Klint Finley

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai suggested that the reclassification and resulting restrictions have hindered telecoms from investing in improved infrastructure. It’s a tricky game—advocates on both sides can make the numbers say what they want.

But Pai’s gambit appears in part to hinge on convincing people that net neutrality, at least as currently enforced, will slow the spread of 5G, the next iteration of ultra-high speed wireless. Chairman Pai says his deregulatory strategy will help prepare the US for 5G. “It’s not a forgone conclusion that we will fully realize this technological potential,” he said in Barcelona. “After all, building, maintaining, and upgrading broadband networks is expensive.” In other words, he’s worried that if he doesn’t get rid of the Open Internet Order, carriers won’t upgrade their infrastructure to 5G. Ultimately, the bigger threat to the Open Internet Order may come from Congress, where Republicans have been trying to kill it since before the FCC passed it. Pai doesn’t seem likely to wait around for them, even if that means making his case in court.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s rise from relative obscurity to big headlines corresponds not just with the Trump’s arrival in Washington, but with the ever-greater centrality of the internet to American life, political and otherwise.

From its start in 1934, the FCC has played a crucial role in determining how Americans communicate and gather information. But for most of its existence, it’s been a boring, technocratic agency tasked with granting broadcast licenses and divvying up the wireless spectrum. It occasionally waded into controversies like obscenity laws, media consolidation rules, or the Fairness Doctrine, but even when decisions followed party lines, they rarely became political firestorms. But these days, the FCC has grown increasingly polarized—and polarizing. The agency that regulates the internet is becoming as sharply divided as the internet itself. You can’t blame petty politics alone for the mess the FCC finds itself in. Debates over net neutrality and cable boxes stem from an ideological shift in Washington. In earlier days, it was “good regulation versus bad regulation,” says Chris Lewis, vice president of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. Now it’s “more regulation versus less regulation.” The Trump administration has signaled a hard shift in the direction of deregulation, though it may occasionally come down in favor of government intervention when politically desirable.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s outlook is clearly in line with administration. But he, like the president and Congress, have an obligation to the public, not just to the Republican base or to free market ideology. No one, not even the telecommunication industry, is well served by regulations that yo-yo back and forth as the political seasons change. The internet, at least in this case, should really be above politics.

A set of internet privacy rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission has become a target for Republicans.

Though it’s received far less attention than healthcare or immigration, the rollback would affect millions of consumers and bring basic changes to how they use the internet—though they might not ever know it. Companies like Google and Facebook can learn an awful lot about you based on what you search for, what pages you “like,” and who your friends are. But your wireless company and in-home broadband provider could learn much more. Although Google uses encryption to protect your searches from prying eyes, these companies can potentially see what sites you actually end up visiting and when you visit them. Mobile carriers track your location and could keep tabs on how much time you spend using different apps. And they can sell that information to the highest bidder.

Now Sen Jeff Flake (R-AZ) plans to introduce a resolution to overturn the FCC rules, enabling internet providers and wireless companies to sell your data unless you explicitly opt out. “The FCC’s midnight regulation does nothing to protect consumer privacy,” Senator Flake said. “It is unnecessary, confusing and adds yet another innovation-stifling regulation to the internet.”

President Donald Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly met recently with Time Warner executives to complain about CNN’s coverage of the president. Any visit from a White House official seeking to stifle journalists is disturbing. But Time Warner, which owns CNN, has another problem that’s all tied up in presidential politics.

The cable and entertainment giant is seeking to sell itself to AT&T, a mega-merger that would require federal approval. At this point, thanks to Kushner’s visit, any move by the Department of Justice or the Federal Communications Commission to block the merger would end up looking political. That’s too bad, because there are plenty of good reasons to be skeptical of the deal. AT&T could hike the rates that other pay TV providers have to pay to provide channels like HBO and CNN. It could refuse to license that content to streaming video services. It could give Time Warner an edge over competitors on its wireless network by exempting its content from data caps. All that stands to get lost in Trump’s petty war on the press.

