Telecommunication

The latest Verizon Network Report shows Americans slowly falling back into old habits. On May 13, slightly over 760 million calls were made, falling well below the peak daily call volume during the COVID pandemic at over 860 million calls. Text messaging continues its week over week decline falling another 5% to just under 6 billion texts sent on May 13. That is compared to over 9 billion texts sent at the peak of the COVID pandemic. As call and text volumes fall back towards pre-COVID levels, working and schooling from home continues.

Rural telecommunication operators are taking on business and financial risks to ensure their communities remain connected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many are providing free service and setting up free Wi-Fi hot spots, exposing them to cash flow risks. Setting up hot spots for school children to use while in the parking lot of a fairground is admirable, but this is not a sustainable model for rural operators or the community – and neither is the Universal Service Fund (USF) funding mechanism that only levies fees against telecommunication bills.

This analysis explores, from an economic perspective, the effects of modifying and expanding the “contribution base”—the supply of financial resources for the Universal Service Fund—to include both voice and broadband connections. While the Federal Communications Commission has updated the way universal service funds are distributed to orient them more toward support of both voice and broadband services, the contributions system that pays for the FCC’s mission-critical USF initiatives continues to rely precariously upon a dwindling pool of revenues from legacy services.

Recently, more than 30 companies came together to announce a coalition to promote policies that support implementing open 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) technology, a critical part of deploying 5G technology. This commitment by the private sector to advance the same objectives shows the widespread priority to secure our domestic and global communications supply chain, and it’s a great step forward to encourage our allies to follow suit.

The Federal Communications Commission's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau granted conditional certification to MachineGenius to provide Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service (IP CTS) using only automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. This is the first such grant and provides an opportunity for advanced technology to meet the FCC’s high reliability standards in providing captioned telephone service for deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans.

Some top Trump administration officials are moving to take a more aggressive stand against China on economic, diplomatic and scientific issues at the heart of the relationship between the world’s two superpowers, further fraying ties. The bitter information war over the virus has become a core part of the competition, but the Trump administration’s efforts to counter China have sharpened across the board.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons made phone calls and some video visits free for inmates in early April, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced a suspension of visits.

Backed by Sens Ed Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a dozen internet access activist groups have generated over 110,000 signatures on a petition to Congress to include funds in the next COVID-19 aid bill to make sure every American has internet and phone service during the pandemic. The groups backing the petition are Access Now, Common Sense Media, Consumer Reports, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Free Press Action, Libraries Without Borders, MediaJustice, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, New America’s Open Technology Institu

The Federal Communications Commission issued Orders to Show Cause against four companies that are ultimately subject to the ownership and control of the Chinese government: China Telecom Americas, China Unicom Americas, Pacific Networks, and ComNet. The Orders direct the companies to explain why the FCC should not start the process of revoking their domestic and international section authorizations enabling them to operate in the US.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai says the FCC is committed to holding ISPs to their Keep Americans Connected pledge to keep subscribers connected during the COVID-19 pandemic. When asked how the FCC would enforce the pledge, Chairman Pai said he has been personally working with the FCC's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau to "make sure that providers are following through with the commitments that they made." But the pledge is voluntary, so it's not something the Enforcement Bureau can enforce.