October 2017

[Commentary] The tools of technology should strengthen, not weaken, democracy. To that end, we should require greater disclosure of the funders of online political advertisements. Tech firms also need to make heavy investments into weeding out fake accounts and false news. Even if tech companies do not adopt the journalistic standards of newspapers, they must offer readers, particularly students, some way of distinguishing fact from opinion. It’s heartening to see companies already making efforts to take some of these steps. Admitting their own shortcomings without delay and showing measurable progress will be key to earning the public’s trust.

Technology offers us hope for a new prosperity and understanding for this century. But it will take enlightened leadership. More than stock prices or product launches, Silicon Valley’s legacy will be defined by whether tech leaders step up to contribute to the larger American experiment.

FirstNet and AT&T continue to garner commitments from states and territories looking to use the nation’s first dedicated network for emergency workers. Even if they get every region they’re targeting, though, they’ll have to continue to fight to win over local municipalities. And that won’t be an easy task.

Earlier in 2017, the U.S. Department of Commerce granted AT&T the right to build the nation’s first network dedicated to first responders. States have a legal right to opt out of FirstNet’s service, but if they choose another service provider, the network must be interoperable with FirstNet’s offering. Securing the contract was viewed as a major win for AT&T, which will get access to FirstNet’s 20 MHz of 700 MHz low-band spectrum and $6.5 billion for designing and operating the nationwide network for federal, state and local authorities, with the right to sell excess capacity on the system. AT&T will spend roughly $40 billion over the life of the 25-year contract to deploy and maintain the network, the Department of Commerce said, integrating its network assets with FirstNet.

[Commentary] As nearly all usable radio spectrum has been allocated to particular uses and assigned to particular users, shifting spectrum toward modern uses almost certainly requires taking from one use or user to give to other uses and users. Such spectrum repurposing need not be contentious and is often successful. The recent $41 billion AWS-3 spectrum auction, the largest-grossing auction in history, involved spectrum repurposed from Federal government incumbents to mobile wireless providers. Yet, success is not guaranteed.

Spectrum, like land, is typically “zoned” to particular uses that play nice together. For instance, a relatively low-powered satellite signal might be drowned in a sea of high-powered, land-based cellular signals. Like small and big dogs being kept separate at a dog park, different types of radio signals are managed to mitigate conflict using technical means such as power limitations and boundaries between interfering frequencies or assigning users and uses varying degrees of priority. Before one can reassign satellite spectrum to terrestrial wireless broadband use, therefore, one must seek permission from the FCC: terrestrial services are prone to interfering with satellite signals, so an approval requires a demonstration that interference with others is not a problem.

[Dr. George S. Ford is Chief Economist of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies]

Google and Facebook are looking to make an early imprint on legislation being drafted in the House and Senate that would force them and other online networks to disclose information about the buyers of political ads. Lobbyists from the Silicon Valley behemoths have met with the staffs of Sens Mark Warner (D-VA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA), all of whom are drawing up bills that would impose new regulations on the industry. The Senate bill is expected to be formally introduced next week.

It is not clear when the House legislation, which has not been previously reported, will be introduced. The companies are keen to show steps they've taken to police themselves when it comes to monitoring and disclosing the ads on their sites, efforts that could be used to fend off heavy-handed regulation as investigations into Russian interference in the election bring unprecedented scrutiny on their businesses.