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  2. March 2016

March 2016

Senate Commerce Approves Mobile Now Act

The Mobile Now Act, which would take numerous steps to boost wireless broadband, passed unanimously out of the Senate Commerce Committee loaded with amendments on everything from shot-clocks for approving facilities, to dig-once policies for combining road projects and telecom plant, to a contest offering up to $5 million for the first person to come up with a way to boost spectrum efficiency.

The bipartisan bill, which specifically targets the buildout of 5G mobile broadband, was the result of months of negotiations, and Commerce Chairman John Thune (R-SD) said he thought the bill had a good chance for passage by the full Senate. Included in the bill was an amendment, backed by, among others, wireless broadband spectrum fan Sen Marco Rubio (D-FL) that would insure that at least 100 MHz of the spectrum being freed up would go for unlicensed use and another 100 MHz for commercial mobile service, with a handwritten addition to the amendment saying that commercial use was "subject to the [FCC's] regulatory purview to implement exclusive licensing in a flexible manner, including consideration of continued use of such spectrum by incumbent federal or non-federal entities in designated geographic areas indefinitely."

You Didn’t Notice It, But Google Fiber Just Began the Golden Age of High Speed Internet Access

[Commentary] Google launched what amounts to a religious war in American telecom land.

In a surprising announcement, the Alphabet company known as Google Fiber said it would expand its high speed Internet access services to Huntsville, Alabama — but in a different way that it currently has started up operations in cities like Austin and Kansas City. In cities it services to date, Google Fiber actually lays down the fiber-optic cables that allow it to deliver super-high numbers of bits to customers and businesses. But in Huntsville, it will lease “dark” fiber that will be built and owned by the electric utility in that city. (Dark fiber is passive, unlit by lasers, so not capable of carrying information until someone comes along and lights it.) The Google lease is nonexclusive — any other ISP can show up and provide services — and will allow Google to provide retail gigabit fiber Internet access services to any home or business that Huntsville decides to serve. I am over the moon about this. It’s a similarly exhilarating feeling to the one I’d have if I were a rabid football fan and my long-suffering team just won the Super Bowl. And don’t mock my wonkiness — because you should be celebrating too. The reason this is totally exciting is that this is the model that has been used with enormous success in several other cities — and could be revolutionary here in smashing the current dogma that keeps Americans overcharged and under-served.

[Crawford is a professor at Harvard Law School and a co-director of the Berkman Center.]

Comcast accused of violating NBC merger commitment and network neutrality rule

Public Knowledge has asked the Federal Communications Commission to stop Comcast from exempting its own streaming video service from Internet data caps, saying that selective enforcement of caps violates a merger condition from when Comcast purchased NBCUniversal and may violate a network neutrality rule.

PK’s petition relates to "Stream TV," a service for Comcast's Internet-only customers that streams live TV channels to computers, tablets, and phones. Stream TV doesn't require a set-top box, but Comcast says it "is an in-home cable service delivered over Comcast's cable system, not over the Internet." Stream TV offers some video outside the home, but live TV channels can only be watched on Comcast customers' home Internet connections. Public Knowledge points out that when Comcast won government approval to buy NBCUniversal in 2011, the FCC and Department of Justice "prohibited Comcast from excluding its own services from data caps or metering and required it to count traffic from competing online video services the same as its own." Public Knowledge also says the data cap exemption for Stream TV should be stopped by the FCC's net neutrality order; though the net neutrality rules don't specifically ban zero-rating, the FCC imposed a "general conduct" rule to be applied on a case-by-case basis. That rule is meant to stop practices that limit consumers' access to content or the ability of online service providers to reach consumers. Comcast argues that Stream TV's data cap exemption doesn't violate the merger condition or net neutrality because it is a cable service and not an Internet one. Public Knowledge is trying to convince the FCC that Comcast is wrong.

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