You’re reading the Benton Foundation’s Weekly Round-up, a recap of the biggest (or most overlooked) telecommunications stories of the week. The round-up is delivered via e-mail each Friday; to get your own copy, subscribe at www.benton.org/user/register
Robbie's Round-Up for the Week of May 1-5, 2017
Thank you for inviting me to join you today to discuss the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, or TCPA. The D.C. Circuit has yet to issue an opinion on ACA International’s appeal of the Federal Communications Commission’s TCPA Omnibus Order, which was joined by a wide array of parties. And I hope against all hope that a number of aspects of that Order will be overturned. Perhaps indicative, the D.C. Circuit recently said that TCPA did not give the FCC authority to require opt-out notices on solicited faxes. But regardless of the outcome on the broader TCPA appeal, I expect that the FCC will need to revisit the issue to write rules that are truly clear and rational. The 2015 rules are neither. Recognizing this reality, I would like to outline three overarching points to help frame the discussion and guide the adoption of any replacement rules.
1) Legitimate Businesses Should be Able to Make Informational and Telemarketing Calls
2) Valid Callers Should be Able to Operate in an Efficient Manner
3) The Commission Should Focus on Actual Harms and Real Bad Actors
[Commentary] We reject the idea that the federal government should control the Internet. That’s why we have introduced the Restoring Internet Freedom Act, which will complement Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s efforts to repeal the 2015 Internet takeover by preventing the FCC from issuing any similar regulations in the future.
As Pai recently explained, “regulations designed for monopoly will push the market further toward monopoly.” This is not what is best for citizens in Utah, Wisconsin, Texas or the rest of the country. We want more competition, not less. More investment, not less. More innovation, not less. We support an open Internet. But we reject the notion that heavy-handed regulations are the way to accomplish this goal.
[Commentary]
Claim: "Network neutrality has hurt investment and the broadband industry." Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai keeps making this claim, so we’ll keep debunking it.
Claim: “We support net neutrality, but just want to get rid of Title II.” A federal court ruled in early 2014 that the legal underpinning for the FCC’s rules was no good, and strongly implied the best way to square that circle would be common carrier classification. Without it the FCC did not have the legal authority to make ISPs adhere to rules about blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization of content.
Claim: "You can’t use old law because the internet is new technology." This is where we get to outright, bald-faced hypocrisy, instead of disingenuous misdirection.
Claim: “We should leave this to Congress.” In the hyper-partisan, hyper-polarized, frankly completely bonkers political world of 2017, getting Congress to act on anything is an uphill battle, to put it mildly. Getting them to do it in a bipartisan way is like herding unicorns.
When Congress voted in March to block Federal Communications Commission privacy rules and let internet service providers sell users’ personal data, it was a coup for the telecommunication industry. Now, the nonprofit, pro-privacy group Fight for the Future is publicizing just how much the industry paid in an attempt to sway those votes.
The group unveiled four billboards, targeting House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and John Rutherford (R-FL), as well as Sens Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Dean Heller (R-NV). All four billboards, which were paid for through donations, were placed in the lawmakers’ districts. “Congress voting to gut Internet privacy was one of the most blatant displays of corruption in recent history,” Fight for the Future co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng said in a statement on the project. The billboards accuse the lawmakers of betraying their constituents, and encourage passersby to call their offices.
Seattle (WA) Mayor Ed Murray has directed that curbs be imposed on internet providers to protect customers’ data privacy. Under a new rule scheduled to take effect May 24, the three companies that have cable franchise agreements with the city must get customer permission if they want to sell personal information or web browsing details.
The city privacy protections come after President Donald Trump signed a bill in April rolling back upcoming federal measures that would have stopped internet companies from collecting and selling customer information without permission. “Where the Trump administration continues to roll back critical consumer protections, Seattle will act,” Murray said.
Whatever Facebook plans to pay its 3,000 new hires, it’s hard to think that it will be enough. Getting in the door at a huge, influential tech company may, in the abstract, sound like an exciting opportunity. But the new positions, which the social media giant will be adding over the course of the next year, involve a new and grinding kind of work: These people will join 4,500 existing Facebook employees in reviewing the grimmest and grisliest content posted to the site to determine what should be allowed to stay up and what should be deleted.
The second 6 months of 2016 was the first time that a majority of American homes had only wireless telephones. Preliminary results from the July– December 2016 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) indicate that 50.8% of American homes did not have a landline telephone but did have at least one wireless telephone (also known as cellular telephones, cell phones, or mobile phones) —an increase of 2.5 percentage points since the second 6 months of 2015. More than 70% of all adults aged 25-34 and of adults renting their homes were living in wireless-only households. This report presents the most up-to-date estimates available from the federal government concerning the size and characteristics of this population.
Steptoe & Johnson LLP is pleased to announce that Jonathan Sallet, former deputy assistant attorney general for litigation in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, has joined the firm as a partner. He will reside in Steptoe’s Washington office.
At the DOJ, Sallet led the Antitrust Division’s review of key mergers and conduct investigations, and supervised the division’s litigation matters from 2016-2017. He also worked closely with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and provided the division’s views publicly on the appropriate analysis of vertical transactions and broadband competition. From 2013-2016, Sallet served as general counsel of the FCC, a position he assumed at the request of incoming Chairman Tom Wheeler. Among his most recognized accomplishments was successfully arguing the Open Internet case on behalf of the FCC before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Prior to his most recent government service, Sallet had a long and varied career as an antitrust lawyer in private practice and as a policy adviser and strategic counselor for technology companies.
The departure of its CEO presents an opportunity for the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) to clean up its act. USAC as it has been managed is not sufficiently accountable to the Commission, and is not meeting the needs of universal service stakeholders or the public, who pay fees to support USAC’s operations. Absent significant and timely improvements, I believe that all options should be on the table, including putting USAC’s functions out for contract, as the Commission has done in other circumstances.
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