December 2016

A bipartisan, bicameral group of legislators has asked Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler to extend the waiver the FCC granted to smaller cable operators in 2015 from the enhanced transparency requirements in the FCC's Open Internet Order. Those smaller operators have argued that the reporting—on network performance particularly—are an undue burden.

The FCC's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau granted the waiver in 2015 for systems under 100,000 subscribers and there were bills in the House and Senate to do the same, while upping the sub trigger to 250,000. But the bills did not make it into law, and the waiver expires Dec. 15 unless the FCC takes action. The legislators—including incoming House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and Sen Joe Manchin (D-WV)—urged the chairman to extend the waiver. "Without commission action, small businesses soon face regulatory uncertainty and will potentially be subject to burdensome requirements," they wrote. "Before the current extension expires, the Commission should extend the enhanced transparency exemption and begin the process of considering whether the definition of small business entities to which the exemption applies should be modified [i.e. expanded to match Congress' 250,000 or perhaps another figure]."

Broadband capital expenditures (capex) was down almost $1 billion—to $76 billion—in 2015 over the year before, according to USTelecom’s annual broadband investment report. Of that, wireless accounted for 43%, wireline 35% and cable at 22%. By contrast, from 1996 to 2015, cable's slice of the pie was 17%, wireless 33% and wireline 51%, so the landscape is changing as wireline's share of capex has declined and wireless and cable's have grown.

Internet service providers, including USTelecom, have argued that the imposition of Title II regulations would result in decreased investment, though Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has suggested that would not and has not been the case. USTelecom pointed to a Progressive Policy Institute report earlier in 2016 that showed sluggish growth and attributed it in part to regulatory uncertainty. The uncertainty now is just how long it will take either a Republican FCC or Congress to reverse the Title II decision. The report shows modest increases in capex between 2012 and 2014 before 2015's decline. Over the 20 years the report covers, broadband industry capex has totaled $1.5 trillion.

Some of the world's richest countries are very poorly served with mobile Internet. The US, UK, and Germany are still lagging behind developing nations when it comes to 4G access and download speeds. A report by consultancy OpenSignal found that American users have to put up with an average speed of just 13 Megabytes per second. That's the 69th slowest in the world, and way behind countries such as Ecuador (25 Mbps), China and Kazakhstan (both 22 Mbps). World leader Singapore boasts 46 Mbps. And the global average stands at 17.4.

While the US ranks poorly in speed, it's doing much better in terms of access. A typical user in the US can get onto a 4G network 81% of the time. That puts the US in 10th spot in the global ranking. The UK, by contrast, ranks just 54th in the world in terms of 4G availability. A typical user in Britain can only access 4G 58% of the time, behind Albania, Panama and Peru. Speed in the UK isn't all that great either, although with 21 Mbps it is still doing better than the US.