Internet/Broadband

A group of small Internet service providers urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to preserve the FCC's network neutrality rules and the related classification of ISPs as common carriers. "We have encountered no new additional barriers to investment or deployment as a result of the 2015 decision to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service and have long supported network neutrality as a core principle for the deployment of networks for the American public to access the Internet," the ISPs said in a letter to Pai that was organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The current rules are necessary "to address the anticompetitive practices of the largest players in the market," but "the FCC’s current course threatens the viability of competitive entry and competitive viability," the companies wrote.

Is privacy a relic of the past given the array of governments and corporations determined to hoover up information about all of us as fully as technology permits it? Julia Angwin doesn’t think so.

The Pro Publica journalist argues that those fighting to better protect privacy aren’t wasting their time, even as the Information Age accelerates. Consider the Industrial Revolution, she urged.vLike advances in information technology, industrialization made societies more efficient, more productive, and wealthier––but those gains came at a heavy cost, for those who lived through the period of rapid industrialization made due with dangerous factories and horrific pollution, among other ills. At the time, those ills struck many as permanent features too entrenched or perhaps even too inevitable to counter. But others fought for industrial reforms, pushing society toward measures that better protected the environment and workers. Indeed, the conditions that prevailed in the early years of the Industrial Revolution would be unthinkable in the U.S. today. Why shouldn’t the Information Age prove as malleable to reformers?

At the Smart Cities Connect Conference held June 25-28 at the Austin Convention Center, US Ignite and the National Science Foundation announced five new cities that have joined the Smart Gigabit Communities (SGC) program, which "accelerates the development of advanced gigabit applications that cannot run on current networks as the bedrock of smart communities by identifying new economic and social opportunities created by those applications," according to the SGC website. Each "gigabit" city receives support from the National Science Foundation to use its physical and wireless network infrastructure as an enabler of smart applications to solve specific community problems. Cities joining the program this year include: Washington (DC), Albuquerque (NM), Phoenix (AZ), San Diego (CA) and Jackson Energy Authority (TN).

Verizon has asked the Federal Communications Commission to get rid of the so-called de facto retirements from its copper retirement definition, arguing that it could create uncertainty in the process of shutting down legacy facilities. In the FCC’s 2015 Technology Transitions Order, the FCC defined “copper retirement” as the “removal or disabling of copper loops, subloops, or the feeder portion of such loops or subloops, or the replacement of such loops with fiber-to-the-home loops or fiber-to-the curb loops.” However, the company said that the current process might hold up the process of migrating what it calls “chronic” copper customers, or those that have had multiple service visits to resolve issues.

"The 'de facto' concept should be removed because it introduces significant uncertainty to the copper retirement process,” Verizon said in a FCC filing. “Among other practical problems, the vague de facto retirement concept could result in unmanageable loop-by-loop retirement requirements or complicate a provider’s ability to move customers to fiber when that is the best and most efficient way to resolve troubles they are experiencing with copper facilities.”

A $130 billion to $150 billion fiber infrastructure investment is required in the US to unleash innovation, close the digital divide, and fully prepare the country for 5G, according to a report from management consulting firm Deloitte. The report says the investment is needed over the next five to seven years to enable ‘deep fiber,’ or fiber infrastructure closer to the end user.

Much of the premise behind the report focuses on 5G, which requires a dense fiber network for backhaul and fronthaul. But it also stresses the discrepancy between rural and urban broadband options. Deloitte is calling on regulators and the broadband carrier community to address this issue, or risk losing leadership for the global digital economy opportunity. The report says the US currently lacks the fiber infrastructure necessary to take advantage of 5G. Many tier one carriers, including Verizon, have expressed their plans to ramp up fiber investments. Deloitte seems to suggest it’s not enough.

California faces a growing class of “under-connected” households that rely only on smartphones for online access, a trend that may worsen the state’s economic inequality, according to a report released by UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. In 2017, more Californians — 87 percent of the state’s households — had broadband Internet connectivity at home. But of those, 18 percent had smartphones as their only computing devices, more than double the 8 percent just two years earlier.

While smartphones provide a cheaper, more portable way to get online, their limited computing power hinders the development of basic computing skills, leaving smartphone-only households much less likely to be integrated into California’s booming tech economy, experts said. Thirty-four percent of those without broadband at home cited the expense. They also acknowledged they felt disadvantaged in developing new career skills or taking classes, according to the poll, which surveyed more than 1,600 adults in six different languages.

[Commentary] For some time now, the related issues of control and intelligent infrastructure have fuelled the network neutrality debate. Proponents of network neutrality are concerned that if internet service providers get to charge Netflix, YouTube or any website for the privilege of being downloaded at a faster speed than others - allowing some companies to avoid becoming slowed down - society would allow deep pockets to hijack our attention.

It's tempting to back Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai if it means we'll be able to stream movies faster and buffer-free. But while smart systems seem attractive, they'll inevitably be optimised for corporate profit and control. The principle of first-come, first-served is our best protection against interference. We need it on the web - and on the roads.

[Brett Frischmann is a professor at Cardozo Law School in New York City. Evan Selinger, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology]

The Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau announces the updated standard levels for speed and usage allowances for Lifeline-supported services as required by the 2016 Lifeline Modernization Order. The Bureau specifically announces the newly calculated minimum service standards for fixed broadband. It also reminds providers of the updated minimum service standards for mobile broadband and mobile voice service, as established in the FCC’s rules. These standards will take effect on December 1, 2017. Finally, the Bureau announces that the budget for federal universal service support for the Lifeline program for calendar year 2018 will be $2,279,250,000. Beginning December 1, 2017, the Lifeline minimum service standard for fixed broadband speed will be 15 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream.

[Commentary] Recently, without any reference to the Net Neutrality debate, the cable industry trade association NCTA made the unsurprising observation that broadband speeds in the US continue to rise, as they always have. Seeing all things through the lens of Net Neutrality, Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld immediately laid claim to the trend, asserting that the data in NCTA’s post supports the FCC’s reclassification decision. According to Feld, the speed trend confirms that the “Title II Virtuous Circle” is “totally working” because “the rate of increase has accelerated since the FCC adopted the Title II Reclassification Order in February 2015.”

Feld sets up a direct test of the wisdom of Title II reclassification based on the pace of speed increases following the 2015 Open Internet Order. An empirical question requires an empirical answer. Using the Akamai speed data, Ford subjects Feld’s “theorem” to a battery of statistical tests. Without exception, the data reveal a statistically significant decline in the rate of average broadband speed increases for the US subsequent to the 2015 Open Internet Order. Ford finds that “but for” the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order, US broadband speeds would have been about 10% higher—or about 1.5 Mbps faster—on average. Thus, in direct contradiction to Feld’s claim, reclassification appears to have significantly retarded expected broadband speed increases.

[Commentary] The First Amendment protects our right to use social networks like Facebook and Twitter, the Supreme Court declared. The decision called social media “the modern public square” and “one of the most important places” for the exchange of views. The holding is a reminder of the enormous role such networks play in our speech, our access to information and, consequently, our democracy. But while the government cannot block people from social media, these private platforms can. Today, as social media sites are accused of spreading false news, influencing elections and allowing horrific speech, they may respond by increasing their policing of content. Clarity about their internal speech regulation is more important now than ever. The ways in which this newfound transparency is harnessed by the public could be as meaningful for online speech as any case decided in a United States court.

[Margot E. Kaminski is an assistant professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Kate Klonick is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale Law School.]