Internet/Broadband

[Commentary] As a candidate, Donald Trump deserved credit for identifying a policy that damages jobs, competitiveness, and economic growth: underinvestment in infrastructure. Unfortunately, Trump’s plans as president, including his budget and tax proposals, in combination with congressional politics, suggest his overall impact on infrastructure will make a bad situation worse. Would the long-promised $1 trillion infrastructure fund more than make up for the problems the tax bill creates? The answer is no. A

s President Trump finally admitted, his plan will not work. Candidate Trump’s plan was premised on attracting private capital to fund infrastructure. But that would only help projects that directly produce revenues, leaving out such needed projects as local roads, schools, and fire stations, among others. Public funding is essential to building a broad coalition necessary to move forward with a national infrastructure bill. Private financing not only limits the kinds of projects financed, but also limits where the projects will be located. Other than in broadband, nearly all the kinds of infrastructure projects—airports, transit, bridges—capable of attracting the kinds of revenue necessary to secure funding, are in metropolitan areas. That would limit the political attractiveness of any legislation to rural congressional members, whose voting block is sizable. The administration’s tax plan, however, now makes the fiscal politics for public funds impossible. In short: Trump’s tax plan would decrease funds for the principal sources of infrastructure financing; his original infrastructure plan is dead; and his tax plan will put the country in a position where no infrastructure plan is likely to move forward. That combination would only intensify national infrastructure challenges.

[Blair Levin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. Adie Tomer is a fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and leads the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative.]

[Commentary] Frontier's recent revelation that it intends to use fixed wireless to address the rural broadband availability problem using the second phase of the Federal Communications Commission’s Connect America Fund (CAF-II) program is set on a simple goal: extend broadband to areas where deploying wireline facilities is prohibitive. What’s interesting about Frontier is that other than being a supplier of backhaul, the company is mainly a wireline carrier.

Can it effectively overcome engineering and regulatory challenges to complement rural wireline broadband with wireless? There’s both regulatory and technical challenges. Putting aside these challenges, it's hard to not to see the benefits wireless broadband could bring for rural providers. These telcos can use a complementary approach to address remote areas that are still difficult to address even with CAF-II funding today.

I am concerned the Federal Communications Commission is gearing up to approve a transaction that will hand a single broadcast company the unprecedented ability to reach more than 70 percent of American households. It hasn’t happened yet. But there are disconcerting signs.

Before I returned to the Commission, the agency inexplicably resurrected an outdated and scientifically inaccurate system for tallying station ownership, known as the UHF discount. It also reversed an effort to investigate joint sales agreements. Both steps helped speed the way for this transaction—which would combine two broadcasting giants: Tribune and Sinclair The bottom line is we are not going to remedy what ails our media with a rush of new consolidation. We are not going to fix our inability to ferret fact from fiction by doubling down on a single company owning ever more of our public airwaves.

FirstNet is charged with establishing a nationwide public-safety broadband network that is reliable, secure, and interoperable. To inform this work, FirstNet is consulting with a variety of stakeholders. In March 2017, FirstNet awarded a 25-year contract to AT&T to build, operate, and maintain the network. FirstNet's oversight of AT&T's performance is important given the scope of the network and the duration of the contract. This testimony provides information on (1) FirstNet's efforts to establish the network; (2) stakeholder views on network reliability, security, and interoperability challenges FirstNet faces and its efforts to address them; and (3) FirstNet's plans to oversee its network contractor. This statement is based on GAO's June 2017 report.

For this report, GAO reviewed FirstNet documentation, key contract oversight practices identified in federal regulations and other sources, tribal communication practices identified by federal agencies, and assessed FirstNet's efforts and plans against these practices. GAO also interviewed FirstNet officials and a nongeneralizable selection of public safety, tribal, and other stakeholders selected to obtain a variety of viewpoints. In June 2017, GAO recommended that FirstNet fully explore tribal stakeholders' concerns and assess its long-term staffing needs. FirstNet agreed with GAO's recommendations and described actions to address them.

Cable Internet with download and upload speeds of 10Gbps may eventually come to American homes thanks to a new specification for higher-speed, symmetrical data transmissions. The industry's R&D consortium, CableLabs, announced that it has completed the Full Duplex Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, an update to DOCSIS 3.1.

The completion of the 10Gbps full duplex spec comes 18 months after the project was unveiled. The completion of the spec doesn't mean you'll suddenly be getting multi-gigabit uploads and downloads, as commercial deployments may be at least a couple of years away and may not initially provide the maximum speeds allowed by the spec. The initial version of DOCSIS 3.1 was announced in 2013 and allowed 10Gbps downloads and 1Gbps uploads, but the first modems weren't certified until early 2016, and real-world implementations are still catching up. Comcast last year began offering gigabit download speeds over cable using DOCSIS 3.1, but the service limited uploads to 35Mbps. Comcast's only symmetrical gigabit service uses fiber-to-the-home instead of cable, as fiber technologies have supported symmetrical transmissions at gigabit speeds for years.

AT&T says Incompas’ proposal to the Federal Communications Commission to raise the broadband definition from 25/3 Mbps to 1 Gbps will create an unrealistic environment that reaches beyond the current usage realities.

In a new FCC filing, AT&T said that the industry advocacy group does not provide any clear evidence to change the current benchmark to a faster speed. “Commenters seeking to avoid the obvious finding that Section 706 is satisfied propose to move the goal posts even further – proposing speed benchmarks even higher than 25 Mbps/3 Mbps, and as high as 1 Gbps (download speeds),” AT&T said in its FCC filing. “These commenters provide no basis for this new benchmark other than that these are the next-generation services and that providers have begun to deploy them. But this approach would ensure that the Congressional standard in Section 706 could never be satisfied, as the goal posts are constantly moved out to the over-the-horizon generation of technology as opposed to the current advanced generation that is meeting the needs of customers.”

A point often lost when we talk about the digital divide is what happens when we actually bridge the divide. Too often, we declare mission accomplished when we’ve connected a home that has been forever without, but I challenge you to take a more nuanced view. We should only claim victory when a consumer is meaningfully using their connectivity to take advantage of the economic, educational, and health care opportunities it affords....

One of our primary goals at the Federal Communications Commission is to be good stewards of ratepayer dollars. That means moving away from the past practice of using our high-cost program to fund multiple networks in the same geographic area. We should not support a company that is serving an area where another provider is providing quality service without a subsidy. That is fundamentally inconsistent with protecting consumers and it does not enable the market to work as intended.

The Federal Communications Commission recently asked for input on whether wireless is now a substitute for wired broadband. The Communications Workers of America says a definitive "no," and has offered up a report in an effort to back up the assertion. That came in comments to the FCC. In its comments, CWA said its "expert report," from CTC Technology & Energy, found that mobile was not an adequate substitute, but was and would remain a complement to faster and more robust wired broadband.

[Commentary] Cable is no longer the “bottleneck” that Congress once assumed it was for delivering video into American homes. This calls into question the continuing value of must-carry, retransmission consent and other regimes based on this premise.

As a mature-to-declining product, cable must cut costs to remain viable against new competitors. This dynamic explains the recent rise in merger activity among cable operators. Building economies of scale can strengthen regional cable operators’ negotiations with programmers and can help them compete more effectively against Netflix and other alternatives, which are national in scope. It is important that antitrust regulators recognize cable as only one part of a larger market for video services — and allow them to compete accordingly.

[Daniel Lyons is an associate professor at Boston College Law School]

The Federal Communications Commission has granted an experimental license for Project Loon, led by Google's parent company Alphabet, to help provide emergency cellular service in Puerto Rico.

“More than two weeks after Hurricane Maria struck, millions of Puerto Ricans are still without access to much-needed communications services,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. “That’s why we need to take innovative approaches to help restore connectivity on the island. Project Loon is one such approach. It could help provide the people of Puerto Rico with access to cellular service to connect with loved ones and access life-saving information. I’m glad the FCC was able to grant this experimental license with dispatch and I urge wireless carriers to cooperate with Project Loon to maximize this effort’s chances of success.” Project Loon is a network of balloons that provides connectivity to users on the ground. Now that the experimental license has been approved, it will attempt to initiate service in Puerto Rico. Project Loon obtained consent agreements to use land mobile radio (LMR) radio spectrum in the 900 MHz band from existing carriers operating within Puerto Rico.