Internet/Broadband

Today, when we talk about universal service, we have in mind bringing high-speed Internet access, or “broadband,” to any American who wants it. Broadband is important for many reasons: it can help you get a job, start a company, get health care, educate your kids, and the like. But it’s also vital for free speech and political engagement. Fewer today seem to be willing to defend to the death others’ right to say things with which they might disagree. The situation on many college campuses is especially distressing.

A strong platform that allows the people to share their ideas and inform themselves about current affairs forestalls that fate. And in a remarkably short time, the Internet has become one such platform. The FCC’s charge and our cultural traditions remind us that we need to extend that online megaphone to all Americans. I look forward to working with you to do that—and to fulfilling this timeless vision for the digital age.

Network neutrality advocates are planning two days of protest in Washington DC in Sept as they fight off plans to defang regulations meant to protect an open internet. A coalition of activists, consumer groups and writers are calling on supporters to attend the next meeting of the Federal Communications Commission on Sept 26 in DC. The next day, the protest will move to Capitol Hill, where people will meet legislators to express their concerns about an FCC proposal to rewrite the rules governing the internet. Participating organizations in the protest include Fight for the Future, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Media Justice, Common Cause, Consumers Union, Free Press and the Writers Guild of America West.

Longtime Comcast customer Drew Weaver was surprised in mid-May of 2017 when he got an automated call notifying him that he’d gone over his 1TB monthly data cap. First of all, Comcast alleged that he'd exceeded the data cap two months in a row, and Weaver says he never got a notification about the first overage. Moreover, Weaver just didn't believe that he'd used more than 1TB of data. But after a weeks-long, tedious process of troubleshooting with Comcast, the company insisted that its data meter was accurate. Comcast agents also repeatedly urged Weaver to pay an extra $50 a month to upgrade to an unlimited data plan or risk paying a $10 overage fee for each additional 50GB, up to a maximum of $200 in extra fees each month.

According to Comcast, Weaver had used up his "courtesy months" in which a customer is allowed to exceed the data cap without penalty and would have to pay overage charges going forward unless he limited his usage or bought unlimited data. Weaver could afford the additional payments—but out of principle, he decided not to give Comcast the extra money. And so he ended his nearly 14 years of being a Comcast customer.

Proponents and opponents of data caps make conflicting claims about the effect of data caps on prices, network capacity and speeds, subscription, congestion, and consumer surplus. In this paper, we survey the academic literature on data caps and analyze the relationship between the characteristics of each paper's model or data and the paper's results.

We find that model or data assumptions about service differentiation, purpose of the data cap, and amount of competition strongly influence each paper's results. Consequently, conclusions about the effect of data caps are often limited to certain types of service providers (fixed or mobile) and/or to certain types of data caps (heavy-users or profit-maximizing). We find that most proponents' claims about data caps in fixed broadband service are incorrect, and that most proponents' claims about data caps in mobile broadband service are likely to be correct if and only if data caps increase competition. We also discuss how data caps may be evaluated under the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order. We find that heavy-users caps on mobile broadband service are likely to satisfy the Order's rules, that profit-maximizing caps on mobile broadband service may or may not satisfy the rules, and that caps on fixed broadband service are unlikely to satisfy the rules.

[Scott Jordan is associated with the University of California, Irvine]

[Commentary]

• Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai plans to reverse the agency’s open internet rules passed in 2015.
• The Open Internet Rule makes sure that the internet, the most important network of the 21st century, is open and available to everybody, and not controlled by a handful of companies.
• More than half of American consumers don’t have a choice when signing up for internet service, allowing monopolists to make the rules.
• The Open Internet Rule, as it currently stands, ensures that there is oversight in the internet marketplace.
• There are four companies, cable and telephone, that provide three-quarters of the access to the internet for American consumers, and they would prefer to be unregulated.
• The Open Internet Rule is the law of the land that protects consumers. If Congress or the Trump administration’s FCC eliminate the rule, consumers will lose their current protections. Without the Open Internet Rule, cable and phone companies will pick what you see, what you pay, and what you have to pay extra for. Congress plays an important role in the oversight of the FCC and in how the internet is regulated.
• The Open Internet Rule has been successful in protecting consumers, in stimulating innovation, and in providing good returns for those who provide internet service. If it isn’t broken, it doesn’t need to be fixed.

