Internet/Broadband

This report analyzes the current and emerging generation of mobile wireless technologies and Compares those technologies to wireline technologies such as fiber‐to‐the‐premises (FTTP), cable broadband, and copper DSL across a range of technical parameters, including reliability, resilience, scalability, capacity, and latency. The report also evaluates wireless carriers’ mobile pricing and usage structures—including so‐called “unlimited” data plans—because those policies play a significant role in whether consumers can substitute mobile for wireline service.

The report concludes that, for both technical and business reasons, wireless technologies are not now, and will not be in the near to medium future, adequate alternatives or substitutes for wireline broadband.

At our November open meeting, we'll be tackling top priorities: curtailing unlawful robocalls, unleashing 5G wireless connectivity, enabling the next generation of broadcast television, speeding infrastructure deployment, and modernizing our media ownership rules.

Lifeline: Speaking of bridging the digital divide, the Lifeline program is an important component of the Commission's efforts to bring digital opportunity to low-income Americans. But when I testified on Capitol Hill last month, I heard loud and clear from Democratic and Republican Senators alike that the program is in need of serious reform. For starters, we need to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse. And we will. For instance, right now, Lifeline recipients in cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Reno, Nevada receive an enhanced Tribal subsidy, intended for rural Tribal lands, of $34.25 a month, while those in other cities receive the standard $9.25 subsidy. Giving residents of Tulsa and Reno an extra $25 per month subsidy is a waste of money given that the cost of providing service in those cities is far lower there than it is in poorer, rural areas. Therefore, at our November meeting, the Commission will aim to close this loophole and limit the enhanced Tribal subsidy to those actually living on Tribal lands in rural areas. We'll also vote to solicit public input on how to effectively and efficiently direct Lifeline funds to the areas where they are most needed and to do so consistent with the FCC's legal authority. And we'll give Lifeline recipients better service and more choices–such as by eliminating a current prohibition on Lifeline broadband beneficiaries changing service providers for an entire year.

Media Ownership: We will be voting on modernizing our media ownership rules to reflect the marketplace of the present, not the past. President Clinton's first FCC Chairman stated, "Under current conditions, the FCC's [newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership] rule is perverse." In 2017, the FCC is poised to finally bring our media ownership rules into the digital age. If this proposed Order is adopted, the FCC would make five significant nods to reality. First, we would once and for all eliminate the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule. In this day and age, if you want to buy a newspaper, you deserve a roadmap, not a roadblock. Second, we would eliminate the radio/television cross-ownership rule, which is unnecessary in today's marketplace given the Commission's separate local radio and local television ownership rules. Third, we would revise the local television ownership rule to eliminate the eight-voices test and incorporate a case-by-case review into the top-four restriction. This would better reflect the competitive conditions in local markets. Fourth, we would eliminate the attribution rule for television joint sales agreements, finding that JSAs serve the public interest by allowing broadcasters to better serve their local markets. And fifth, we would finally establish an incubator program to encourage greater diversity in and new entry into the media business and seek comment on what the details of that program should be.

Intended initially as a mechanism to reduce the cost of phone service for low-income customers, the bipartisan Lifeline program has worked in lockstep with telephone providers and consumers to increase the uptake in phone service throughout the country and has kept pace with changes in technology as the U.S. moved from a wireline world to one where the number of mobile devices and services now exceeds the population to a recognition that broadband internet is an essential communications service. Unfortunately, Chairman Pai’s proposal turns America’s back on our commitment, enshrined in law, to make sure world-class telecommunications are available and affordable for all. By nick and hack, Pai is gutting the only Universal Service Fund program that directly benefits consumers instead of carriers. His changes will mean fewer low-income households are served by fewer competitive options. At the very least, we hope that the FCC will take the time to do an economic analysis around the impact of the proposed changes. Many, many Lifeline recipients are U.S. veterans who fought for our flag. Chairman Pai appears to be waiving the white flag of surrender for their connected future. This is a sad day for anyone who believes in truly universal service.

The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on network neutrality and the role of antitrust for Nov 1. The Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, which will hold the hearing, has not released details, but the event is likely to address concerns that internet service providers stifle competition. The hearing comes as Republicans in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) put their finishing touches on a plan to scrap net neutrality. The agency has not released a timeline for when it will release and vote on the final version of Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to roll back the rules, but telecommunication insiders speculate that a vote could come as soon as December.

For years, the country’s biggest technology companies have been virtually untouchable in Washington. The public adored the companies’ new devices, educators embraced their tools and politicians extolled their contributions to the economy. Even traditionally powerful voices, like media and telecom businesses, found little success in criticizing the technology industry. But now, as lawmakers look into how Russia used Google, Facebook and Twitter to influence the 2016 presidential election, many critics see a rare opening — and are lining up to take their shots.

