House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-PA) sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai requesting information about what communications may have taken place between FCC and FCC licensees relating to legal challenges of the Commission’s Accelerating Wireless Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure InvestmentDeclaratory Ruling and Third Report and Order. It has come to Pallone and Doyle’s attention that the FCC may have sought to stack the deck against local governments by directing carriers to challenge the Order in separate circuit court jurisdictions, with the goal of moving the case out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Democrats requested that Chairman Pai provide answers to the following questions and provide the requested documents within three weeks of the FCC receiving normal operational funding:

• Did the FCC have communications with an FCC licensee relating to the legal challenges or potential legal challenges of the Order?
• If so, identify every person(s) and/or FCC employee(s) involved in the communication(s), describe in detail the communication(s), and provide all documents in your possession, custody, or control relating to such communication(s).
• Did any person at the FCC and/or FCC employee at the FCC urge an FCC licensee to challenge the Order?
• To the extent that an FCC licensee refused to challenge the Order, has any person at the FCC and/or FCC employee threatened or taken adverse action against such FCC licensee, including but not limited to delaying consideration of items or issue of interest to such person?

California’s Public Advocates Office, a nonpartisan and publicly funded agency that advocates on behalf of California residents with respect to energy, water, and communications regulations, strongly recommended a denial of T-Mobile’s proposed merger with Sprint. In testimony given to California’s Public Utilities Commission, the office said the proposed transaction should be blocked “because of the irreparable damage to competition in the wireless market and the low-income customer markets as well as the absence of specific, measurable and verifiable benefits attributable to the merger.” Losing a competitive player in these markets “would create significant risk of parallel conduct and higher pricing for consumers,” particularly if, as proposed, the “New T-Mobile would rival or exceed [AT&T and Verizon] in market share, creating a strong incentive for oligopolistic behavior,” the office testified. The combined company would also “comprise nearly 60% of the wireless prepaid market that predominantly serves low-income customers, placing excessive market power under the control of a single company and creating a virtual monopoly over these services.”

Cell carriers claim that you should be able to stream online video on your cellphone almost anywhere in Vermont. But in some places in the state, it's not even possible to make a phone call. A Vermont Department of Public Service official spent about six weeks proving that point to the federal government. Corey Chase, the department's telecommunications infrastructure specialist, drove around Vermont with six cellphones, each connected to a different carrier. The result is the first independent map of Vermont cell service that's rooted in experience. The new map shows that cell carriers have overstated their coverage in large swaths of Vermont. 

Fifteen years ago, I realized you could find almost anything on the internet—music, books, information—except the thing that matters most: people. So I built a service people could use to connect and learn about each other. I’ve heard many questions about our business model, so I want to explain the principles of how we operate. I believe everyone should have a voice and be able to connect. If we’re committed to serving everyone, then we need a service that is affordable to everyone. The best way to do that is to offer services for free, which ads enable us to do. People consistently tell us that if they’re going to see ads, they want them to be relevant. That means we need to understand their interests. So based on what pages people like, what they click on, and other signals, we create categories and then charge advertisers to show ads to that category. We give people complete control over whether we use this information for ads, but we don’t let them control how we use it for security or operating our services.

[Zuckerberg is founder and CEO of Facebook]