Network management

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.)

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a motion to stay the effect of the Commission’s reform of its rules governing business data services. Chairman Pai issued the following statement:

“The court’s decision to let our modernization of our business data services rules take effect is an important—though unsurprising—affirmation that the Commission thoroughly analyzed our massive data collection to establish a robust, forward-looking competitive framework. These reforms will encourage vigorous investment in next-generation networks, which is critical if we are going to bridge the digital divide in our country."

A company that tracks Internet service providers and data caps in the US has identified 196 home Internet providers that impose monthly caps on Internet users. Not all of them are enforced, but customers of many ISPs must pay overage fees when they use too much data.

BroadbandNow, a broadband provider search site that gets referral fees from some ISPs, has more than 2,500 home Internet providers in its database. This list includes telecommunications providers that are registered to provide service under the government's Lifeline program, which subsidizes access for poor people. BroadbandNow's team looked through the ISPs' websites to generate a list of those with data caps. The data cap information was "pulled directly from ISP websites," said BroadbandNow Director of Content Jameson Zimmer. "For those that have multiple caps, we include the lowest one and an asterisk to show that they have regional variation." BroadbandNow, which is operated by a company called Microbrand Media, plans to keep tracking the data caps over time in order to examine trends, he said.

The Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 pole attachment order was upheld in a ruling July 31 by the Eighth Circuit Court, providing a potential win for competitive and incumbent providers expanding their fiber networks. In 2015, a group of electric utilities, including Ameren Corporation, American Electric Power Service, CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric, and Virginia Electric and Power Company petitioned to review a November 2015 order of the FCC governing the rates that utility companies may charge telecommunications providers for attaching their wired facilities to utility-owned poles.

The FCC, which was joined by intervenors Incompas, National Cable & Telecommunications Association, Level 3 Communications, and USTelecom, opposed the petition. In delivering its decision, the court found that the November 2015 Order provided a “reasonable interpretation of the ambiguity” in Section 224 of the Pole Attachments Act.

On April 18, 2017, Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep Mike Doyle (D-PA) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai urging him to postpone the vote on the Business Data Services (BDS) Report and Order that was scheduled for a vote at the April 20, 2017 FCC meeting.

On July 17, Chairman Pai responded by saying, "In your letter, you suggest additional protections for small businesses and the need for a reasonable transition as well as a delay of the Commission's vote. Although the Commission was unable to accommodate your every request, I note that the Commission did deny incumbent carriers a catch-up adjustment to their existing rates in non-competitive areas and implemented a staged transition: In newly deregulated areas, price-cap carriers cannot raise their tariffed rates for special access services for a period of six months and have three years to transition to de-tariff their services. The Commission also emphasized that incumbents may not use the de-tariffng process to disturb existing contractual or other long-term arrangements-a contract tariff remains a contract even if it is no longer tariffed. Finally, the Commission adopted downward pricing flexibility in still regulated areas to ensure that small businesses in rural America have the opportunity to receive the same discounts now available in urban areas."

The Trump Administration’s plan for $1 trillion in infrastructure spending presents an opportunity not only to repair existing roads, bridges, and tunnels, but also to build out broadband internet coverage in rural areas. On July 24, the Center for Technology Innovation hosted a panel discussion at Brookings about how the administration, Congress, and the private sector can work together to address broadband needs of unserved (no access) and underserved (limited access) populations.

The event began with opening remarks from House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), focused on the congressional perspective on broadband infrastructure. To close the access gap, Chairman Blackburn seeks to eliminate regulatory barriers, increase investment in unserved areas, and redraft current Federal Communications Commission maps to more accurately reflect the percent of Americans that lack broadband access. The panelists largely focused on ways the government and private sector can work together to expand broadband internet access.

President Donald Trump has signaled that broadband will definitely be part of his planned infrastructure investments. The president issued an executive order July 19 creating the Presidential Advisory Council on Infrastructure that will include a representative from the communications and technology sector. The council will report back to the president with its findings. The members will be appointed by the president and will represent the following sectors: real estate, finance, construction, communications and technology, transportation and logistics, labor, environmental policy, regional and local economic development, and "other sectors determined by the President to be of value to the Council."

The mission of the council, whose membership will be capped at 15, is to "study the scope and effectiveness of, and make findings and recommendations to the President regarding, Federal Government funding, support, and delivery of infrastructure projects in several sectors, including surface transportation, aviation, ports and waterways, water resources, renewable energy generation, electricity transmission, broadband, pipelines, and other such sectors as determined by the Council." That will include prioritizing infrastructure buildouts, speeding approval processes, coming up with ongoing financing mechanisms, identifying public-private partnerships, coming up with best practices for procurement and delivery and promoting innovation. The Department of Commerce will provide the administrative staff, facilities and support services for the council. The council positions will be unpaid, though private citizens will get travel expenses.

[Commentary] All of this network neutrality action involves just the very last part of the communications grid in the US — the “last mile,” or the part of the network that actually touches consumers. Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler pushed through the relabeling of the “last mile” as a regulable service. That utility label needs to be retained, as I’ve often argued.

But there’s an even bigger and possibly more insidious policy in the works that will result in far greater woes for consumers. It involves the not terribly well-understood part of the system called the “middle mile.” As with the last mile, the new administration wants to avoid enforcing any legal protections. And it‘s doing this in a manner that just happens to benefit the powerful forces that take citizens’ money while denying them the best services.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a Professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.]

Capital expenditures by US internet service providers have declined by $3.6 billion since the Federal Communications Commission adopted its Title II regime for internet regulation in 2015, Comcast regulatory chief David L. Cohen said. Cohen’s blog posting—and the associated comments made to the FCC—continued Comcast’s push to get the now-Republican-led agency to reverse its regulations.

The capex figure was quoted from economist Hal Singer, who said the top 12 ISPs invested 5.6% less in 2016 vs. 2014, before Title II was enacted. “A CTIA study found that capital expenditures declined for wireless providers by 17.4% from 2015-2016,” Cohen added. “A study by Dr. George S. Ford found that the threat of Title II regulation between 2011 and 2015 reduced broadband investment by about 20% to 30%, or about $30 to $40 billion annually. That reduction amounts to "about $150-$200 billion over the five-year period," or the equivalent of losing an entire year’s worth of investment. Those who say investment isn’t impacted by the Title II regime “aren’t living in the real world,” Cohen also said.

On July 17, Free Press submitted comments to the Federal Communications Commission, demonstrating once again that the 2015 decision to base Net Neutrality rules on Title II got it exactly right. The 2015 Open Internet Order ushered in an era of broadband investment and internet innovation while giving users assurances that their service providers will not block, throttle or discriminate against their online communications.

Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood said, “Chairman Ajit Pai’s allegiance to the broadband industry is so great that he has continued to ignore the overwhelming evidence and political forces arrayed against him. The Net Neutrality rules and their Title II framework are working beautifully. Proof of that is everywhere, from the ISPs’ increases in investment and profits to the astounding levels of innovation from companies that use the internet to reach their customers. Phone and cable ISP profits are not the only thing at stake here, though they seem foremost in Pai’s mind. But the fact is that along with their finances, these broadband providers’ service speeds are also on the rise. Companies like AT&T, which industry lobbyists falsely paint as a victim of Title II’s fictional harms, have taken advantage of technological upgrades to deploy faster speeds while spending less than they used to. But don’t take our word for it: AT&T’s own CEO has bragged repeatedly about how it continues to get cheaper-to-deploy fiber and build out the company’s wireless networks."