Friday, January 17, 2020
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Today Congress Travels to Boulder for a Field Hearing: Competitors in the Digital Economy
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The Decade in Broadband: 2020 Statistics & Predictions
Massachusetts Pursues Its Own Route to Broadband Expansion
How Chattanooga is leveraging digital inclusion to open its innovation district to all
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A data-driven series examining the state of broadband deployment in the US throughout the 2010’s, as well as a look ahead to where and how advanced deployment technologies will affect our progress looking out to the next decade. From 2010 to 2020, Americans with access to broadband internet increased from an estimated 74.5 percent to 93.5 percent. ome states have seen greater improvement in broadband availability over the last ten years than others. Montana saw the greatest improvement, with broadband availability increasing from 11% to 86% between 2010 and 2020 – a 652% growth rate. Other states seeing big gains were Vermont (412%), Arkansas (117%) and West Virginia (109%). Of course, states that started with relatively low broadband availability had more room to grow. Not surprisingly, the aforementioned states were the only four that had broadband availability of 40% or less as of 2010. Seven states, all in the densely populated eastern US (including Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts and Delaware), had broadband availability rates of 85% or greater as of 2010. Yet all but two of these states saw broadband availability increase 15% between 2010 and 2020, giving all of them 2020 availability rates of nearly 100%. In contrast, some states that started at lower availability levels had growth rates below 15% over the 10-year period. States in this category were more heavily rural, including Oregon, Utah, and Nevada, suggesting that these states may have difficulty maintaining momentum as only the most difficult areas to reach remain unserved.
The leading Democratic presidential candidates are all calling for major increases in spending for roads, bridges, rural broadband and other infrastructure needs, but they'll need large increases in tax revenue to pay for their plans. The Democrats' plans rely far less heavily than private investment than President Donald Trump would, as President Trump's 2018 budget proposed spending $200 billion “to spur at least $1.5 trillion in infrastructure investments with partners at the State, local, Tribal, and private level.” President Trump hasn't pursued the plan with Congress. Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT) argues he can pay for his infrastructure plan by "closing corporate income tax loopholes and overseas tax havens." Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) wants to raise the corporate income tax from 21% to 25% as well as reduce corporate tax incentives.
The candidates all promise to pour money into rural broadband. Some are proposing as much as $80 billion to $150 billion in new spending, with an emphasis in some cases on helping local communities build networks to fill gaps left by private internet service providers. Former South Bend (IN) Mayor Pete Buttigieg, for example, promises to work for a federal law that would prevent states from blocking the establishment of community-run networks.
Meanwhile, farm groups have come to regard broadband as essential to economic success, even survival. Just a few years ago, the American Farm Bureau Federation said transportation facilities were its clear top priority for rural infrastructure. Now, broadband has joined transportation as the organization’s two priorities for infrastructure spending, says R.J. Carney, an AFBF congressional relations director. Fortunately, "we’ve seen a lot of bipartisanship in regards to broadband infrastructure," he said. He points to the US Dept of Agriculture's ReConnect Program, launched with $600 million in 2018 to provide grants and loans to extend broadband to unserved and underserved rural areas. In Dec another $555 million was added.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced that his office has settled the Attorney General’s lawsuit against Comcast/Xfinity and obtained refunds for 15,600 Minnesotans, as well as debt relief for an additional 16,000 Minnesotans. Together, the refunds and debt relief are worth millions of dollars. The settlement also requires Comcast to change its advertising practices to disclose to its customers the full amount that they will be charged for service. Under the terms of the settlement, Comcast is required to pay out $1.14 million in refunds. The settlement also requires Comcast to pay $160,000 to Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, which can also be used to provide refunds to consumers. In addition to refunds, Comcast will wipe clean the debt for approximately 16,000 former customers that Comcast charged an early termination fee after they downgraded or canceled their services while they were locked into a contract.
Conventional wisdom says a town with less than 200 people wouldn’t have the resources to establish and maintain high-speed Internet for its residents. But Mount Washington, located in Berkshire County (MA) contradicted such wisdom in Nov 2017 when it activated its municipal fiber broadband service. From one angle, the case of Mount Washington is a miracle. Before broadband, Internet options for the town’s citizens were either dial-up or a long-distance Wi-Fi service that provided a download speed of less than 1 Mbps. “You could barely use Wi-Fi calling, and it was impossible to stream anything,” said Brian Tobin, Mount Washington select board member. “You could send emails, and you could do Internet searches that just took a long time.” But from another angle, the massive turnaround for Mount Washington, which offers Internet speeds that can reach 500 Mbps, is part of a larger state plan to bring broadband to 53 rural towns that have lacked service to a significant degree.
Mount Washington benefited from the Last Mile Program, which provided more than $35 million in grants for rural broadband. The program is run by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI), which is part of the state agency Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MassTech). Funds from the Last Mile Program wouldn’t have as much practical value for off-the-grid communities if not for a key piece of middle-mile infrastructure called MassBroadband 123, a 1,200-mile, $84.9 million fiber-optic network that covers more than one-third of the state. Although this network’s primary purpose is to give public institutions — such as schools and libraries — broadband access, it helps connect rural communities that otherwise would have greater difficulty finding economically viable last-mile solutions.
Given the challenges confronting emerging innovation economies, district leaders are faced with a difficult, but important question: How can we advance place-based, innovation-driven economic development while ensuring more people reap the benefits? In 2015, stakeholders in Chattanooga (TN) launched a digital-equity initiative, Tech Goes Home (adapted from the successful Boston model), to coincide with the launch of the Innovation District. The Enterprise Center, a nonprofit economic development partner to both the city of Chattanooga and Hamilton County, leads the program, which works with local partners to provide community members with 15 hours of digital skills training, a new device (e.g., a Chromebook or iPad), and assistance acquiring low-cost home internet. The program, which in four years has served over 4,500 residents, is designed to remove fear and instill agency for those caught on the wrong side of the digital divide. Just as important, it is meant to make Chattanooga Innovation District a place where everyone—particularly those who have previously been excluded from such spaces—feels welcome. Supporting residents through relationships, networking, and agency to engage on their own terms—the fundamental work of digital inclusion—is one way forward in a world dictated by both geography and connectivity.
[Geoff Millener is the Digital Equity Officer at The Enterprise Center]
Nearly half of Americans do not have an internet connection that meets minimum broadband speeds. Moreover, a staggering number of poor people of color do not have home internet access of any kind. And, across the board, Americans are charged some of the highest prices for internet service in the developed world. These are all symptoms of a much larger, structural problem: the corporate capture of the pipes, wires, and other infrastructure that powers the internet. As the fog of neoliberalism begins to lift and the horizons of political possibility extend forward, we should not be satisfied with dithering at the edges of the vast empires of cable and telecom monopolies. This requires not just rearguard critique of the existing communications order, but an affirmative vision of what a more democratic communication system that operates outside of the market would like.
There are strong signs that we are at the beginning of such a reckoning: in recent months, the UK Labour Party, Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and, most recently, Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have all unveiled ambitious plans to create publicly-owned broadband internet networks. Taken together, this troika of plans represents a growing rejection of what was once seen as commonsense: that internet access can only be provided by large corporations such as Comcast and Verizon, unsavory as they may be. Sen Sanders’ High-Speed Internet for All plan proceeds along three broad dimensions of action: imposing strict public interest regulations on behemoths like Comcast, using antitrust legislation to break them up, and creating publicly-owned alternatives to corporate ISPs. The latter is the most transformative plank of Sanders’ Internet for All platform, and is also the one emphasized most heavily in the proposal. We should ultimately at least have a “public option” for internet service that is available to everybody regardless of their city, state, or zip code. After all, the internet was invented thanks to massive public investment: it should be returned to its rightful owners.
[David Elliot Berman is a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the co-author of After Net Neutrality: A New Deal for the Digital Age. This article was originally published Dec. 23, 2019]
Officials from Westmoreland County (PA) and seven neighboring counties are studying a proposal for local governing entities to step up and invest in infrastructure needed to expand or enhance broadband connectivity in under-served areas. About a dozen stakeholders from multiple counties attended a kickoff meeting for the Regional Broadband Task Force study. Meanwhile, Virginia-based consultant Design Nine is preparing a survey to gauge how citizens are obtaining internet service, what they’re paying for it and how they want to use it. The survey soon will be available to complete online or using paper copies. According to estimates based on a previous survey, nearly 6% of the 928,919 residents in the eight targeted counties (also including Fayette, Cambria, Somerset, Blair, Bedford, Huntingdon, and Fulton) lack access to wired broadband service of at least 25 megabits per second download and 3 megabits per second upload. But James Smith, president of the Greensburg-based Economic Growth Connection, argued that the 25 mbps benchmark is outdated as a connectivity goal, especially for businesses. “I’ve got businesses telling me if they don’t have a (gigabit per second), it’s not sufficient,” he said. “This is a business necessity moving forward, just like electricity. If we don’t have the ability to offer that, we’re going to lose.”
