Internet/Broadband

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has a theory. He believes that accessing the Internet through a smartphone is just as good as having high-speed Internet access in your house. In fact, he appears to believe this so strongly that he is looking into changing his agency's guidelines so that any place in the U.S. that has sufficient mobile coverage will be considered "connected," even if people living there have no option to receive broadband access in their homes. That theory forms the essence of a new Notice of Inquiry that the FCC has just put out.

The notice is a first step toward a potential policy change with respect to how the agency measures broadband deployment in the US. If Pai's idea somehow becomes the new official credo for the FCC, it would be a disaster for efforts to improve access to connectivity in America—a country that has, as we have noted several times in just the last year, a persistent, embarrassing digital divide. Mobile broadband access isn't the same as connectivity at home. The screens are smaller, data caps on mobile bandwidth are much tighter (and overages far more expensive), and speeds are slower—something the agency seems to acknowledge in the notice, when it suggests that "mobile broadband" be defined at 10Mbps of download speed and 1Mbps upstream. For the record, that's less than half the 25Mbps/3Mbps threshold necessary for a home connection to qualify as "broadband."

As the number of online comments in the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality proceeding soars to record highs, groups on both sides of the debate are calling on Congress to investigate mounting allegations of fake public input. The latest allegations come from the conservative-leaning National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), which said a whopping 5.8 million pro-net neutrality comments submitted between July 17 and Aug. 4 using the same one sentence appear to be fake. The docket has been plagued for months by charges that many of the comments are duplicates, filed under fake names or submitted without the permission of the people who supposedly signed them. The growing controversy is raising questions about how the comments will be used when the FCC mulls a final order. "It's almost unimaginable how anybody thinks this could do any good," NLPC President Peter Flaherty said.

Many experts say lack of trust will not be a barrier to increased public reliance on the internet. Those who are hopeful that trust will grow expect technical and regulatory change will combat users’ concerns about security and privacy. Those who have doubts about progress say people are inured to risk, addicted to convenience and will not be offered alternatives to online interaction. Some expect the very nature of trust will change.

You can add Altice to the growing list of companies trying to figure out a way to buy Charter Communciations. The French telecom giant and its US cable subsidiary, Altice USA, are working on an offer to buy Charter, but have not yet brought a purchase proposal to Charter or its advisors, apparently.

There's no guarantee that Altice will engage, though the prospects seem likely. Altice and its founder Patrick Drahi have long had ambitions to expand in the U.S., and with SoftBank's recent interest in making an offer to buy Charter, Drahi has decided to see if he can compete. Altice has bankers and lawyers working on a bid for Charter. But like SoftBank, it faces significant hurdles in crafting a deal that would meet shareholders' expectations on price while not being replete with the stock of the acquiring company, which in this case would be the far smaller Altice USA.

[Commentary] More than 15 million comments have been filed with the Federal Communications Commission on its Restoring Internet Freedom docket, which focuses on the concept of net neutrality, and specifically Title II regulations imposed in 2015 under the previous administration. While this colossal number includes many sentiments – including an unsettling number of foreign and some 6 million fake comments – it does not contain significant representation from poor, minority and senior Americans. Media and communications scholars have documented that online activism is the province of the digital elite and largely aligns with race and class. Herein lies an unsettling problem.

"Digital democracy" has been promoted to enable underrepresented consumers to become more politically involved. This seems intuitive, but the reality is that digitization can, if anything, exacerbate the problem of these individuals not participating. The reality is that Title II ignores and hurts underserved communities. It prohibits a free market for data which allows these individuals to enjoy free and reduced price content and offerings. It has cost the nation some $35 billion annually in lost participation from content-side actors and advertisers which would otherwise support internet access to these groups. It is also responsible for deterring the creation of some 750,000 jobs.

[Roslyn Layton is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy.]

While the Internet seems ubiquitous, digital divides remain, particularly across incomes. In the US, adults making less than $30,000 per year are significantly less likely to use any type of digital device and to have broadband Internet access in their home. The 2015 Open Internet Order was adopted, in part, to reduce the divide by expediting broadband deployment and removing obstacles to the market.

In their recent work “The Digital Divide and Other Economic Considerations for Network Neutrality,” authors Michelle Connolly, Clement Lee, and Renhao Tan question whether or not the 2015 OIO is likely to help bridge the digital divide. They argue that despite its rhetoric, the 2015 OIO did not properly consider its effect on the digital divide. In fact, net neutrality rules may depress investment, exacerbate the digital divide, and decrease the quality and diversity of Internet content.

Americans might not need a fast home Internet connection, the Federal Communications Commission suggests in a new document. Instead, mobile Internet via a smartphone might be all people need. The suggestion comes in the FCC's annual inquiry into broadband availability. Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act requires the FCC to determine whether broadband (or more formally, "advanced telecommunications capability") is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.

During the Obama administration, the FCC determined repeatedly that broadband isn't reaching Americans fast enough, pointing in particular to lagging deployment in rural areas. These analyses did not consider mobile broadband to be a full replacement for a home (or "fixed") Internet connection via cable, fiber, or some other technology. But with Republican Ajit Pai now in charge, the FCC seems poised to change that policy by declaring that mobile broadband with speeds of 10Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream is all one needs. In doing so, the FCC could conclude that broadband is already being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion, and thus the organization would take fewer steps to promote deployment and competition.

A Federal Communications Commission decision to eliminate price caps in much of the business broadband market can remain in place after a federal judge denied a petition to halt the FCC order. The FCC's Republican majority in April imposed a new standard that deems certain local markets competitive even when they have only one broadband provider. In those markets, incumbent phone companies like AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink will be able to charge higher prices for business data services that are delivered over copper-based TDM networks. Companies that will have to pay higher prices sued the FCC. They asked for a stay that would halt the elimination of price caps pending the outcome of the case.

But Aug 7, the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit denied the motion for stay. The order provided no explanation for the denial. The FCC's decision eliminates price caps in a county if 50 percent of potential customers "are within a half-mile of a location served by a competitive provider." A county is now also considered competitive if 75 percent of Census blocks have a cable provider. (There are no price caps for cable-based business data services.)

Imagine if you took every single gripe you've had with Verizon over the past five years — the time it blocked Nexus 7 tablets for five months; the time it forced you to pay $20 per month for tethering; the time it tried to make you use a mobile wallet app called "ISIS" — and finally put your foot down. For a year, you spend free moments holed up in library stacks, speaking with experts, and researching and writing a sprawling legal complaint about the company's many, many misdeeds. And then you file it all with the Federal Communications Commission, hoping to get some payback. That's exactly what Alex Nguyen did. And one day very soon, Verizon may have to answer for it.

When he wrapped up in the middle of 2016, Nguyen paid a $225 filing fee and handed his complaint over to the FCC. It would end up being the only formal complaint filed under the net neutrality rules. Now one year after Nguyen's initial filing date, all the arguing is over, and the case is the in hands of the commission's Enforcement Bureau to either shoot down, deliver a fine, or demand Verizon make some changes. "Verizon and I made our cases," Nguyen said. "It looks as though [the FCC's Enforcement Bureau] staff any day now could make a decision."

The Federal Communications Commission wants recommendations on how to improve its data collection process for phone and internet access after becoming aware the agency was basing policies on increasingly flawed information. On Aug 4, the FCC announced its plan to revise the filing process for Form 477, a data set the agency uses to analyze broadband coverage in different areas of the country and show the public what providers they could access.

Internet and phone providers submit data on their coverage in different regions every six months. Many have called the data set inaccurate and unreliable, reporting a number of instances when the FCC says broadband providers are available in areas they don’t cover. The agency aims not only to refine the data set and purge incorrect information but also to reassess what data it needs to paint an accurate picture of nationwide coverage. According to Pai, the FCC may be asking for too much data—some of which it may not need for analysis—and that could overburden companies and discourage them from filing properly.