Telecommunication

[Commentary] My cousin Charlie is serving time in an upstate New York prison. On June 13, a federal appeals court struck down several provisions in the Federal Communications Commission’s recent decisions to cap the cost of prison- and jail-phone calls. This ruling is a real blow to my family and many others like mine across the country. It’s also a huge step backward.

In late 2015, the FCC voted to reduce the steep cost of prison-phone calls charged to incarcerated people and their families. Many inmates and their families had spent years fighting to cap these calls, which can run to more than a dollar per minute. When the FCC voted to implement the caps I felt a sense of relief knowing that Charlie would be able to afford to call my grandmother on a more regular basis without worrying that he’d deplete his commissary on just phone calls. But soon after these rules were adopted the prison-phone industry sued the agency. In February 2017, Donald Trump’s newly appointed FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, said the agency’s lawyers wouldn’t defend key aspects of these rules in court — paving the way for Tuesday’s decision.

Democratic Sens are calling on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai not to allow telemarketers to leave “ringless voicemails” on potential customers' phones. Sens Ed Markey (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and others penned a letter to Chairman Pai, asking that he not allow companies to leave messages soliciting business on consumer’s phones that go straight to their voicemail. The FCC is currently considering a petition from firms that would like the commission to revise its position on such calls, which are currently barred under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991.

“Exempting ringless voicemails from the TCPA’s autodialer protections would allow callers to overwhelm consumers with ringless voice messages without first receiving express consumer consent,” wrote the senators. “Whether by robocall, by robotext, or by ringless voicemail, consumers should have meaningful control over who can and cannot contact their mobile device.”

Today’s DC Circuit decision is deeply disappointing, not just for me and the many advocates who have fought for more than a decade to bring about much needed reform in the inmate calling services regime...it is a sad day for the more than 2.7 million children in this country with at least one incarcerated parent. But the families who have experienced the pain, anguish and financial burden of trying to communicate with a loved one in jail or prison, are still counting on us, so we will press on.

I remain committed to doing everything I can from working with my colleagues at the Commission, to supporting the efforts of Congress and those in the states to bring relief to millions who continue to suffer from the greatest form of regulatory injustice I have seen in my 18 years as a regulator in the communications space.

New to the Federal Communications Commission’s list of items on circulation an un-docketed item on protecting the privacy of customers of broadband and other telecommunications services; implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996; and telecommunications carriers' use of CPNI and other customer information.

Today, the DC Circuit agreed with my position that the FCC exceeded its authority when it attempted to impose rate caps on intrastate calls made by inmates. Looking ahead, I plan to work with my colleagues at the Commission, Congress, and all stakeholders to address the problem of high inmate calling rates in a lawful manner.

We can all agree that what we could do with less is the pull and push between federal, state, and local policymakers. We are in need of and should strive for a new era of cooperative regulation, that recognizes the states as laboratories of democracy, and your federal partners as a uniform guide where and when appropriate. So allow me to take some time this morning, to outline areas where we can work together, and other areas I feel, where states and localities should take the lead when it comes to privacy, universal service, pole attachments, rights-of-way access, and inmate calling.

Empirical research demonstrates that the Obama Administration’s aggressive regulatory agenda at the Federal Communications Commission reduced investment in the telecommunications sector between $20 and $40 billion annually, robbing the nation of a boom in network expansion the public wants and Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act mandates.

As there is a direct relationship between network investment and jobs, the next logical question to ask is how this reduced network investment affected employment in the telecommunications sector. Using standard economic techniques and publicly-available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Ford finds that over the period 2010-2016, the telecommunications sector lost approximately 100,000 jobs per year—many of them high-paying union jobs. This loss is the pay-equivalent of about 130,000 “average” US jobs.

On August 4, 2015, a number of public interest advocates (including the Benton Foundation) filed a petition for rulemaking asking the Federal Communications Commission to repeal Section 42.6 of the Commission’s rules, Retention of Telephone Records, that requires telephone companies to retain the detailed call records of their customers. The petitioners explained that the regulation was unduly burdensome and ineffectual and posed an ongoing threat to the privacy and security of American consumers. The FCC is seeking comment on the petition. Comments are due June 16; reply comments are due July 3.

For over a century, assessments of competition or the lack thereof have been central to how public policy treats the telecommunications industry. This centrality continues today. Yet, numerous foundational questions about this concept persist. In this paper, we chronicle how the definition of “competition” has evolved in economics and has been applied in the communications arena. The academic literature on competition hits an important inflection point in the mid-20th century with the development of “workable competition”: a term that is equated to “effective competition.” We find that while the concept of “effective competition” is central to policy formation at the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC’s own applications of “effective competition” are inconsistent. Given the centrality of this concept, and its inconsistent applications to date, we draw upon the seminal contributions to the development of the notion of “effective competition” to offer a modern definition suitable for application in 21st century communications markets.

The Justice Department is apparently OK with Liberty Interactive's proposed purchase of Alaska telecom GCI. That came in an early termination notice released June 8. That means the DOJ has found no reason to try and block or condition the deal and put an early end to its Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust review. The Federal Communications Commission must still weigh in on the deal. It goes beyond antitrust to look at the public interest impact of mergers in the communications space. That review will not be concluded until at least next month. On May 19, the FCC created a pleading cycle for the deal, with comments due June 19 and reply comments due July 5. The $1.1 billion deal was struck in April.