admonishment of National Football League players who do not stand for the national anthem, a network of Twitter accounts suspected of links to Russia seized on both sides of the issue with hashtags such as #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee.

As Twitter prepared to brief staff members of the Senate and House intelligence committees on Sept 28 for their investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, researchers from a public policy group have been following hundreds of accounts to track the continuing Russian operations to influence social media discourse and foment division in the United States. There is evidence that Twitter may have been used even more extensively than Facebook in the Russian influence campaign in 2016. In addition to Russia-linked Twitter accounts that posed as Americans, the platform was also used for large-scale automated messaging, using “bot” accounts to spread false stories and promote news articles about emails from Democratic operatives that had been obtained by Russian hackers.

President Donald Trump took aim at Facebook, calling the social network “anti-Trump.” But the social network insists it is pro-democracy and pro-truth — and the German election shows it.

“Trump says Facebook is against him,” said Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook. “Liberals say we helped Trump. Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like.” Zuckerberg expressed regret for initially appearing dismissive of his company’s potential effects on the 2016 election, saying that the topic was “too important.” But he also repeated a point he has made many times — that Facebook’s broader impact, “from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote,” had a much greater effect on the election than that of misinformation on the platform.

Mark Zuckerberg pledged $1.5 million in aid to organizations assisting in Puerto Rico’s recovery from Hurricane Maria, together with direct assistance from Facebook’s connectivity team to help the country get back online.

The hurricane left 80 percent of the island without power, and citizens have faced intense shortages of food, fuel, and drinking water in the seven days since landfall. The $1.5 million donation is split between the World Food Programme, an anti-hunger organization, and NetHope, a consortium of non-profits that works to improve connectivity in undeveloped or disaster-stricken areas. Zuckerberg asked concerned followers to donate to Save The Children, which is working to distribute aid on the island. Zuckerberg emphasized the importance of communications in the recovery effort. “With 90% of cell towers on the island out of service, people can't get in touch with their loved ones, and it's harder for rescue workers to coordinate relief efforts,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We're sending the Facebook connectivity team to deliver emergency telecommunications assistance to get the systems up and running.” The company also plans to use donated Facebook ad space to share critical information with Puerto Rican users, although the ads will be of little use until power and connectivity is restored.