[Wheeler is a visiting fellow in Governance Studies. Wheeler is a businessman, author, and was Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission from 2013 to 2017.]

The Federal Communications Commission is currently in the process of redefining much of rural and low-income America in reverse when it comes to internet access. The good news: There is still time to tell them that’s a bad idea. In fact, just recently, the FCC listened to calls from stakeholders, as well as 12 members of the US Senate, to extend the time allotted for people to weigh in.

So let’s all get cracking! Let’s not let the agency change the rules for its own homework assignment so it doesn’t have to do the project. Congress told them in no uncertain terms to get real, high-functioning connectivity to all Americans, to every corner of our nation. No one should have to settle for less.

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee held a hearing Sept 14 titled, "FCC’s Lifeline Program: A Case Study of Government Waste and Mismanagement". Committee members criticized the subsidy program for phone and Internet access that was the subject of a recent watchdog report detailing cases of fraud and abuse. Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) said at a hearing that there “probably” needs to be a complete overhaul of the Lifeline program. “We need to completely rethink how we distribute that subsidy,” Chairman Johnson said.

Sen Claire McCaskill (D-MO) called on the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on the companies that she says are defrauding the program. “Why are we providing these companies with this massive opportunity for fraud?” Sen McCaskill said. Both Sens McCaskill and Johnson suggested diverting funds from Lifeline towards programs focused on expanding rural internet access.

Once again we will read headlines trumpeting faults in the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program that do not match the realities of the day. Despite significant reforms made under the previous administration and no new evidence of waste, fraud, or abuse, the Lifeline program continues to be under attack while our nation’s most vulnerable remain on the wrong side of the digital and opportunities divide. I am especially disappointed by the current FCC majority and those who repeatedly reject real reform efforts. This administration refuses to allow new broadband providers into the Lifeline program, which will deepen and cement the digital divide while omitting the fact that the Lifeline program has one of the lowest improper payment rates of all government subsidy programs.

Continuing to vilify our nation’s only means-tested universal service program and remaining on the sidelines while communities and their residents do without connectivity, is a dereliction of the oath we were sworn to uphold. I, for one, remain committed to working with those who wish to improve the only FCC program that directly tackles the challenge of affordability in communications. Going forward, it is my sincere hope that those who are empowered to help those in need, will offer solutions, not attacks, so that we may enable all of our citizens to participate in a 21st century digital economy.

[Commentary] Rural areas don’t need to wait on expensive and hard-to-build fiber-to-the-home networks to start using broadband. In many cases, fixed wireless can provide a fast and affordable last-mile connection in underserved areas. And some communities are building the system themselves.

WISPs – Wireless Internet Service Providers – are the un-song heroes closing the digital divide in rural communities. New technology makes WISPs faster than ever, much more affordable than fiber, and a great option in areas where terrain and population density make wired systems problematic.

[Craig Settles is a broadband industry analyst and consultant]

Passed 27 years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act mandates equal rights and opportunities for people with disabilities. Title III of the ADA specifically mandates that all public and private institutions and spaces render themselves accessible to those with sensory, cognitive, and physical limitations–think of Braille on store signs, sound-enabled walk signals, on-ramps carved into sidewalks. But over the past year and a half, a string of lawsuits filed on behalf of people with disabilities against companies indicates that one crucial space has been bypassed in effectively interpreting the purpose of the ADA: the internet.

It makes sense that the ADA’s mandates around internet accessibility would be fuzzy. In 1990, when the law was passed, the web was a fringe pastime. Why concern yourself with e-commerce accessibility when Americans were still doing their shopping in brick-and-mortar stores? Now, however, 79% of people in the U.S. shop online; in that and so many other ways, including access to financial services, the internet has effectively transitioned from a privilege to a necessity. And Mark Lacek, a marketing CEO who was tipped off to the string of web-accessibility related lawsuits by his business attorney, saw an opportunity to help companies build ADA compliance into their online operations.