Upcoming policy issue

The Rural Wireless Association (RWA) claims T-Mobile lied to the Federal Communications Commission about the extent of its 4G LTE coverage. T-Mobile claimed—under penalty of perjury—to have coverage in areas where it hadn't yet installed 4G equipment. As part of the FCC's Mobility Fund challenge process, RWA members have conducted millions of speed tests at their own expense to determine whether the major carriers' coverage claims are correct. Those speed tests previously found that Verizon didn't cover the entire Oklahoma Panhandle as the carrier claimed.

William P. Barr, nominated to become the nation’s top law enforcement official in the Trump administration, is a former chief lawyer for Verizon Communications who has opposed net neutrality rules for more than a decade. Barr, who served as attorney general under former President George H.W. Bush from 1991-93, warned in 2006 that “network neutrality regulations would discourage construction of high-speed internet lines that telephone and cable giants are spending tens of billions of dollars to deploy.”

Democrats are expected to use their upcoming control of the House to push for strong net neutrality rules. Gigi Sohn -- a former lawyer at the Federal Communications Commission who is now a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology, Law and Policy -- said she expects Democrats to use their new power to push for the restoration of strong net neutrality rules — and for the topic to be on the lips of presidential hopefuls. “I have no doubt that bills to restore the 2015 rules will be introduced in both the Senate and the House relatively early on,” Sohn said.

A group of 10 senators is calling on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to stand down on his proposal to classify text messaging as an information service. “We urge you to right this wrong and classify text messaging as a telecommunications service, affording this vital means of communications protections that promote innovation and support freedom of speech,” the lawmakers write in a letter led by Sen. Ed Markey(D-MA) and co-signed by eight Senate Democrats as well as Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Now that Democrats are about to take charge of the House in January, lawmakers plan to force some accountability on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. FCC oversight is a top priority for the House Commerce Committee in the upcoming session, according to committee members. “We plan to put the consumer first by pushing policies that protect net neutrality, promote public safety, and provide meaningful privacy and data security protections that are seriously lacking today,” said incoming-Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ).

The alliance between Democrats and Silicon Valley has buckled and bent amid revelations that platforms like Facebook and Twitter allowed hateful speech, Russian propaganda and conservative-leaning “fake news” to flourish. But those tensions burst into open warfare after revelations that Facebook executives had withheld evidence of Russian activity on the platform for far longer than previously disclosed, while employing a Republican-linked opposition research firm to discredit critics and the billionaire George Soros, a major Democratic Party patron.

The new Democratic majority in the House is wasting no time in preparing its oversight efforts. “We’re getting ready to send a letter over to the [Federal Communications Commission] letting them know we intend to have a lot more oversight hearings and we want to start getting them on their schedule early,” said Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA). He predicted an FCC oversight hearing is “not going to be too much later” than January, if not then. He plans to meet with incoming House Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) next week to game out the subcommittee agenda. Rep.

Federal Communications Commission General Counsel Tom Johnson is set to rebut net neutrality advocates on Feb. 1 before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals — and he previewed the agency’s arguments during a Free State Foundation event Nov 9.

House Democrats plan to investigate whether President Donald Trump abused White House power by targeting — and trying to punish with "instruments of state power" — the Washington Post and CNN, said incoming-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA). Rep Schiff said President Trump "was secretly meeting with the postmaster [general] in an effort to browbeat the postmaster [general] into raising postal rates on Amazon." "This appears to be an effort by the president to use the instruments of state power to punish Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post," Rep Schiff said.

While several slices of spectrum can carry mobile internet, the most promising for rural school districts is one the Federal Communications Commission first reserved for educational television broadcasts in the 1960s. Over three decades, the government gave away more than 2,000 spectrum licenses to school districts and education nonprofits, primarily in urban areas. But the FCC effectively stopped issuing such licenses in 1995, because many license holders weren’t using their spectrum, and instead making money by leasing it to commercial telecommunication companies.