Public Knowledge

[Commentary] The Lifeline program is essential to the public safety sector because it increases access to public safety communications by equipping more low-income users with traceable service-initialized cellphones. Lifeline is crucial to ensuring that all Americans, even those from low-income communities, can contact 9-1-1 during an emergency - regardless of their location. Furthermore, if a caller does not know his or her location, but calls from a service-initialized cell phone, the 9-1-1 dispatcher can contact the cell carrier and request a trace of a subscriber’s GPS coordinates. That information can aid a dispatcher in dispatching emergency services to an exact and precise location. During the critical moments of an emergency, time is of the essence and sometimes a rapid response can mean the difference between life and death.

It is essential that the Lifeline program remain intact, as equipping more people with cell phones greatly expands the accessibility of public safety communications, particularly to low-income communities.

Beginning July 19, T-Mobile is offering a limited-time promotion tied to the wildly popular augmented reality game Pokémon GO, in which the mobile data used by the game will not count toward a customer’s data cap. This is yet another form of zero-rating, a practice that can raise serious concerns about competition policy, network neutrality, and consumer choice.

Amidst a global Poké-craze, we shouldn’t lose sight of what this may portend for the future of the open Internet. So we want to take the opportunity to raise a number of questions about this promotion which would also be important to answer for any other zero-rating service proposal. Before concluding anything about this promotion or any similar plans that may be proposed, it is important to better understand their potential dangers and benefits. Whether or not the zero-rating of Pokémon GO constitutes an unreasonable interference or disadvantage, it at least raises important questions that deserve close and immediate scrutiny.

[Commentary] The idea is simple: consumers should be allowed to choose which device they want to use to access their content. Because of the current business model of most cable companies, consumers and content creators alike are not able to access programming distribution the way they wish to. And because cable companies currently enjoy the control of the experience while profiting from the deficiencies in the system, they want to keep it that way.

Communities of color are thirsty for content in the mainstream media that resonates with them. Just as in the network neutrality debate, communities of color and their advocates are fighting for more consumer choice and access. The Federal Communications Commission’s proposal will loosen pay-TV’ grip on innovation and encourages minority content makers, small and independent companies, new entrants, and existing developers to market their apps and devices nationwide instead of cutting exclusive, limited deals. A new technology standard could allow consumers to access their cable network, pay-TV, and over-the-top content all in one place. More importantly, the proposal will allow minority programmers to tell their own stories to whomever chooses to access it, regardless of whether Big Cable wants to carry it. It’s time to let the FCC free the chained consumer choice. The future of TV depends on it.

Public Knowledge condemns this latest attempt to hijack critical funding legislation with dozens of provisions that will actively harm Americans, generally dislodge government processes, and once more take aim at the Federal Communications Commission's ability to do its job.

The anti-set-top box language is particularly egregious. The Commission’s current proceeding has been mandated by Congress for 20 years and would relieve millions of consumers of rental fees they currently pay to Big Cable for their set-top boxes. These fees total around $20 billion a year, and consumers have no choice but to pay. The bill also contains three unnecessary provisions intended to scale back the FCC's network neutrality rules, a victory for consumers lauded by millions of Americans. These misguided attacks on the FCC's ability to protect consumers and ensure an open internet fly in the face of the will of Americans nationwide. We are hopeful that moving forward, Congress will reject any bill burdened with language that conflicts with its duty to act in the best interests of the American people.

Public Knowledge and the Open Technology Institute filed a Petition to Deny asking the Federal Communications Commission to stop the merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

The groups demonstrate that the FCC typically analyzes large broadband and cable mergers through the lens of distribution. If it buys Time Warner Cable, Comcast would have about a 50 percent share in the market for truly high-speed residential broadband distribution.

This would make Comcast the most dominant communications company in the United States since the breakup of the Bell System. Under its public interest standard, the FCC cannot permit a single company to have such control over the marketplace.

“The FCC needs to stop this merger. The tough questions the FCC has already put to Comcast show that the agency is skeptical that this merger serves the public interest,” said John Bergmayer, Senior Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge.

[Commentary] The website TmoNews broke the story that T-Mobile is planning on throttling customers who use bittorrent on their wireless connections. Back in 2007, Comcast decided to start throttling bittorrent as well.

After a formal complaint and investigation, the Federal Communications Commission found that Comcast’s decision to single out bittorrent for blocking violated the open Internet rules that were in place at the time. And yet, strangely, T-Mobile has decided to revive this practice by singling out heavy data users who are making use of peer-to-peer applications.

Which only makes our point that we need strong network neutrality even stronger. This is about what FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler calls the “Network Compact.”

Public Knowledge filed comments with the Department of Justice on the antitrust consent decrees governing the performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI.

The consent decrees, last updated in 2001 and 1994, respectively, require ASCAP and BMI to issue reasonable licenses without discriminating between various companies and services.

Public Knowledge filed letters with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon as the first step in the formal open Internet complaint process with the Federal Communications Commission.

The complaint is in relation to AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon’s practice of throttling wireless data subscribers with “unlimited” data plans, as well as T-Mobile’s practice of exempting speed test applications from throttling.

Sprint and Verizon violate the transparency rule by failing to meaningfully disclose which subscribers will be eligible for throttling. AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon violate the transparency rule by failing to disclose which areas of the network are congested, thus subject to throttling. T-Mobile violates the transparency rule by preventing throttled subscribers from determining the actual network speed available to them.

Public Knowledge sent letters to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon as the first step in the process of filing open Internet complaints against each of them at the Federal Communications Commisson.

The letters address violations of the FCC’s transparency requirements, which are the only part of the open Internet rules that survived court challenge.

Specifically, they call on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon to make information available about which subscribers have their wireless data connections throttled and where that throttling happens.

The letter to T-Mobile calls on it to stop exempting speed test apps from its practice of throttling some users, thus preventing them from understanding actual network speeds available to them.

These letters are the first step in the open Internet rule formal complaint process. Once ten days have passed, PK can file a formal complaint to the FCC. At that point, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon will each have an opportunity to reply to the complaint, and PK will have the opportunity to reply to that reply.

Of course, that process can stop at any time. As soon as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and or Verizon comply with the transparency rule, PK will drop our complaint.

Public Knowledge filed comments with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration urging the Obama Administration not to support any privacy legislation that would eliminate important legal protections for telecommunications metadata.

Public Knowledge was joined on the comments by Benton Foundation, Center for Digital Democracy, Common Cause, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, Free Press, New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, US PIRG, and World Privacy Forum.