Reporting

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when President Donald Trump refrained from flamethrowing messages on Twitter. That time is over. Never mind that his aides have asked him to stop. Never mind that now the lawyers have told him to stop. Even though his White House has been warned that tweets could be used as evidence against him, President Trump has made clear in the days after returning from a largely Twitter-free overseas trip that he fully intends to stick to his favorite means of communication. Throughout 2016’s campaign and into the early months of his presidency, the concern among Trump’s advisers was mainly political. Every time the president let loose with one of his 140-character blasts, it distracted from his agenda and touched off a media frenzy that could last for days. But now the worry has turned increasingly legal. With multiple investigations looking at whether the president’s associates collaborated with Russia to influence the election, any random, unfiltered tweet could become part of a legal case.

Data, data, data. Who’s got it? Tech giants like Google and Facebook, who provide a service directly to their users, and then use that data for ad targeting. It’s why they are dominating online advertising today. Who doesn’t? A traditional media giant like Time Warner, which owns brands like HBO and CNN, but which doesn’t have a direct connection with viewers because it sells its channels through a cable provider. That, in essence, is why Time Warner has agreed to sell itself to AT&T — a company that has a direct link with consumers — Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said.

Internet service providers have been among the fiercest critics of the Federal Communications Commission’s two-year-old network neutrality rules aimed at preventing companies like Verizon and Comcast from dictating how fast — or slow — online content can be accessed. That doesn’t mean ISPs oppose network neutrality — they just have a different definition for it, Comcast Senior Executive Vice President David Cohen said during a panel discussion in Washington.

Cohen endorsed the recent FCC move that begins reversing Obama-era rules that classified the internet as a “utility” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. “Getting rid of Title II does not mean getting rid of net neutrality,” Cohen said at Free State Foundation’s telecommunications policy conference. “You can support net neutrality rules, but you don’t have to do that under all of the baggage that comes with Title II.”

Licensed spectrum remains perhaps the most important building block in the wireless industry. As a result, nationwide carriers like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint are eager to both obtain suitable spectrum holdings across the country, and to use those spectrum licenses in the most effective way possible. But where exactly do these nationwide carriers own spectrum? And what type of spectrum do they own? And how much?

To answer these questions, FierceWireless has once again partnered with Allnet Insights & Analytics, a wireless spectrum research and analysis firm, to map out exactly how much spectrum each of the four Tier 1 nationwide US wireless carriers currently owns. Also included in this list is Dish Network, which for the past several years has been quietly accumulating a war chest of spectrum that today almost rivals that of T-Mobile. These maps and charts include all pending spectrum transactions filed before April 30, 2017 (the FCC reviews all license spectrum transactions). Importantly, these maps and charts also include the results of the FCC’s recently completed incentive auction of TV broadcasters’ unwanted 600 MHz licenses. For complete details on the results of that auction, click here. Allnet Insights' data also includes the spectrum AT&T is getting access to through its partnership with FirstNet.

[Commentary] On May 18, I had the privilege of joining a people’s protest outside Federal Communications Commission headquarters in Washington (DC). Inside on that same morning, two intransigent and backward-looking commissioners (they constitute the FCC majority) announced their intention to dismantle the good and court-approved network neutrality rules put in place by the previous FCC. Their intention is to close the open internet. Meanwhile more than 2,000,000 Americans had already contacted the Commission directly, the overwhelming majority seeking to keep the net neutrality rules and guarantee an internet that serves us all rather than kowtow to big cable and bloated telecom. In the May 18 match-up, 2 trumped 2,000,000, and the semi-final proposal was circulated, with final approval likely late this summer or early fall. Unless even more of us get involved.
[Michael Copps served as a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from May 2001 to December 2011 and was the FCC's Acting Chairman from January to June 2009.]

In order to understand what’s happening to the internet today and how we can keep it free and open in the future, we have to consult its past. It’s remarkably hard, however, to find that past in a single narrative thread, with a minimum of legal and technical jargon. That’s what I’ve tried to create with this series, Commission Impossible. Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.

The National Legal and Policy Center, a political and policy lobbying group, has fired the latest shot in the battle over network neutrality comments filed with the Federal Communications Commmission, saying that if its analysis is correct, it will ask Congress to investigate. Countering pushback from Title II fans who have said net-neutrality foes are flooding the Title II docket with fake comments, the NLPC said it has found evidence of "massive deception" among the pro-Title II contingent and its own flood of questionable input. The group said it has concluded, based on its own analysis, that for up to 20% of all the pro-net neutrality comments filed so far, either the e-mail address and name don't match or the same email address was used to email multiple comments -- sometimes thousands of them -- including addresses "culled from spammer and hacker databases" and generated by a fake email address site. The NLPC said it plans to have a "professional data forensics expert" vet the comments.

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is lauding the Federal Communications Commission for starting to roll back federal rules that govern high-speed internet providers. Appearing on C-SPAN, the Brentwood (TN) Republican said she views the FCC’s vote nearly two weeks ago to undo so-called "net neutrality" rules as “a positive step in the right direction.” The FCC’s new chairman, Ajit Pai, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in January, “is going to do a wonderful job,” Chairman Blackburn said. “He is focused on closing the digital divide and extension of broadband and making certain that the internet is an open source and is not going to be under heavy government control. I think those are good steps, good things.”

With the Federal Communication Commission’s recent vote to consider reversing net neutrality rules, many might be wondering how that could affect their lives. Net neutrality has a handful of functions, but its main function is to keep internet service providers from speeding up, slowing down or blocking content users may want to access, said Sherry Lichtenberg, principal for telecommunications research and policy at National Regulatory Research Institute. “There will no longer be protection for blocking access to websites you want to go to or having carriers favor their own sites or browsers over the one you want to go to,” she said. “It takes away the protection, essentially, that allows you to do whatever you want on the internet.” That’s one take on things, but the FCC, with Chairman Ajit Pai at the helm, believes the commission overstepped with the 2015 rules. The FCC’s notice of proposed rule-making, which was adopted May 18, said the decision to apply utility-style regulation to the internet represented a “massive and unprecedented shift in favor of government control of the internet.”

The order to classify the internet as Title II put online investment and innovation at risk, the FCC said in the notice. Its biggest concern is that over the past two years, investment in broadband networks declined and service providers have pulled back on plans to build new infrastructure.

The Freedom of Information Act, often known as FOIA, has been used by journalists, activists, and private citizens to get access to federal government records since it went into effect in 1967. And every state has passed similar laws that allow the public to get access to state and local records, generally with exemptions for files like records of ongoing investigations or personal medical records. (Florida’s are called the Sunshine Law.) The trouble, say transparency advocates and people who rely on open records laws for their day-to-day work, is that in an era when files can be searched, copied, and transmitted in minutes at minimal cost, many agencies still respond to requests with excessive delays, claims of high processing costs, and files produced in difficult-to-handle formats like scans of printed versions of digital documents.