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  2. April 2016

April 2016

US Adds China’s Internet Controls to List of Trade Barriers

China’s notorious online controls have long been criticized as censorship by human rights groups, businesses, Chinese Internet users and others. Now they have earned a new label from the American government: trade barrier.

United States trade officials have for the first time added China’s system of Internet filters and blocks — broadly known as the Great Firewall — to an annual list of trade impediments. The entry says that over the last decade, the limits have “posed a significant burden to foreign suppliers, hurting both Internet sites themselves and users who often depend on them for business.” The move, which isn’t likely to have immediate repercussions, speaks to the American government’s growing concern over Chinese Internet regulations and could foreshadow more aggressive actions. It also underscores the opposing visions the world’s two largest economies have on how the Internet should work and be managed.

FCC Announces Tentative Agenda For April 2016 Open Meeting

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the April Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, April 28, 2016:

  1. Transition from TTY to Real-Time Text Technology: The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that seeks comment on proposals to support real-time text communications over Internet Protocol communications networks, to improve the accessibility of these networks for consumers who are deaf, hard of hearing, deaf-blind, and speech disabled. (GN Docket No. 15-178)
  2. Business Data Services: The Commission will consider a Tariff Investigation Order and a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing a new regulatory framework for the provision of business data services. (WC Docket Nos. 16-XX, 15-247, 05-25)

FCC Charges Total Call Mobile with Overbilling the Lifeline Program, Plans $51 Million Fine

The Federal Communications Commission plans to fine Total Call Mobile $51,070,322 for apparently enrolling tens of thousands of duplicate and ineligible consumers into the Lifeline program.

The FCC alleges that since 2014, Total Call has requested and received an estimated $9.7 million dollars in improper payments from the Universal Service Fund for duplicate or ineligible consumers despite repeated and explicit warnings from its own employees, in some cases compliance specialists, that company sales agents were engaged in widespread enrollment fraud. Lifeline providers are required to ensure their employees do not commit fraud within the program. This is the largest fine that the FCC has proposed against a Lifeline provider.

Verizon, CLECs Strike Deal on Special Access

The Federal Communications Commission had barely fired the starting gun for both sides in the special access data race, but there was already talk of a negotiated finish. Incumbent telecommunication company Verizon and INCOMPAS, which represents competitive carriers, signaled they had struck a compromise on how the FCC should proceed in an IP world, which would include technology-neutral rate regulations on everyone, including cable and competitive carriers, where there is insufficient competition. Verizon was even joining in a call for the imposition of Title II, in this case for all providers offering dedicated service.

Special access is the business broadband service that incumbent telecommunication companies (ILECS) dominated because they had built out the networks. The FCC requires ILECS to lease those lines (unbundle) to those competitive telecommunication companies (CLECs) and cable companies at reasonable rates. "In an effort to move beyond a more than decade-long debate [over whether and how to extend those legacy regulations to an IP world], INCOMPAS and Verizon sent a letter to the FCC today that recommends adopting a permanent policy framework for all dedicated services, including Ethernet services," said INCOMPAS CEO Chip Pickering and Kathleen Grillo, SVP and deputy general counsel, public policy and government affairs for Verizon.

Verizon to Proceed With Yahoo Bid, Google Weighs Offer

Verizon plans to make a first-round bid for Yahoo’s Web business during the week of April 11, and is willing to acquire the company’s Yahoo Japan Corp. stake to help sweeten the offer, apparently. Google, the main division of Alphabet Inc., is also considering bidding for Yahoo’s core business, apparently.

Potential suitors AT&T and Comcast have decided against bidding. Microsoft, which failed with a hostile bid for Yahoo in 2008, won’t bid this time. Time Inc is still evaluating a bid, while private equity funds Bain and TPG -- among others -- are also planning to make a run at the business, either alone or by backing a strategic acquirer. While the buyout firms haven’t yet paired themselves with a strategic buyer, they are open to the idea of doing so, apparently. First-round bids for the company’s main Web assets are due April 11.

Chairman Wheeler's Response to Members of Congress Regarding GAO Report Entitled, "Additional Coordination and Performance Measurement Needed for High Speed Internet Access Programs on Tribal Lands"

On March 31, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote to several members of Congress on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding a Government Accountability Office report entitled "Additional Coordination and Performance Measurement Needed for High-Speed Internet Access Programs on Tribal Lands".

Chairman Wheeler wrote, "In their January 20, 2016 response to the draft report, the Chiefs of the Commission's Consumer and Governmental Affairs and Wireline Competition Bureaus agreed with the Report's four recommendations for Commission action. As indicated in that response, the Commission has executed, or is prioritizing, a broad range of initiatives to help improve and measure the availability and adoption of high-speed Internet on Tribal lands. The Commission is committed to facilitating the expansion of 21st century communications to Tribal Nations across the United States."

A Google offshoot is imagining cities that work like the Internet

Creating physical urban spaces that run on data—in ways that resemble the connectivity of the Internet itself—has been a dream of Larry Page’s since he publicly floated the idea of “Google 2.0” in 2014. The Google founder and Alphabet CEO’s idea is a guiding principle at Sidewalk Labs, spun off last summer. And that dream has set the Internet’s imagination aflutter in the last few days, with headlines asking, “Is Alphabet Going to Build a City?”

The speculation came after Sidewalk’s CEO, Dan Doctoroff, responded to a question about rumors that the company was exploring building an experimental city. “It’s a great idea,” he replied. “If you could create a place, it’d be a laboratory to experiment with these problems.” But Doctoroff wouldn’t discuss or confirm any such plans and, for now, Sidewalk has its hands full with the more prosaic, painstaking slog of changing how existing cities function. The company’s ambitions are to marry technology with government to improve city life, and to do so it is leveraging an unprecedented understanding of how everything moves around cities, using the smartphones and sensors riding around in most people’s pockets and vehicles.

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