April 2015

Verizon has alleged that Dish illegally colluded with designated entities (DE's) Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless during the ASW-3 auction bidding, according to ex parte notifications of meetings it held with top Federal Communications Commission officials.

Dish counters that it complied with all legal requirements, including antitrust laws. The FCC is now deciding whether those latter two companies should get billions in bidding credits given that they were essentially bidding with Dish dollars -- Dish owns a majority stake in both companies. The collusion charge came in meetings between Verizon executives and FCC commissioners and other staffers. Accompanying the Verizon group was Duke economics professor Leslie Marx, who offered up an analysis of the relationship between the companies she said provided evidence of collusion in violation of antitrust laws and FCC rules. Among the allegations were suppression of rivalry, distortion of information, allocation of markets and more.

The First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) Board approved the framework of FirstNet’s proposed acquisition approach to deploy the nationwide public safety broadband network and authorized the release of a Special Notice requesting feedback on draft Request for Proposals (RFP) documents. Also at the special meeting, the Board approved a third Public Notice seeking further comment on the definition and scope of the term “public safety entity” as used in FirstNet’s enabling legislation. FirstNet Board members underscored the importance of continuing to consult with the public safety community on these items.

“Today’s decisions by the FirstNet Board continue the significant progress FirstNet is achieving toward our goal of implementing the nationwide public safety broadband network,” said FirstNet Chair Sue Swenson. “We look forward to having a meaningful dialog on these two topics with the public safety community, state and local jurisdictions, territories and tribes, and potential offerors to move us along our strategic roadmap toward a final RFP and ultimately the deployment of a dedicated public safety broadband network." FirstNet is finalizing the Special Notice with draft RFP documents to reflect the Board’s decisions today and plans to release them on Monday, April 27 with responses due within 90 days.

A new regional fiber network built by two small local telecommunications companies not only will bring higher-speed connectivity to communities in six states, but it should also enhance users’ Internet experience in another way by minimizing the number of carriers underlying users’ end-to-end Internet connection. Minimizing the number of carriers should help minimize latency -- an increasingly important consideration as the Internet increasingly supports real-time offerings such as video streaming services. The new regional fiber network comes from Arkansas-based Ritter Communications and Missouri-based Fidelity Communications and will support broadband connections between 10 Mbps and 100 Gbps. The network will link Dallas (TX) and Memphis (TN), serving rural communities in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

[Commentary] Given the apparent security risks of e-mail, should the President be using it? There are some flaws with the argument that keeping the President off e-mail altogether will make communications more secure. First is that even in this recent set of breaches, the most secure of government digital messaging systems appears to have remained intact. At least publicly, agencies targeted by the recent wave of attacks have said that only their unclassified systems were compromised: Classified digital messages are largely kept in an entirely separate system, which officials have said remained safe. Plus, even if the president isn't sending or receiving his own e-mails, unless the entire White House were to switch to typewriters like the Russian intelligence service reportedly did after the revelations about the National Security Agency's digital spying powers in recent years, the people around him will still be his proxies -- creating a digital record of what's going on inside the administration.

And that digital record is actually the most compelling reason the President should use e-mail. Having e-mails that show how the President's positions developed over time will help provide perspective insight into how the country worked decades and potentially centuries down the line. Unfortunately, there's already evidence one President's aversion to e-mail was at least partially driven by an attempt not to leave that much of a trail. In a 2013 C-SPAN interview President Bush cited a fear of "congressional intrusion" as a reason he avoided e-mail. He even wistfully addressed the loss that choice caused the public: "A lot of history’s lost when presidents are nervous about their personal papers being subpoenaed."