Google Fiber is getting a lot smaller. Alphabet is sending hundreds of employees at Access—the division that runs the high-speed internet service—to work at other parts of the company. It’s not the end of Fiber, not exactly. But the slimming-down likely signals a future for Alphabet’s broadband ambitions that involves less fiber. Google first announced Fiber in 2010 with a widely publicized contest to see which city the company would first grace with its ultra-fast service. Since then, Fiber has spread to several US cities and metropolitan areas. But Access said in October that it was curtailing plans to expand to new locations, and Alphabet has clearly lost faith in the idea of running fiber optic cables right into people’s homes, at least in the traditional way.

Instead, Access has hired a new CEO, tech and broadband veteran Greg McCray, to figure out new ways to bring faster—and presumably cheaper—high-speed internet access to the rest of the country. McCray used to be chief executive officer of telecom services provider Aero Communications Inc. He also sits on the board of CenturyLink Inc., one of the biggest U.S. providers of internet and phone services for businesses.

Verizon is finally bringing back unlimited plans. Yes, the plans come with catches. But they’re great news for Verizon customers who want to stream or upload lots of video. At least as long as the company faces enough competition to keepthe competition might not last. T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, has been trying to sell the wireless carrier for years, and T-Mobile’s aggressive pricing has always looked in part like a ploy to grow its subscription base to make itself more attractive to potential acquirers. If Deutsche Telekom were finally able to sell T-Mobile, its new parent might get stingier with pricing and pizzas. If not, its current parent might do the same.

2015 was the year the Federal Communications Commission grew a spine. And 2017 could be the year that spine gets ripped out. Over the past two years, the FCC has passed new regulations to protect network neutrality by banning so-called “slow lanes” on the internet, created new rules to protect internet subscriber privacy, and levied record fines against companies like AT&T and Comcast. But this more aggressive FCC has never sat well with Republican lawmakers. Soon, these lawmakers may not only repeal the FCC’s recent decisions, but effectively neuter the agency as well. And even if the FCC does survive with its authority intact, experts warn, it could end up serving a darker purpose under President-elect Donald Trump.

2015 was the year the Federal Communications Commission grew a spine. And 2017 could be the year that spine gets ripped out.

Over the past two years, the FCC has passed new regulations to protect network neutrality by banning so-called “slow lanes” on the internet, created new rules to protect internet subscriber privacy, and levied record fines against companies like AT&T and Comcast. But this more aggressive FCC has never sat well with Republican lawmakers. Soon, these lawmakers may not only repeal the FCC’s recent decisions, but effectively neuter the agency as well. And even if the FCC does survive with its authority intact, experts warn, it could end up serving a darker purpose under President-elect Donald Trump.

The internet was supposed to alleviate media conglomeration. Instead, it may compound it. Amazon, Facebook, Google, and a handful of others are displacing media companies and telecommunication companies. They already host much of the content you consume, and produce more and more of it. They own much of the infrastructure carrying that data, and they’re starting to sell Internet access. These tech titans didn’t plan to take down the telecommunication companies. But they depend upon you having fast, reliable internet, so they’re bringing everything in-house. This promises to make things drastically better for you as a consumer, so if you hate big telecoms, you’ll feel schadenfreude at their demise. But you might end up with more of the same as the new guard becomes the old guard.

Public Wi-Fi is great. But it’s infuriating when your connection at the neighborhood coffee shop goes down minutes before deadline and the baristas have no clue what’s wrong. This frustrates the hell out of the coffee shop, too. It wants to offer secure, reliable service but usually lacks the expertise. That’s true of any business that offers free Wi-Fi, especially airports, hotels, and others that offer Wi-Fi on a huge scale. Google plans to fix this with Google Station, a suite of tools designed to make creating and maintaining public Wi-Fi a breeze.

The company isn’t saying much beyond that, but it is working with unspecified Internet service providers and hardware companies to make it happen. Google is now enlisting partners like cafes and shopping malls. This goes beyond a set of recommended tools or preconfigured Wi-Fi routers. Google will handle login info for the different hotspots. You’ll access the Internet from any of them using a single username and password—no more asking the barista for the network name and password. Google also promises to help Wi-Fi hosts to monetize their connections, the suggestion being that it will handle payments for anyone charging for access.