Internet/Broadband

Microsoft introduced an initiative, the Microsoft Rural Airband project. Microsoft will invest an unspecified amount of money with existing rural broadband carriers to bring broadband to 2 million people in rural America by 2022. Microsoft will help fund projects that use TV white spaces spectrum for wireless broadband. It’s a technology they believe in and have deployed in 20 projects across the globe, serving about 185K subscribers.

TV white spaces spectrum is in the 600 MHz band and offers good propagation and distance characteristics. Microsoft is also calling on federal, state, and local governments to play a role. They are advocating appropriate spectrum use policies with the FCC to ensure nationwide unlicensed use of three channels below the 700 MHz band. They are calling on matching funds from any federal and state infrastructure spending to include TV white spaces technology options.

Internet service providers have asked the Supreme Court for a 60-day extension of the deadline for filing their appeals to the Supreme Court of a DC federal appeals court decision upholding the Federal Communications Commission's Title II-based Open Internet order. They want an extension from July 30 to Sept. 28 in case the new FCC proposal to roll back Title II moots that appeal. Seeking the extension are NCTA–The Internet & Television Association, CTIA–The Wireless Association, USTelecom, the American Cable Association, AT&T, CenturyLink , Alamo Broadband, TechFreedom and various individuals including VoIP pioneer Daniel Berninger.

The FCC has sought comment on the proposal by the Republican FCC majority under chairman Ajit Pai to reclassify internet access—wired and wireless, fixed and mobile, customer facing and interconnections—as an information service not subject to Title II and to review whether rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization are necessary. Those comments are due July 17 (initial comments) and Aug. 16 (replies).

You are probably used to pop-ups on websites begging you to sign-up for an e-mail newsletter, enter a contest, or watch an ad. But tomorrow the web will be plastered in a different sort of pop-up as some the tech's biggest companies fight to maintain a free and open internet. July 12, sites across the web will place alerts on their pages encouraging people to send letters to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency not to jettison net neutrality. Hundreds of companies and organizations plan to participate in this so-called "Day of Action," from giants such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Netflix to Reddit, Etsy, PornHub, Spotify, and even some smaller internet service providers like Ting and Sonic. But not every company is equally committed to the cause of net neutrality. Here's where six internet giants stand on the issue, and what a world with fast and slow lanes might mean for them.

Microsoft will harness the unused channels between television broadcasts, known as white spaces, to help get more of rural America online.

In an event at the Willard Hotel in Washington, where Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated a coast-to-coast telephone call a century ago, Microsoft plans to say that it will soon start a white-spaces broadband service in 12 states including Arizona, Kansas, New York and Virginia to connect two million rural Americans in the next five years who have limited or no access to high-speed internet. Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, said white spaces were “the best solution for reaching over 80 percent of people in rural America who lack broadband today.” To support the white-spaces plan, Microsoft is appealing to federal and state regulators to guarantee the use of unused television channels and investments in promoting the technology in rural areas. But the company faces many hurdles with the technology.

Microsoft said its goal was not to become a telecom provider. It will work with local internet service providers like Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities in Virginia and Axiom Technologies in Maine by investing in some of the capital costs and then sharing in revenue. It has also opened its patents on the technology and teamed with chip makers to make devices that work with white spaces cheaper.

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai plans to eliminate net neutrality protections. Without these protections, big internet service providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T will be free to block or slow down content as they see fit. We, as former FCC commissioners, believe that these rules are the only way of preserving real net neutrality that protects the internet as an economic engine and platform for democratic discourse.

If Chairman Pai has his way, we could see an Internet where big cable companies decide who should have a voice and which businesses succeed and fail. Only the current net neutrality rules give the FCC the authority to ensure that the Internet remains open for all, and can remain a watchdog to stop bad behavior before it harms consumers and innovation. Americans in both parties believe the government should prioritize preventing companies from harming consumers before it occurs. Eliminating or watering down the net neutrality rules would do just the opposite, giving companies free reign to control what Americans see and do on the Internet, changing the profound effect the open Internet has on the economy and our democracy.

Strong net neutrality rules are important to the future of continued innovation, free speech, and economic opportunity. Proponents of a free and open internet should ensure their support is heard by filing comments at the FCC. And, if we want an internet that truly lives up to our country’s ideals, the current FCC chairman better listen to the citizens he serves.

