Internet/Broadband

The gap between the share of Americans who get news online and those who do so on television is narrowing.

As of August, 43 percent of Americans report often getting news online, just 7 percentage points lower than the 50 percent who often get news on television, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in August. This gap between the two news platforms was 19 points in early 2016, more than twice as large. The share of Americans who often get news from TV – whether from local TV news, nightly network TV news or cable news – is down from 57 percent in early 2016. At the same time, the portion of Americans often getting news online, either from news websites/apps or social media, grew from 38 percent in early 2016 to 43 percent today. What’s more, the decline in television news use occurs across all three types of TV news asked about in the survey – local, network and cable – but is greatest for local television news. As of August 2017, 37 percent of Americans said they often get local TV news, compared with 46% in early 2016.

Facebook promised to address the spread of misinformation on its platform, in part by working with outside fact-checking groups. But because the company has declined to share any internal data from the project, the fact-checkers say they have no way of determining whether the “disputed” tags they’re affixing to “fake news” articles slow — or perhaps even accelerate — the stories’ spread. They also say they’re lacking information that would allow them to prioritize the most important stories out of the hundreds possible to fact-check at any given moment. Some fact-checkers are growing frustrated, saying the lack of information is undermining Facebook’s efforts to combat false news reports.

Modernizing Lifeline for broadband is critical for poor people and people of color, who are more likely to be on the wrong side of the digital divide and who cite cost as a major barrier to adoption. Lifeline is the only federal program poised to increase broadband adoption and provide a pathway out of poverty for millions of people. When talking about Lifeline, we hear a lot about waste, fraud and abuse. But this narrative is overblown and frankly offensive.

I have long been troubled by the tenor of the Lifeline debate: There’s a tendency to wage war on the poor, to demonize and assume the worst about Lifeline recipients. And I cannot sit here today, especially as white supremacy is on the rise around the country and in the White House, without directly confronting the racist undertones of these assumptions. We should avoid inflated stories of waste, fraud and abuse at the expense of poor people and people of color, who rely on Lifeline to meet basic needs. The first priority should be expedient implementation of the 2016 Order. We should reject radical measures such as moving Universal Service funds to the U.S. Treasury “to offset other national debts,” as the FCC Chair’s office evidently suggested to the GAO. This could undermine all USF programs, including Lifeline and others designed to connect rural Americans, schools and libraries.

I can summarize my testimony in three sentences. First, promoting universal access to modern communication services and the Internet, especially for low-income and disadvantaged Americans, is a noble cause and a pragmatic objective which deserves Federal support. Second, the Federal Communications Commission’s current lifeline program is not an effective or efficient means of achieving these goals, nor are current reform efforts likely to make it so. Third, we cannot give up: the doors of digital opportunity must be opened for low-income and disadvantaged Americans, and it is therefore incumbent on policymakers to develop a new approach that is both effective and a good investment for the American taxpayer.

Brandt Kuykendall’s daughter needed fast Internet access to help her excel at school. But he couldn’t find cheap, reliable service that would connect their scenic yet secluded coastal Marin County (CA) home. So Kuykendall taught himself how to create a high-speed wireless Internet service.

In about a year and a half, Dillon Beach Internet Service has grown to connect about 145 homes, charging a flat $50 per month, with no equipment rental fees, taxes or installation charges. He monitors the network’s operations in “command central” — his garage, which has five computer screens and fiber-optic cables connecting to switching equipment mounted near where he lays his boogie board and spearfishing harpoon. And Kuykendall, the company’s sole employee, handles all repairs for free, since he’s already in the neighborhood.

As far as the US perspective, our priorities generally seek to create a regulatory environment that provides our telecommunications industries the opportunity to innovate, obtain investment and ensure continued growth for years to come. We also seek to promote the interests of our citizens, especially those who are unserved and in need of modern and robust connectivity in order to participate in the new digital economy.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 open internet order has long been a posterchild for bad law and worse economics. It has been labeled an “economics-free zone” by the FCC’s own chief economist. The data on the results of its fool hard decision to proceed with Title II despite reams of expert warnings bears this out. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai deserves credit for revisiting the issue in an economically serious way and attempting to restore some semblance of order to a renegade regulatory agency.

[George S. Ford, Ph.D., is an economist specializing in technology issues at the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies.]

[Commentary] Right now, a bill is being rushed through the California state Legislature using the highly suspect “gut and amend” process. It would reorganize the Internet app and data ecosystem – which has created hundreds of thousands of jobs – without a single public hearing. At first glance, AB 375 seems reasonable. The author claims the bill is needed to restore President Obama era privacy protections repealed by President Trump. However, and this is a critical point, AB 375 does not “restore” President Obama’s longstanding privacy policy. It actually reverses that policy.

[Nancy Libin is co-chair of the Privacy and Information Governance Practice at Jenner & Block LLP and the former chief privacy officer at the U.S. Department of Justice.]

[Commentary] Network neutrality is having a Gilda Radner moment. After years of debate, protests, name calling, and the like, technology is leaving net neutrality behind. Here are at least three indicators that technology is outsmarting net neutrality:

1. 5G will use network slicing, which enables multiple virtual networks on a common physical infrastructure. Each slice can be customized for specific applications, services, customers, etc. Network slicing means the end of treating all internet traffic the same — if that ever really happened — which was supposed be a core principle of net neutrality. 5G explicitly customizes the network to different types of traffic.
2. Netflix and other large edge providers are bypassing the internet. More specifically, they are building or leasing their own networks designed to their specific needs and leaving the public internet — the system of networks that only promise best efforts to deliver content — to their lesser rivals.
3. Mobile internet is leaving wireline internet in its dust in numbers of users and traffic. Mobile internet increasingly bypasses the World Wide Web because about 90% of customers’ mobile time is spent in apps, not the web. Apps are gatekeepers that direct customers only to resources that the app makers choose.

[Mark Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. He served on the Trump FCC Transition Team.]

By this Order, the Wireline Competition Bureau and Wireless Telecommunications Bureau extend the deadline for filing initial and reply comments in response to the Thirteenth Section 706 Report Notice of Inquiry until September 21, 2017 and October 6, 2017, respectively.