Reporting

Thanks to an “extraordinary” response to an RFP issued earlier in 2017, a Pennsylvania broadband aggregation group called the Monroe Gigabit Project, which unites more than three dozen public agencies and private companies, will continue through 2017. Four local and national providers submitted bids to 44 organizations across Monroe County, AcceleratePA — a statewide pro-business and technology organization — said after the close of business on Wednesday, June 7.

As a result, the project, which likely would have wrapped before the end of the year, will instead continue through Dec. 31 so consultants can help participants — including the Monroe County 911 Call Center; a regional police force; several townships, boroughs and hospitals; East Stroudsburg University; and Pocono Raceway — shape the best possible deals on broadband.

In 2015, the Library of Congress received critical audits from the Government Accountability Office and its inspector general, both detailing serious years-long IT governance, security and strategy issues. The troublesome findings, in particular, those from GAO, drove the library to hire a permanent chief information officer—something it hadn’t had since 2012—and laid out 30 recommendations to right the legislative branch’s IT ship. In the two years since, the Library of Congress has made significant strides improving its IT operations, according to CIO Bernard Barton, though the library still has large challenges ahead.

President Donald Trump could soon fill the two open slots at the Federal Communications Commission, by tapping Brendan Carr, currently the general counsel to current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, and Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat who previously served at the agency.

At the moment, those two seasoned telecommunication policy experts are seen as the front-runners to fill the remaining seats at the five-member FCC, apparently, though President Trump has not yet formally nominated anyone. If elevated to commissioner, Carr could become a major, new legal ally to his soon-to-be-former boss. Apparently, Chairman Pai may have actually recommended Carr, who joined Pai’s staff in 2014, for the open Republican job at the FCC. Politically, though, Carr could face criticism from some Democrats and left-leaning consumer groups because of his business background. Before arriving at the FCC as an attorney in 2012, he worked as a lawyer at the DC law firm Wiley Rein and represented telecommunication companies like AT&T, Verizon and two of their main trade associations, USTelecom and the wireless-focused lobbying group, CTIA. Similar ties to the telecom industry previously haunted Pai, who represented Verizon at a DC law firm before he joined the commission.

The Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality docket (dubbed "Restoring Internet Freedom") is some 150,000 comments lighter as of June 8. Or at least that is according to the total on the FCC's "most active proceedings" in the last 30 days page, where it still leads the top 10 by a factor of 500 or so. That still leaves 4.78 million comments, though that is down from over 4.9 million from earlier in the week after the docket swelled by a couple of million comments since the week before.

Five Democratic Sens allege that AT&T's use of forced arbitration clauses has helped the company charge higher prices than the ones it advertises to customers. The senators pointed to a CBS News investigation that described "more than 4,000 complaints against AT&T and [subsidiary] DirecTV related to deals, promotions and overcharging in the past two years." But customers have little recourse because they are forced to settle disputes with AT&T in arbitration, according to Sens Al Franken (D-MN), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Edward Markey (D-MA).

"Forced arbitration provisions in telecommunications contracts erode Americans' ability to seek justice in the courts by forcing them into a privatized system that is inherently biased in favor of providers and which offers virtually no way to challenge a biased outcome," the senators wrote in a letter to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. "Forced arbitration requires consumers to sign away their constitutional right to hold providers accountable in court just to access modern-day essentials like mobile phone, Internet, and pay-TV services." Forced arbitration provisions such as AT&T's also "include a class action waiver; language which strips consumers of the right to band together with other consumers to challenge a provider's widespread wrongdoing," they wrote. When contacted, AT&T argued that arbitration is better for consumers than courts of law.

Wireless carrier T-Mobile has big plans for its newly acquired 600 MHz spectrum — a nationwide 5G network deployment by 2020. However, there’s a hitch. The repack of the TV band needed to clear the spectrum for wireless use won’t be finished until the middle of that year. So, the wireless carrier is trying to speed up the repack by enticing some stations to move their new channels earlier than required.

The Justice Department is apparently OK with Liberty Interactive's proposed purchase of Alaska telecom GCI. That came in an early termination notice released June 8. That means the DOJ has found no reason to try and block or condition the deal and put an early end to its Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust review. The Federal Communications Commission must still weigh in on the deal. It goes beyond antitrust to look at the public interest impact of mergers in the communications space. That review will not be concluded until at least next month. On May 19, the FCC created a pleading cycle for the deal, with comments due June 19 and reply comments due July 5. The $1.1 billion deal was struck in April.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai paid a visit to three Northwest Iowa towns to address the issue of broadband Internet access -- or lack thereof -- in rural areas. He stopped in Iowa as a part of his tour from Milwaukee (WI) to Casper (WY) exploring rural areas' access to broadband Internet. He visited Spencer, Laurens and Sioux City (IA) before heading to South Dakota. In Sioux City, Chairman Pai met with Western Iowa Telecom as well as the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce in order to assess the issues of broadband access in Siouxland. "There's a big and growing divide, a 'digital divide,' in this country between those who have high-quality internet access and those who don't," Chairman Pai said. "Disproportionately, rural Americans find themselves on the wrong side of that divide."

Greg Gianforte, the Montana Republican charged with assaulting a reporter the night before he won a seat in the House of Representatives, formally apologized to the reporter and said he would donate $50,000 to a journalism nonprofit as part of a settlement.

Gianforte wrote in a letter to the reporter, Ben Jacobs of The Guardian, that his actions on May 24 were “unprofessional, unacceptable and unlawful.” In the apology, Gianforte promised to donate $50,000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an advocacy group for press freedoms and journalists’ rights. “As both a candidate for office and a public official, I should be held to a high standard in my interactions with the press and the public. My treatment of you did not meet that standard,” wrote Gianforte, who won Montana’s lone seat in the House on May 25. “You did not initiate any physical contact with me, and I had no right to assault you.”

Jacobs accepted the congressman-elect’s apology, he said. “I hope the constructive resolution of this incident reinforces for all the importance of respecting the freedom of the press and the First Amendment and encourages more civil and thoughtful discourse in our country,” Jacobs said.

CQ Roll Call reporter John Donnelly, who was allegedly manhandled at the May Federal Communications Commission open meeting, contested how FCC Chairman Ajit Pai described the incident in a letter to lawmakers.

"I appreciate that Chairman Pai has offered an apology, but his version of the facts is inaccurate. I never attempted to enter a restricted area. That is false. Even if the guards had somehow convinced themselves that I was trying to enter a restricted area, that does not excuse what they did," Donnelly said. "As for the supposedly 'inadvertent' physical contact with me: if it was an accident, then why didn't they say so then or apologize?" Donnelly said guards appeared to know he was a reporter and contends Pai's account denying that he was pinned against the wall is inaccurate.