1. Monthly archive
  2. May 2017

May 2017

FCC Chairman Announces Carey Will Serve As Media Bureau Chief

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that Michelle Carey to serve as chief of its Media Bureau, continuing the work she has been doing as acting chief.

Before serving as acting chief, Carey served for six years as deputy chief of the bureau she now leads. She has also served as a senior advisor to the assistant secretary at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the Department of Commerce. Carey was also a senior legal advisor to then-FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and previously held senior leadership positions in the agency’s Wireline Competition Bureau. Carey received her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and her B.A. from Georgetown University. The FCC’s Media Bureau plays a key role in promoting innovation in the media marketplace, as it develops, recommends, and administers the policy and licensing programs relating to the media industry, including cable television, broadcast television, and radio. It also handles post-licensing matters for satellite services and releases public reports on the data collected from the industry.

No Matter What Washington Does, One Nonprofit Is Closing the Digital Divide

In 2016, with the help of a program called ConnectHome -- a partnership between EveryoneOn and the Department of Housing and Urban Development -- the Choctaw Nation connected every single rental housing property in Talihina to low-cost internet service. Choctaw Nation was one of 28 pilot cities to join the ConnectHome initiative back in 2015. The Obama-era program has since connected some 20,000 people in those cities to the internet, and distributed more than 7,000 smartphones and laptops, funded with in-kind contributions and donations from internet providers and advocacy groups.

Now EveryoneOn is announcing its plans to take over the ConnectHome program from HUD and expand its efforts to close the digital divide in more than 100 communities, both rural and urban, by 2020. HUD will still serve on the group’s advisory board, but will no longer manage it day to day. The new entity, rebranded ConnectHome Nation, is an effort not only to grow the program but to protect it from the often mercurial whims of Washington.

T-Mobile’s “Digits” program revamps the phone number

On May 31 T-Mobile will launch Digits, a revamp of how T-Mobile phone numbers work, virtualizing customer numbers so they can work across multiple devices.

It sounds a lot like Google Voice—rather than having a phone number tied to a single SIM card or a device, numbers are now account-based, and you can "log in" to your phone number on several devices. T-Mobile says the new phone number system will work "across virtually all connected devices," allowing multiple phones, tablets, and PCs to get texts and calls. This means T-Mobile needs apps across all those platforms, with the press release citing "native seamless integration" in Samsung Android phones, Android and iOS apps, and a browser interface for PCs. The new phone number system is free to all T-Mobile customers. Customers can also buy an extra phone number for $10 or by signing up to the $5-per-month "T-Mobile One Plus" package, which is a bundle of extra features like a mobile hotspot and in-flight Wi-Fi. Here, the "extra number" use case matches what Google Voice users have been doing for years: a personal and business number, or a number to give to online sales sites like Craigslist, or an easily dumpable number for your Tinder dates.

‘Anyone . . . with a pulse’: How a Russia-friendly adviser found his way into the Trump campaign

As part of its broader investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, the FBI continues to examine how Carter Page joined the campaign and what conversations he may have had with Russian officials about the effort to interfere with the election — with or without the knowledge of Donald Trump and his team — according to people familiar with the matter. The Senate Intelligence Committee has also zeroed in on Page, asking him for records of all his contacts with Russians during the campaign, all financial interactions he had with Russia and all communications he had with Trump campaign staff.

The circumstances that led to Page’s easy access to the Trump campaign represents one of the main questions facing investigators: Were Trump’s connections to multiple Russia-friendly advisers mere coincidence, or evidence of a coordinated attempt to collude with a foreign government? Or were they the result of incompetent vetting that left a neophyte candidate vulnerable to influence from people with nefarious agendas? Regardless of the answer, the campaign’s previously unreported procedures for vetting Page and other advisers are greatly complicating matters for Trump’s presidency.

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