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  2. September 2017

September 2017

A merger between Sprint and T-Mobile might not face many hurdles at the Trump administration

A potential merger of T-Mobile and Sprint could fare well with the Trump administration, which has telegraphed for months that it isn’t resolutely opposed to the combination of the country’s third- and fourth-largest wireless giants. For years, the two companies have flirted with a tie-up, and while talks became particularly serious in 2014, Sprint-owner SoftBank pulled the plug amid threats from the U.S. government that it would block the deal in its tracks.

Under President Trump, however, the Federal Communications Commission has reversed course and sought to deregulate the telecom industry. And the agency’s chairman, Ajit Pai, previously has said he doesn’t “take a preexisting view as to what the optimal market structure is” when it comes to the country’s four major wireless carriers: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. “I don’t think any regulator who embraces regulatory humility and intellectual honesty about economics can say whether three or four or five [carriers] is the optimal number,” he said earlier in 2017. “What I do want to see is a competitive wireless marketplace.”

A T-Mobile/Sprint Merger Would Destroy Wireless Competition, Kill Jobs and Harm Low-Income Families

No one but Donald Trump’s pals on Wall Street wants to see this competition-killing, investment-killing and job-killing merger. There is no rational justification for T-Mobile to take over Sprint and remove yet another consumer choice from the marketplace. It’s motivated by pure greed and a desire to reach deeper into people’s wallets.

What’s obvious about the wireless market is that customers benefit most when the government has the wisdom to block such mergers. Competition driven by the smaller carriers is finally starting to pay off for consumers, but this merger would halt all that. The competition between T-Mobile and Sprint is particularly important for lower-income families who favor these carriers over AT&T and Verizon. Many people in these households rely on mobile as their only internet connection. If T-Mobile and Sprint merge, prices will spike and the digital divide will widen. The legal standard for approving giant mergers like this is not whether Wall Street likes it. Communications mergers must enhance competition and serve the public interest. This deal would do just the opposite: It would destroy competition and harm the public in numerous irreversible ways. So unless Ajit Pai wants his tenure at the FCC to go down as the worst for consumers in the agency’s 83-year history, the chairman should speak out and show us he’s willing to do more than rubber-stamp any harmful deal that crosses his desk.

For Puerto Ricans Off the Island, a Struggle to Make Contact After Maria

For the more than five million Puerto Ricans living on the United States mainland, it was bad enough to watch news reports on Sept 19 of Hurricane Maria ripping through an island where relatives and friends lived. What made it worse was not knowing how their loved ones had fared.

With the entire power grid knocked out and with more than 95 percent of wireless cell sites out of service, communication was all but impossible on Sept 21, and an already emotional day became even harder for the Puerto Rican diaspora. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said that the hurricane’s impact on the island’s communications infrastructure had been “catastrophic,” and that the commission was trying to help. Some services, like texting and a few internet messaging apps, were reported to be working, but not consistently.

Top 5 and bottom 5 US metro areas for broadband subscription

In “Signs of digital distress: Mapping broadband access and subscription in American neighborhoods,” the authors also examine broadband subscription, and find that in 2015, nearly a quarter of Americans lived in “low subscription neighborhoods,” where fewer than 40 percent of households subscribed to broadband (here defined per FCC data as 10Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload), and which contain nearly 18 million children.
Top 5 Performers: 1) Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville (FL) 2) Honolulu (HI), 3) Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk (CT), 4) New YOrk, Newark-Jersey City (NY,NJ,PA), 5) Boston-Cambridge-Newton (MA,NH)
Bottom 5 Performers: 1) Jackson (MI), 2) Augusta-Richmond County (GA, SC), 3) Birmingham-Hoover (AL), 4) Tulsa (OK), 5) Fresno (CA).

Russia denies use of Facebook ads in 2016 election

Russia's government denied using Facebook ads to influence the 2016 US presidential election, saying in a statement it didn't even know "how to place an advert" on the social media giant. “We do not know ... how to place an advert on Facebook. We have never done this, and the Russian side has never been involved in it,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Democratic Sens ask FCC to delay net neutrality repeal

A group of Democratic Sens is asking the Federal Communications Commission to delay its effort to repeal the Obama-era net neutrality regulations in order to review a trove of recently-released documents related to the proceeding. The nine senators, led by Sen Edward Markey (D-MA), wrote to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai asking if the new documents had been taken into account by the agency when deciding to roll back the rules. “Although the Commission has undertaken an historic proceeding to undo the Open Internet Order, the FCC has failed to provide stakeholders with an opportunity to comment on the tens of thousands of filed complaints that directly shed light on proposed changes to existing net neutrality protections,” the letter reads.

FCC Announces Chairs of Working Groups for Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment

This Public Notice serves as notice that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has appointed chairs for the three working groups for the Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (ACDDE):
Henry Rivera, Senior Advisor, Emma Bowen Foundation, will chair the Broadcast Diversity and Development Working Group.
Heather Gate, Director of Digital Inclusion, Connected Nation, will chair the Digital Empowerment and Inclusion Working Group.
Marc H. Morial, President and CEO, National Urban League, will chair the Diversity in the Tech Sector Working Group.

Chairman Pai previously designated Julia Johnson, President, NetCommunications, LLC, to serve as Chair of the ACDDE, and Diane Sutter, President/CEO, ShootingStar Broadcasting, to serve as Vice Chair. The ACDDE will hold its first meeting on Monday, September 25, 2017.

Verizon’s FiOS Deployment In Boston Is Fiber-To-The-B.S.

[Commentary] In April 2016, Verizon told Boston it was going to be spending $300 million to deploy FiOS, their wireline Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTP) service, to the entire city over the next six years. Unfortunately, what Verizon’s CEO told investors on September 13th, 2017, shows it has deceived the citizens of Boston and harmed Massachusetts.

[Bruce Kushnick is executive director of New Networks Institute]

Public Knowledge Calls for Court to Protect Rights to Access the Law

Public Knowledge filed an amicus curiae brief in the case ASTM v. Public Resource. The case concerns Public Resource’s copying of model building codes and educational testing codes, which had been enacted into federal law and regulations. The standards organizations sued Public Resource for copyright infringement based on the copying of those legally-enforceable codes. The case is currently on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case is expected to be argued next year. The amicus brief, filed on behalf of a coalition of 62 organizations, companies, former government officials, librarians, innovators, and professors of law, asks the appeals court to permit Public Resource’s copying of the text of model codes enacted into law and not find it to be a copyright infringement.

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