[Michael Copps is the Special Advisor at Common Cause and former FCC Commissioner and Gloria Tristani is a Special Policy Advisor at National Hispanic Media Coalition and former FCC Commissioner.]

Too many students still scrounge for the vital internet access their classmates (and technology-enamored school reformers) take for granted. Dozens of interviews—along with reviews of tax disclosures, Federal Communications Commission filings, and court records related to the Educational Broadband Service (EBS)—show that this educational spectrum is, at least, woefully underutilized. It's a public resource born of good intentions but wasted by a broken system.

There are lots of ideas for fixing EBS. JH Snider of iSolon said the FCC could reclaim leased EBS licenses when they expire and reallocate them, although he can’t imagine them taking such a bold step. The FCC could also issue new spectrum licenses for the rural areas not yet covered by EBS, under the condition that license holders use the spectrum for public purposes rather than lease it. The national association of EBS license holders sent the FCC a proposal along these lines in 2014, but the agency has not formally responded. As for the current leases that dominate EBS, EveryoneOn founder Zach Leverenz said that the FCC could do a lot to “correct the shadiness in the system” just by clarifying the vagueness of legacy rules tying EBS to its original mission—such as defining what 20 hours per week of educational use means and ensuring that the 5 percent of spectrum “reserved” from the leases is actually used for educational purposes.

With the July 12 Title II Day of Action protest targeting Internet service providers getting a lot of attention, Broadband for America (BFA), which backs and includes those ISPs, was pushing back with a backgrounder on why Title II fans are off base. BFA said the protestors will claim that the FCC wants to end network neutrality, that Title II is the only way to preserve an open internet, and that ISPs oppose net neutrality. Wrong, wrong and wrong said BFA.

It said ISPs strongly support an open internet and have pledged to support enforceable principles and legislation to permanently protect against "blocking or unreasonable discrimination." BFA says that the current Title II regime has led to a $3.6 billion decrease in infrastructure investment and puts the entire internet ecosystem at risk. While Title II fans say that is the only foolproof legal framework for protecting the internet, BFA said legislation "can pass" that will protect it without the "burdens and problems" of utility regulations.

Through years of rulemakings and enforcement actions, the Federal Communications Commission has developed the expertise necessary to protect consumer privacy on communications networks. Consumers are concerned about their ability to protect their personal privacy for themselves and their families. According to survey results released by the National Telecommunications Information Administration, a significant number of consumers avoid online activities because of privacy concerns. To foster security, opportunity, and development of the internet, the FCC must continue to have a strong role in protecting broadband privacy. As members of Congress continue to develop online privacy legislation, they should understand the important role the FCC plays in protecting consumer privacy on communications networks.

[Commentary] Suppose you started a program to improve the reading abilities of the 80 percent of lower-income students who cannot read at grade level. This is a worthy cause, so let’s assume that you are spending more than $1 billion annually to fix this. Then someone studies the effectiveness of your program and finds: (1) The children who enroll already read at or above grade level, (2) the percentage of lower-income children reading below grade level has barely changed since you started, and (3) some of the people administering your program are stealing from it. Would you keep your program, or ditch it? If you were the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), you would probably keep it. At least, that is how the agency is treating its Lifeline program, which received another failing grade from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2017.

The GAO had already given the program a failing grade seven years ago in 2010. As I have written before, a less complex, less costly, and less corruption-prone way to provide Lifeline’s income benefits would be to provide direct income subsidies to low-income households. This would save the FCC considerable time and effort that it currently devotes to patching Lifeline and would save the GAO the expense of giving the program another failing grade seven years from now.

[Mark Jamison is the Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida]

[Commentary] Chattanooga (TN) had the right idea when it requested and received Federal Communications Commission approval to expand broadband service – offered through its municipal utility provider, EPB – into neighboring Bradley County, an area overlooked by commercial providers. Unfortunately, that plan was sidelined in 2016 when Tennessee turned it into a state’s rights issue and successfully contested the approval in federal court.

After the ruling, state attorney general Herbert Slatery reiterated the case “was not about access to broadband,” but rather about preventing the federal government from exercising power it didn’t have. Meanwhile, many rural communities continue to lose out, either unserved or underserved by broadband providers. During a stop in Memphis a year ago, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke outlined what the real goal here should be. “Broadband now is an essential part of people’s lives,” he said. “The highways and the roads that we drive on are what allow goods and services to transport at quick speed and grow the economy of our country. It’s the same thing with the internet. And everybody needs access to it.”