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Federal Communications Commission Changes Tribal Lands Eligibility for Lifeline Program Without Tribal Consultation
On November 16, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a Report & Order to change its definition of “rurality” for Tribal lands eligible for the enhanced Tribal subsidy of the Lifeline Program. Despite a thorough record of Tribal filings in this proceeding—including previous reform and modernization proceedings beginning initiated in 2011—the FCC has decided to eliminate the enhanced Tribal Lifeline support that was previously designated for all Tribal lands. Instead, the FCC will redirect the enhanced Tribal support to Tribal lands that are rural and not an, “urbanized area or urban cluster area with a population equal to or greater than 25,000 people.” Specifically, the FCC referenced areas like Tulsa, OK, and Reno, NV, as examples of Tribal lands that are located near urban centers with access to high-speed broadband Internet and telephone service and therefore should not be eligible for the enhanced Tribal Lifeline support providing discounted phone and mobile Internet services to low-income residents of Tribal lands. The Report & Order to adopt these changes to the Lifeline program was done without prior and informed notice to Tribal Nations.
FCC's Lifeline overhaul sets fire to a bridge over the digital divide
[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission took its first major step toward overhauling the controversial Lifeline program in a move that will punish not just low-income citizens but perhaps small, innovative service providers as well. Yes, Lifeline was once teeming with fraud, waste and abuse. Yes, the program still has significant flaws. And yes, companies that fail to provide adequate services should be forever barred from Lifeline for preying on some of our most vulnerable citizens. But the 2016 reforms may be working well—we won’t know until we see more updated data—and existing failings can be analyzed and addressed individually as necessary. Instead, the FCC is opting to overhaul the system dramatically, slashing subsidies for some and moving to prevent the kinds of service providers that are ideally suited to serve low-income consumers, often in remote areas.
Rural Telecommunication Companies Ask FCC To Prevent State Unwinding of Title I Reclassification
As Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai prepares to circulate an item reversing the Title II common carrier classification of Internet service providers, expected late next week, a group of rural members of USTelecom has asked the FCC to make sure it prevents states and localities from trying to undo that good work via their own laws and regulations. In a letter to Chairman Pai and the other commissioners Nov 17, the groups said "Returning broadband service to the Title I light-touch framework that provided the foundation for the growth and success of the broadband-enabled Internet is essential to getting and keeping communities connected." But it signaled that growth and success depends on a "common sense federal framework" for "shielding" consumers from "divergent and burdensome state and local requirements" that would be roadblocks on the bridge to digital unity.
'Time to Raise Hell': Internet Defenders Mobilize as FCC Aims to Kill Net Neutrality Within Month (Common Dreams)
Digital loitering reality of life for poor
On some evenings, after the Cleveland Public Library branch on Woodland Avenue closes, people linger near the low-slung entrance or sit in cars in the parking lot. Heads down, their eyes locked on a phone or small computer tablet, they come to do what most of us do without much thought or the need to leave the living room couch -- connect to the internet. For the people who live just across the street in the apartments that make up the King Kennedy public housing complex, access to the internet is not so easy. Broadband networks are available, but many can't afford the service. And some people have pay-as-you go phone plans that limit the amount of data they can stream. So, people from Cleveland's impoverished Central neighborhood tap the library's public wireless internet signal, which spills out of the building. The practice is known as digital loitering, common outside inner-city public spaces such as libraries and even at restaurants with free Wi-Fi, such as McDonald's.
Ignored By Big Telecom, Detroit's Marginalized Communities Are Building Their Own Internet
“When you kind of think about all the ways the internet affects your life and how 40 percent of people in Detroit don’t have that access you can start to see how Detroit has been stuck in this economic disparity for such a long time,” said Diana Nucera, director of the Detroit Community Technology Project. Nucera is part of a growing cohort of Detroiters who have started a grassroots movement to close that gap, by building the internet themselves. It’s a coalition of community members and multiple Detroit nonprofits. They’re starting with three underserved neighborhoods, installing high speed internet that beams shared gigabit connections from an antenna on top of the tallest building on the street, and into the homes of people who have long gone without. They call it the Equitable Internet Initiative. The issue isn’t only cost, though it is prohibitive for many Detroiters, but also infrastructure.
