December 2015

After eight months of negotiations, Comcast and the City of Philadelphia (PA) agreed to the terms of a new 15-year franchise agreement. Both sides favorably described the deal, which includes added discounts for low-income Philadelphians, commitments to paying workers a living wage, and installation of a new network in more than 200 city buildings. Comcast officials called it the best in the nation. With the ink barely dry, City Council's public property committee signed off on Dec 3, sending the agreement for a vote of the full body the following week.

The negotiations were far-reaching. Chief among Council's concerns was Comcast's Internet Essentials discount program, open to low-income families with school-age children. Under the deal, Comcast would expand that program to seniors. The company said it would also provide up to $2.7 million over the next five years to allow other low-income Philadelphians to enroll. The money would help about 1,000 Philadelphians in the first year. Council also asked Comcast to drop the stipulation that only those without Internet service for 90 days qualify for the program. Instead, the city said it would give $170,000 per year to provide discounted Internet service to those excluded by the 90-day rule. The money, estimated to cover about 700 users, would come from the franchise fee Comcast pays to the city, officials said.

Charter Communications continues to work to obtain regulatory approval for its massive purchases of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, arguing that the resulting company -- dubbed New Charter -- would only service roughly 21 percent of all American broadband customers. Charter noted that figure is "less than Comcast and only slightly more than AT&T." Charter's latest statement on the company's proposed transaction essentially stands as a rebuttal to Dish Chairman of the Board Charlie Ergen and Dish Network, which have mounted a major offensive against the deal.

In a meeting with FCC officials, Ergen argued that Charter's proposed transaction "will create a suffocating duopoly: this transaction will result in two broadband providers controlling about 90 percent of the nation's high-speed broadband homes between them." Specifically, in a filing about the meeting, Dish noted that the so-called New Charter "would serve almost 30 percent of the homes in the United States that have broadband speeds of at least 25 Mbps." But Charter, in a recent filing with the SEC, blasted that claim: "New Charter would serve only 23 percent of subscribers receiving 25 Mbps and above," the company said in its filing, which it noted is "smaller than the percentage Comcast serves today."

[Commentary] Hillary Clinton’s widely publicized misuse of private e-mail for official correspondence should be used to spur reforms to deter such behavior among high-level government officials. By using private rather than government e-mail systems, Clinton and other high-level government officials seek enhanced control of public records concerning their job performance. This control prevents potentially embarrassing work e-mails from becoming public. Such control can be attained by using a hosted e-mail server such as Gmail or Outlook, or, as Clinton used, a home-based e-mail server. Using a hosted e-mail server is much more widespread because of its greater convenience and lower cost. But both types of server can be equally effective in selectively shielding work e-mails from public scrutiny.

Much of law enforcement has always been based on motivating witnesses and co-conspirators to whistle blow, partly by providing them with some immunity for doing so. It is long past time when this principle should have been applied to curb the abuses of high level government officials using private e-mail systems to shield their official work from public scrutiny.

[Snider, a former American Political Science Association Congressional fellow in Communications and Public Policy, is the president of iSolon.org]

[Commentary] Until February, mobile broadband had always been classified as an information service, and even the most aggressive regulators thought it was beyond Title II’s reach. And for very good reason: Wireless is special. Wired broadband is no easy feat. But wireless is technically more tricky, it is capacity-constrained, and it operates in a shared medium, with many users competing for limited capacity. Airborne wireless signals must contend with trees, buildings and other wireless signals in their attempt to reach mobile devices traveling at 70 miles an hour down the highway. With wires, moreover, we can light up another fiber optic cable if need be. But mobile is constrained by the amount of commercially available wireless spectrum, which has been in short supply and where the future pipeline is uncertain.

Mobile networks thus employ a number of technical and commercial methods to deliver robust and economical services. Wireless relies on differentiated signaling and packet prioritization to make sure users get their fair share of capacity and to ensure various applications work properly. Wireless is doubly important for the economy. Wireless is also doubly vulnerable to bureaucratic meddling that would interfere with technical and commercial innovation. Fortunately, wireless is doubly protected by statute. The courts will likely strike down the Federal Communications Commission’s ill-advised and illegal rules, with a double denunciation for wireless meddling.

[Bret Swanson is president of Entropy Economics LLC and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute]