News (Of Sorts) From the FCC

Two stories from the Federal Communications Commission caught our eye this week. One gained lots of headlines. The second is a bit of inside baseball but could turn out to be big news down the line. Both impact the deployment of broadband and closing the digital divide. FCC commissioners have voted to approve T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint. But the news did not come from any official release from the agency but from an op-ed from FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel published by The Atlantic. In the piece, Commissioner Rosenworcel announced that she had voted to block the transaction because "[s]hrinking the number of national providers from four to three will hurt consumers, harm competition, and eliminate thousands of jobs." Rosenworcel fears that the transaction will mark the end of "a golden age in wireless that helped bring to market lower prices and more innovative services" and result in a "cozy oligopoly dominated by just three carriers." 

And we were intrigued by a letter and a filing by just the state members of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service. "The State Members of the Joint Board find that the [FCC] has the authority, and that it is in the public interest, to expand the contribution base to include a broader class of services that touch the public communications network, including Broadband Internet Access Service (BIAS)."