Easing of broadcast ownership restrictions is expected to benefit Sinclair/Tribune deal
Federal regulators took steps Nov 17 to ease broadcast ownership restrictions, a move seen as favorable for Sinclair Broadcast Group’s proposed $3.9 billion takeover of Tribune Media Co. The Federal Communications Commission said the rule changes would promote ownership diversity and allow broadcasters and local newspapers to better compete in the digital age. Critics said the changes would encourage consolidation and hurt media diversity. Under one change, the commission eliminated a rule prohibiting cross-ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations in a single market and another banning ownership of radio and television stations in a single market. The newspaper/broadcast rule dates to the pre-cable, pre-Internet world of 1975. Other changes could have a more direct impact on Hunt Valley-based Sinclair’s deal to acquire Tribune. The FCC eliminated a rule that required at least eight independently owned TV stations to be in a market before any entity may own two stations.
Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim Delivers Keynote Address at American Bar Association's Antitrust Fall Forum
How does antitrust fare in the required reduction in federal regulations? First, antitrust is law enforcement, it’s not regulation. At its best, it supports reducing regulation, by encouraging competitive markets that, as a result, require less government intervention. That is to say, proper and timely antitrust enforcement helps competition police markets instead of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. doing it. Vigorous antitrust enforcement plays an important role in building a less regulated economy in which innovation and business can thrive, and ultimately the American consumer can benefit. The second answer relates to remedies—at times antitrust enforcers have experimented with allowing illegal mergers to proceed subject to certain behavioral commitments. That approach is fundamentally regulatory, imposing ongoing government oversight on what should preferably be a free market.
The tiny, passionate group battling Google, Facebook, and Amazon’s grip on US minds and wallets
Google, Facebook, and Amazon are controlling Americans’ minds and wallets, and they need to be stopped before they destroy the US economy and democracy itself. That was the message from a dimly-lit, packed conference room in a nondescript Washington DC hotel near the train station last week. Nearly 200 tech executives, journalists, public relations people, and academics attended the event, organized by the Open Markets Institute, a tiny nonprofit that’s becoming a lightening rod for the growing anger and frustration with Big Tech in America. Here are their main points:
- They’re destroying our intelligence and humanity
- Their dominance makes us desperate
- They’re as addictive as opioids, and rotting our kids’ brains
- They’re killing competitors and other industries
Digital media struggles to survive technology's chokehold
The economic strains of technology on the entire media landscape are intensifying. Weeks after Google and Facebook announced record earnings, some of the biggest players in the digital media industry are still struggling to hit revenue projections, make profit or grow. Rapid consolidation in every sector, but especially digital, shows how difficult it is for media companies to survive in an attention economy dominated by tech platforms. Tech giants, aided by decades of minimal regulation, have scaled to the point at which they are able to adjust their advertising models and adapt to consumer demands faster than most media companies can keep up with.
Former Facebooker: We Can’t Trust Facebook to Regulate Itself (New York Times)
The Kochs Are Inching Closer to Becoming Media Moguls (New York Times)
Liberty Media Chair John Malone: Politics Is Making Deals Harder to Predict (Mutlichannel News)
Election officials move closer to placing new rules on Facebook and Google
The Federal Election Commission moved a step closer to placing tighter regulations on Internet ads published on major Web platforms, marking a significant shift for an agency beset by partisan dysfunction and another sign that regulators are seeking to thwart foreign meddling in U.S. elections. All five members of the commission voted to start a rulemaking process to require disclaimers for small, character-limited political ads that run online on places such as Facebook, Google and Twitter. The commissioners described working together to prevent foreign operatives from influencing American voters as a crucial priority. “Foreign interference in U.S. elections is inimical to our nation’s interests and democratic values,” said the Republican commissioners in a motion to advance the rulemaking process. “The need to prevent such interference is an issue that transcends partisan politics, and on which all Americans can agree.”
Twitter crackdown sparks free speech concerns (The Hill)
How Jared Kushner’s Newspaper Became a Favorite Outlet for WikiLeaks Election Hacks
The New York Observer, owned by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was a friendly outlet for the 2016 Russian hackers. Kushner has long denied any collusion with the Russian government, which is suspected of targeting the 2016 election, but his newspaper proved a favored conduit for hacks, which the U.S. intelligence community says were carried out on Kremlin orders. The Observer was not the only outlet that received exclusive access to Guccifer 2.0 documents — or those from other outlets such as DC Leaks, widely believed to be part of the same campaign — but it was the only one owned by someone who was part of the Trump campaign. “This would be of significant interest to law enforcement and investigators,” said John Sipher, a former CIA officer who worked in Russia.
Chris Wallace: Trump is assaulting our free press. But he also has a point.
