Even though efforts to restore communications services have been going well in most of the areas affected by Hurricane Michael, the slow progress in restoring wireless service in areas close to where the hurricane made landfall is completely unacceptable. While the Federal Communications Commission has been in regular contact with companies serving the affected areas, I’m concerned that their actions on the ground aren’t matching the urgency that we have conveyed during those conversations. I am therefore joining Gov Rick Scott (R-FL) in calling on wireless carriers to waive the bills of Floridians in these affected areas for the month of Oct and to allow them to change carriers without penalty. These carriers also need to immediately disclose publicly to Floridians how they will quickly restore service. In addition, I have directed our Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau to promptly initiate an investigation into this matter.

California's network neutrality law will cause "significant lost revenues" for Comcast, the nation's largest cable company said in a court filing. Comcast described the net neutrality law's potential impact on its ability to charge online service providers and network operators for network interconnection. "The paid interconnection provisions will harm Comcast's ability to enter into new, mutually beneficial interconnection agreements with edge providers that involve consideration, leading to a loss of existing and prospective interconnection partners and significant lost revenues," Comcast Senior VP Ken Klaer wrote in the filing in US District Court for the Eastern District of California. Comcast submitted its filing on Oct 3 as part of the broadband industry lawsuit that seeks to overturn CA's net neutrality law (SB 822), which is slated to take effect on Jan 1, 2019 unless the court grants a stay halting implementation. Comcast's filing is meant to support the industry's request for an injunction that would halt enforcement of the law while litigation is pending. AT&T also complained about the CA law's interconnection provisions in a court filing, saying that the law "purports to regulate such [interconnection] agreements and may be construed to prohibit payment for direct interconnection in many circumstances."

Spending time like this outside of DC—hearing directly from community leaders and broadband providers alike—is critical. I can think of no better way to identify both the regulatory barriers that needlessly slow down broadband deployment and the steps we can take back in Washington to remove them. As this hearing makes clear, spectrum and infrastructure are key for 5G. So I want to start by commending the [Senate Commerce] Committee for leading on these two issues. Chairman John Thune (R-SD) championed the MOBILE NOW Act, which frees up the spectrum necessary for next-generation wireless service. And on the infrastructure side, I want to acknowledge both Chairman Thune and Sen Brian Schatz (D-HI) for their work on the bipartisan STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act. This bill would update our nation’s infrastructure policies by cutting the red tape that threatens the deployment of 5G networks. At the Federal Communications Commission, we are building on your efforts, and we recognize that the time to act is now.

For two years, Alex Stamos was the Facebook executive tasked with defending the company’s systems against Russian interference and other critical threats. Now the former chief security officer, who left the social network in Aug, says Facebook — and the entire technology industry — needs a systems of checks and balances to help it weigh the complex decisions Silicon Valley companies are making in areas including security and democratic expression. Stamos plans to announce the creation of an institute to do that, in some of his first public remarks since leaving Facebook and joining Stanford University as an adjunct professor and Hoover fellow.  He hopes the new institute, called the Stanford Internet Observatory, will help unite “sometimes warring factions” of academia, tech companies and Washington policymakers to work together to help solve “the negative impacts technology can have on society,” he said. The Observatory will aim to assist technology companies in their investigations — “a bridge between multiple platforms fighting the same problems,” he said — by sharing data and providing more transparency and accountability to their security challenges.

Federal Trade Commissioner Rohit Chopra set the stage for the agency’s look at tech platforms by focusing on how digital marketplaces harvest data, and how operators set the rules for buying and selling in the marketplaces. Noting that mass data collection and analysis can be used to form individualized pricing, Commissioner Chopra said the FTC must learn more about companies’ data collection practices, their use of predictive analytics and how data is monetized. Without naming any companies outright, he also raised questions about how marketplace operators can set the rules to benefit their bottom lines, like requiring a seller to pay more for premier placement. “Shedding light on how marketplaces and platforms engage in data collection and analysis, as well as how their rules and regulations promote or impede the competitive process, will be a great contribution to advancing the Federal Trade Commission’s mission and developing policy that will make sure our markets are truly working,” Commissioner Chopra said. But panelists were not shy about calling out big tech companies. Ben Thompson, who writes the tech newsletter Stratechery, offered ideas for regulating Facebook and Google in particular by preventing them from buying up potential competitors. “I consider the greatest regulatory failure in the internet era [to be] Facebook acquiring Instagram, and part of the problem was there was no framework to say why they shouldn’t be allowed to,” Thompson said. And early Facebook and Google investor Roger McNamee said antitrust action against the companies is “the best and most pro-growth remedy available.”

Apparently, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood subpoenaed more than a dozen telecommunications trade groups, lobbying contractors, and Washington advocacy organizations, seeking to determine whether the groups submitted millions of fraudulent public comments to sway a critical federal decision on internet regulation. Some of the groups played a highly public role in 2017’s battle, when the Federal Communications Commission voted to revoke rules that classified internet service providers as public utilities. NY AG Underwood’s investigators have estimated that almost half of all of the comments — more than nine million — used stolen identities. "The FCC’s public comment process was corrupted by millions of fake comments,” NY AG Underwood said. “The law protects New Yorkers from deception and the misuse of their identities. My office will get to the bottom of what happened and hold accountable those responsible for using stolen identities to distort public opinion on net neutrality.” In Sept, the New York Times sued the FCC to obtain digital records that would help trace the source of the public comments. The case is continuing.