The Senate Commerce Committee's first hearing of 2020, "Industries of the Future" dealt with the federal government's role in advancing new technologies. Federal Communications Commissioners Jessica Rosenwrocel and Michael O'Rielly testified and spoke about 5G. On the issue of speeding the 5G rollout, Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) pointed out that there is "a company on TV" already advertising that they are already leading the industry in 5G. Commissioner Rosenworcel said there have been some deployments, which was exciting, but that they were chiefly in urban areas. But she said that, overall, there were more deployments in countries like Switzerland, and far more in China. Commissioner O'Rielly said the priority was speed, while Commissioner Rosenworcel said it should be "getting it right."
Commissioner Rosenworcel took a critical view of what she said was the FCC's focus on high-band spectrum. She said the US was alone in focusing on auctioning high-band early on, which she said was only good for urban America, not rural. She said the FCC needs to pivot to mid-band (freeing up C-band spectrum for 5G). Chairman Wicker asked if the FCC commissioners agreed on the need for that pivot. Rosenworcel said the committee could help get agreement by coming up with legislation to chart out the best way forward on 5G spectrum. Chairman Wicker said the committee would certainly want to be heard from on where the money from those spectrum auctions go. Commissioner Rosenworcel said legislation was needed to clarify the FCC's practice of reclaiming spectrum and to direct where the billions of dollars in proceeds should be directed. Satellite companies have argued the FCC does not have the authority to simply take the spectrum without compensating them for it. But some in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, are concerned that paying satellite operator incumbents, all international companies, would be taking money that could instead be spent on things like public safety and rural broadband.
By some accounts, about 40 percent of the world’s population relies on Huawei equipment. But even with 191,000 employees and $108 billion in annual revenue, Huawei remained hungry for growth. That desire, however, faced a formidable obstacle: the US government. Washington argued that Huawei’s technology was an elaborate Trojan horse for Chinese government surveillance. As tech firms like Huawei become ever more indispensable across the globe, American leaders have, not unreasonably, become possessed by the fear that Chinese technology will offer a ruthless Beijing many “backdoors” into Western affairs of state, security, and commerce. And in the past two years, the US has, at least in the case of Huawei, begun to toy with a policy of complete technological quarantine.
A full US ban on Huawei products could mark the beginning of the end of a one-world internet. It could calve the world into two separate tech ecosystems, one in North America and parts of Europe and the other across Asia and the Southern Hemisphere. The former would be dominated by Nokia, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple, and the latter by Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. The Trump administration’s escalating fight has left US companies that supply Huawei reeling and left Huawei wondering if it can ever count on access to US supply chains again. About the only thing that is clear is that the Trump administration’s fight isn’t really about Huawei at all. “There’s a big geopolitical battle going on,” one Huawei executive said, “one that’s far above Huawei’s pay grade.”
The trade deal that President Donald Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He signed left the tech world clamoring for more. Industry leaders praised the deal’s progress on forced technology transfers and intellectual property theft in China and expressed optimism about its next iteration. But they were also quick to point out how the agreement fails to address key concerns and noted that the remaining tariffs would continue to interfere with supply chains, drive up costs and hurt market access for tech companies. “Some of the thorniest issues confronting innovation-driven industries are still on the table, including the lavish industrial subsidies China showers on its companies, including its state-owned enterprises,” said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. He added, “China has shown itself to be a master of obfuscation when it comes to living up to its agreements.” IPC, the electronics manufacturers association, added that the deal does not address cybertheft or the tariffs still hampering their industry.
The phase one terms partially walk back tariffs on some tech gear (like TVs, smart watches, smart speakers and earbuds) and postpone duties on others (like smartphones, tablets and laptops). But tariffs remain for tons more products, including chargers, power adapters and desktop computers. “Market uncertainty remains until we see permanent tariff removal,” said Consumer Technology Association President and CEO Gary Shapiro. The group hopes phase two “will eliminate special tariffs on Chinese imports once and for all,” Shapiro added, a view echoed by ITI President and CEO Jason Oxman. The result is increasing frustration among some American businesses and technology companies who feel Trump is trading away hard-earned leverage in exchange for an agreement that does little to resolve the systemic issues that led the White House to begin imposing tariffs against China two years ago.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ripped into Facebook during her weekly press briefing and accused the social media company of “schmoozing” the Trump administration out of tougher regulation. She said:
I think that they have been very abusive of the great opportunity that technology has given them. My thought about them is that all they want is their tax cuts and no antitrust action against them, and they schmooze this administration in that regard because so far that is what they’ve received. What they have said, very clearly, very blatantly, is that they intend to be accomplices for misleading the American people with money from god knows where. They didn’t even check on the money from Russia in the last election. They never even thought they should. They have been very irresponsible. Again, as you say these are people that we’ve known and worked with over time. Actually, Facebook is down the peninsula but they do have an office in my district and I think their behavior is shameful.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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