[Commentary] Even if Trump is trying to undermine the press for his own calculated reasons, when he talks about bias in the media — unfairness — I think he has a point. I believe some of my colleagues — many of my colleagues — think this president has gone so far over the line bashing the media, it has given them an excuse to cross the line themselves, to push back. As tempting as that may be, I think it’s a big mistake. We are not players in the game. We are umpires, or observers, trying to be objective witnesses to what is going on. That doesn’t mean we’re stenographers. If the president — or anyone we’re covering — says something untrue or does something questionable, we can and should report it. But we shouldn’t be drawn into becoming players on the field, trying to match the people we cover in invective. It’s not our role. We’re not as good at it as they are. And we’re giving up our special place in our democracy.
Senate bill would impose new privacy limits on accessing NSA’s surveillance data
Sens Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Mike Lee (R-UT) released their bipartisan proposal to renew a powerful surveillance authority for collecting foreign intelligence on US soil, but with a new brake on the government’s ability to access the data. The bill would require government agencies to obtain a warrant before reviewing communications to or from Americans harvested by the National Security Agency under the surveillance authority known informally as Section 702. The measure stands little chance of passage. But, some Senate aides said, it may pressure lawmakers to insist on privacy-enhancing reforms as they look toward an end-of-year deadline to reauthorize the data-collection program — the intelligence community’s highest legislative priority.
Data Manipulation: The dangerous data hack that you won’t even notice
[Commentary] A recent wave of cyberattacks—from WannaCry and Equifax to the alleged Russian influence on the US election—has demonstrated how hackers can wreak havoc on our largest institutions. But by focusing only on hackers’ efforts to extort money or mess with our political process, we may have been missing what is potentially an even scarier possibility: data manipulation. Imagine that a major Big Food company gets hacked. But this time, instead of leaking the company’s proprietary information to the public or freezing its systems with ransomware, the hackers subtly manipulate the data on which the company relies. Because of the opportunity that data manipulation provides, we need to take simple steps now before this kind of hack becomes more common. First, we need to design systems that are carefully watching for manipulation: Hard or offline backups are essential, and data holders should develop systems to regularly compare live versions of their data to their backups.
Science’s Next Frontier? It’s Civic Engagement
[Commentary] Scientists need to go even further, venturing into unfamiliar local venues where science may not be mentioned but where communities gather to discuss their problems. Scientists need to be present at these tables, and practice those deep listening skills. At a minimum you will meet new people and gain new insights. But you may also make valuable new connections, find new collaborators, and most important of all, forge stronger bonds with your community. Don’t underestimate the power of the data you collect and create to impact community decision making. [Louise Lief was Scholar-in-Residence at the American University School of Communication Investigative Reporting Workshop from 2015-2017. Previously, she was a public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, affiliated with the Science and Technology Innovation Program and the Environmental Change and Security Program.]
Remarks Of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai At Cato Institute Policy Perspectives 2017
Across the board, we are reviewing our regulations to make sure that they reflect current market conditions; that they are applied evenly and fairly; and that they are consistent with the law and sound principles of economics. In some cases, that means streamlining rules to reflect current technological and marketplace realities. In other cases, that means eliminating them altogether. In all cases, it means getting government out of the way as much as possible in order to encourage private initiative. Beyond that, we have adopted a posture of regulatory humility. Government is not particularly well-suited to predict with certainty what the future will look like. That wisdom certainly doesn’t reside in Washington, DC. So, we aren’t seeking to manipulate regulatory levers to create a particular market structure. And we aren’t picking winners and losers.
Expect US mobile carriers to diversify and bundle more services
AT&T’s former Mobility Chief Glenn Lurie says the wireless pure-play is on its way out. “I do think, long term, you’re going to see less single-play players and more double- and triple-play players, and more bundling. Because without question the customer expectation is going to change, and it is changing. Their expectation is around having everything on their device, having their video on the device, being able to do the things around social on the device. So, I just think that for carriers to continue to grow, they’re going to have to diversify. And that will continue to happen long term—and that’s not just in the US I think that’s globally.”
Will 5G deepen the digital divide?
It’s no secret that America’s low-income and low-population communities trail urban areas when it comes to broadband access. Government and industry must ensure that gap doesn’t expand when 5G becomes operational, public- and private-sector officials said in a House Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing Nov. 16. Today, most electronic devices connect to the internet, and some of those items, like connected vehicles, will be creating significant amounts of data that needs to be processed quickly. Tomorrow's internet requires a faster and more robust network the 4G wireless that connects us now. 5G technology promises to bring the low latency and high reliability required by the internet of things, telemedicine and other applications, according to Chris Pearson, the president of 5G Americas, whose members include AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and other telecom companies.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) -- we welcome your comments.
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