Universal Broadband

Louisville (KY) has garnered much praise for an award-winning data map that visualizes the modern day effects of redlining — a practice that dates back to the 1930s, and involves racial and socioeconomic discrimination in certain neighborhoods through the systematic denial of services or refusal to grant loans and insurance. This map, dubbed Redlining Louisville: The History of Race, Class and Real Estate, takes historic data about redlining found in the national archives in Washington (DC) in 2013, and combines it with a timeline of historic events, data about current poverty levels, neighborhood boundaries and racial demographic info. With a host of tools including buttons and sliders, users can clearly see the correlation between the deliberate injustices of the past and the plight of struggling neighborhoods today. For Louisville CIO Grace Simrall, the map is proving an asset in the city’s ongoing work to improve digital equity. City officials have also looked at the map as lens through which to examine digital inclusion, the effort to provide all residents with equal access to technology, as well as the related skills to benefit.

A nonprofit group is challenging President Donald Trump over his infrastructure council, claiming that the panel has been operating in secrecy and that its co-chairs have potential conflicts of interest. In a lawsuit filed July 25 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Food & Water Watch claims that the administration violated federal public access requirements in establishing and running the new panel. In addition to President Trump, the lawsuit also lists the Transportation and Commerce departments as defendants. President Trump announced in January that he was putting billionaire real estate developers Richard LeFrak and Steven Roth in charge of the council, which is helping oversee his proposed $1 trillion rebuilding push and vetting transportation projects. But Trump only recently issued an executive order to formally establish the group. In its complaint, the nonprofit group alleges that the White House violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires advisory panels to publicly disclose meetings and members and requires membership to be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented.

Legislation that would give telecommunication companies tax breaks for expanding high-speed internet access doesn’t include proper oversight controls to ensure firms invest in areas where it’s most needed, public interest groups say. The pushback reflects a potentially divisive fight on an issue — expanding internet access to underserved areas — that generally has bipartisan support. The Gigabit Opportunity Act, sponsored by Sen Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), would provide state governors the flexibility to choose low-income areas to be designated as GO zones, investments for which telecoms could claim write-offs. Eligibility would also require states and municipalities to adopt model codes to “streamline” local regulations. Those codes are being written by the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee.

Some local entities are wary of pre-emption of their powers to set rates for pole attachments and other permitting procedures. The congressional proposals don’t address the real problem — lack of will by providers to invest in low-density areas where its hard to turn a profit, said Martha Duggan, senior director of regulatory affairs for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. “The irony is that we are the unserved communities, we want that connectivity,” Duggan said at the BDAC meeting. “I can tell you stories of municipalities that have offered zero-cost rates for pole attachments if the providers will come out and build in our areas. None have taken us up on that so far.”

The Rural Utilities Service (RUS), an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), announces the second application window for fiscal year 2017 for the Rural Broadband Access Loan and Loan Guarantee Program. Announcing a second application window within the current FY is a statutory requirement of the 2014 Farm Bill.

This new procedure amends previous announcements related to this application window and is designed to improve loan application processing, better manage work flow, and encourage infrastructure investment and job creation in rural communities in need of improved broadband service. In addition to announcing this application window, RUS revises the minimum and maximum amounts for broadband loans for the second window for FY 2017. The agency has $115.2 million available in FY 2017 appropriated and carryover funds, and of this amount the agency expects that at least $60 million is available to fund applications received in this window. Applications under this NOFA will be accepted immediately through September 30, 2017.

The week of July 17 brought more bad news for Google Fiber, the search giant’s troubled bid to become a powerful internet service provider. On July 18, Greg McCray stepped down as CEO of the company’s ISP business (now formally housed under Access, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet). His departure comes just nine months after Craig Barratt left the same role. Meanwhile, the Access division has faced staffing cuts, and aggressive plans to expand to more cities are on hold indefinitely.

Google Fiber began as an experiment, then briefly seemed poised to grow into a legitimate contender against the ISP incumbents. But today it serves as proof that providing high-speed wired internet is a losing proposition, even for one of the world’s wealthiest companies. The lesson Google is learning is one that the major ISPs already figured out: Providing traditional broadband internet isn’t a great way to make money in 2017, no matter how fast it is. Home broadband adoption has plateaued in the United States as some Americans opt to simply use their phone’s data plans to go online. That’s one reason why the major ISPs, from Comcast to AT&T to Verizon, have focused their efforts on acquiring content providers like NBCUniversal, Time Warner, and Yahoo in recent years.

Seattle’s Information Technology Department has won two awards from the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors for its efforts to foster digital inclusion within the city. The awards are:

• 2017 Community Broadband Strategic Plan of the Year, for Seattle’s Strategic Plan for Facilitating Equitable Access to Wireless Broadband
• 2017 Community Broadband Digital Equity Project of the Year, for Seattle’s Technology Matching Fund

The Appalachian Ohio-West Virginia Connectivity Summit was created by community organizer and Meigs County resident Liz Shaw and the Citizens Connectivity Council. Her goal was not necessarily to see immediate action, but to show the strong desire for access and the currently sad state of broadband in Appalachia. “We’re not only not going forward, we are going backward in many cases,” Shaw said. “This is like being in a Conestoga wagon on the prairie and sending up smoke signals, in my opinion, when you hear from a county that has no 911 and no landlines and no cell phone and no internet working.” Kate Forscey, associate policy counsel at Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C., digital rights advocacy group, said the summit was a good time for national groups to hear from the region. “This is an opportunity for localities to be empowered, to provide their own broadband, to talk about the challenges that they face that we don’t necessarily always hear about in Washington,” Forscey said.

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.

The average South Korean can choose between three major private internet providers –SKT, KT and LG U+ – and pay less than $30 a month for the fastest internet in the world. That’s $17 less than what the average American pays for a much slower internet hookup. But why? How is it possible that the citizens of the last developed democracy have a faster and more affordable internet than Americans? The simple answer to this question is that in the 1990s South Koreans decided that their country needed a fast and affordable internet provided by a vibrant private sector, and there was the political willingness, and a national plan, to achieve that goal.

[I]t is particularly important that the United States and Caribbean nations collaborate. Our countries share many common interests and significant cultural and economic ties. The U.S. is the leading trading partner for the Caribbean, and we have benefitted greatly from the contributions of the Caribbean diaspora community in the United States. Unlike baseball, this is not a game where there is only one winner. When we expand opportunity and enhance security in one nation, the benefits can flow throughout the region. Recognizing these benefits, Congress last year made it the official policy of the United States to increase engagement with government leaders, the private sector, and civil society groups in the Caribbean region. I am proud to be here in the spirit of this law and want you to know that Chairman Pai is committed to enhancing the FCC’s engagement with the Caribbean region.