The action is nascent, but gaining momentum fast. Lawmakers are pushing for regulations for technology companies for the first time in years, encouraged along by big tech’s broad assortment of rivals. For several weeks, a group of companies including smaller tech companies and entertainment and retail businesses has informally begun regular meetings and conference calls to compare notes about Google, Facebook and Amazon and to find a way to join in a stronger opposition force. But even as they sense an opportunity today, the rivals say that challenging the internet companies remains a daunting task. They doubt they can put a dent into the online ad duopoly of Facebook and Google. It will also be difficult, they say, to restrain Amazon’s fast movement into new markets, given the company’s willingness to lose money to gain a foothold.

A freshman Michigan state representative introduced a sweeping bill last week that would ban any city and town in the state from using public funds to provide municipal broadband service — publicly owned internet infrastructure. A review of state campaign finance and lobbying records found that the representative’s campaign was heavily financed by telecommunications companies and trade associations. She also dined with trade association lobbyists in the months leading up to introducing the bill.

MI state Rep Michele Hoitenga, who is chair of the Michigan House's Communications and Technology Committee, introduced the bill, HB 5099, on October 12. The bill says that a city or town “shall not use any federal, state, or local funds or loans to pay for the cost of providing qualified internet service,” effectively banning municipal broadband outright. Campaign finance records show that two of her largest campaign contributors are AT&T Michigan and the Telecommunications Association of Michigan (TAM): AT&T gave her campaign $1,500 while TAM provided her with $3,500 — large amounts for a first term state representative. The Michigan Cable Telecommunications Association — a separate entity from TAM — gave Hoitenga’s campaign $1,000.

[Commentary] In the interest of openness and transparency, the Kentucky Communications Network Authority (KCNA) would like to address some statements about KentuckyWired that have appeared in the public forum lately. KCNA would like Kentucky’s citizens to be properly informed.

KentuckyWired will be helping private industry. KentuckyWired is building a “Middle Mile” network — the primary purpose of which is to give broadband service to state agencies. The network will also be the middle mile between the global internet and any company or organization leasing access to the network’s extra capacity. KentuckyWired will be an ultra-high-speed, high-capacity network to which the private internet service providers (ISPs) can connect. Think of it like a major highway with exit ramps into every county. KentuckyWired is not competing with ISPs so much as facilitating them and making it easier for them to reach places where they previously could not, or would not, go.

[Phillip Brown is the director of KCNA]

[Commentary] Here are just a few ways internet service providers (ISPs) have throttled or blocked content in the past:
Packet forgery: In 2007 Comcast was caught interfering with their customers’ use of BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer file sharing
Discriminatory traffic shaping that prioritizes some protocols over others: a Canadian ISP slowed down all encrypted file transfers for five years
Prohibitions on tethering: the Federal Communications Commission fined Verizon for charging consumers for using their phone as a mobile hotspot
Overreaching clauses in ISP terms of service, such as prohibitions on sharing your home Wi-Fi network
Hindering innovation with "fast lane" discrimination that allows wireless customers without data plans to access certain sites but not the whole Internet
Hijacking and interference with DNS, search engines, HTTP transmission, and other basic Internet functionality to inject ads and raise revenue from affiliate marketing schemes, from companies like Paxfire, FairEagle, and others
Individually and collectively, these practices pose a dire threat to this purely democratic engine of innovation that has allowed hackers, startups, and kids in their college dorm rooms to create the free Internet that we know and love today.

[John Ottman is Chairman and co-founder of Minds, Inc. a social media network.]

[Commentary] Handing the network neutrality problem over to a government agency with strong industry ties and poor mechanisms for public accountability poses a real danger of creating more problems than we’d solve. One alternative is to foster a genuinely competitive market for Internet access. If subscribers and customers had adequate information about their options and could vote with their feet, internet service providers (ISPs) would have strong incentives to treat all network traffic fairly. But the ISP market today is under oligopoly control. Nearly one in three American households have no choice when it comes to their Internet, and for all the other consumers choices are quite limited.

Another scenario would be for Congress to step in and pass net neutrality legislation that outlines what the ISPs are not allowed to do. But fighting giant ISP mega-corporations (and their army of lobbyists) in Congress promises to be a tough battle. Yet another option: empower subscribers to not just test their ISP, but challenge it in court if they detect harmful non-neutral practices. That gives all of us the chance to be watchdogs of the public interest, but it too, is likely to face powerful ISP opposition.

[John Ottman is Chairman and co-founder of Minds, Inc. a social media network.]

When a California state legislator proposed new broadband privacy rules that would mirror the federal rules previously killed by Congress, broadband industry lobbyists got to work. The lobbyists were successful in convincing the state legislature to let the bill die without passage in Sept, leaving Internet users without stronger rules protecting the privacy of their Web browsing histories.

The week of Oct 23, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released documents that lobbyists distributed to lawmakers before the vote. The EFF described one as "an anonymous and fact-free document the industry put directly into the hands of state senators to stall the bill" and the other as "a second document that attempted to play off fears emerging from the recent Charlottesville attack by white supremacists." The California bill, introduced by Assembly-member Ed Chau (D-Monterey Park), was modeled on now-defunct Federal Communications Commission rules and would have required Internet service providers to obtain customers' permission before they use, share, or sell the customers' Web browsing and application usage histories.