July 2017

[Commentary] We’re still picking ourselves off the floor from all the laughing we did when AT&T issued a press release announcing that it was joining the “Day of Action for preserving and advancing the open internet.” Here are some things AT&T could actually do to defend Net Neutrality and the open internet:

1) Quit trying to co-opt the terms “Net Neutrality” and “open internet.”
2) Actually support real Net Neutrality.
3) Get your CEO on the record in support of Title II.
4) Quit suing the FCC over the 2015 Open Internet Order.
5) Stop sending all your lobbyists to lobby against Net Neutrality.
6) In fact, leave Congress out of it altogether.
7) Stop lying.
8) Specifically stop lying about investment.
9) Abandon your merger with Time Warner.
10) If you won’t do that, can you at least pledge to extend John Oliver’s contract when you own HBO? That’s our guy.

In a letter to Universal Service Administration Company CEO Vickie Robinson, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai responded to a recent Government Accountability Office report on potential waste, fraud and abuse in the FCC’s Lifeline program and additional internal FCC investigations. “In light of these investigations and their findings, I believe immediate action is warranted.” He called on USAC to implement safeguards in six areas to ensure Universal Service Fund monies are not used by “unscrupulous eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs)”:

• Audit the ten ETCs with the highest number of potential ineligible Lifeline subscribers
• Review a sampling of Lifeline subscribers each month to determine if they are eligible
• Require ETCs to verify Lifeline subscribers’ eligibility and de-enroll any subscribers who are not eligible
• Refer ETC abuses to the FCC’s Office of Inspector General for possible civil or criminal action
• For addresses with 500 or more Lifeline subscribers, require ETCs to de-enroll subscribers who cannot verify their address and confirm they are “independent economic households” from other Lifeline subscribers -- and, on a quarterly basis, review in a similar way a sampling of addresses with 25 or more subscribers
• Recapture improper payments associated with de-enrolled Lifeline subscribers
• Explore automating the process of detecting oversubscribed addresses
• Step up efforts to identify “phantom,” deceased and duplicate subscribers, de-enroll them, and prosecute ETCs who collect USF funds for serving these fictitious customers
• Require Lifeline sales agents to register with USAC, block new subscribers enrolled by sales agents who are registering too many customers, and stepping up prosecution of fraudulent sales agents.

Chairman Pai asked USAC to report to him on implementation of these safeguards by August 8, 2017.

President Donald Trump praised his son, Donald Trump Jr., who is under fire for meeting with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have compromising information about Trump's Democratic rival in the presidential race, Hillary Clinton. “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency,” President Trump said in a brief statement, which White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders read to reporters during an off-camera briefing.

President Trump had previously remained silent on the growing controversy surrounding the meeting at the height of the campaign. The revelation has shaken the White House, which for months has struggled to contain the fallout from a wide-ranging investigation into Russia’s election-meddling effort in 2016. Sanders acknowledged that, “the president is, I would say, frustrated with the process of the fact that this continues to be an issue.”