Daily Digest 12/7/2018 (Happy Birthday, FCC Office of Economics and Analytics)

Benton Foundation
Table of Contents

Fun For Thought

Dispatch from the Chairman's Dinner  |  Read below  |  John Eggerton  |  Multichannel News

Broadband

Native Americans On Tribal Land Are 'The Least Connected' To High-Speed Internet  |  Read below  |  Hansi Lo Wang  |  National Public Radio
FCC Releases Draft Appendices to Communications Marketplace Report  |  Read below  |  Press Release  |  Federal Communications Commission
Chairman Pai buries 2-year-old speed test data in appendix of 762-page report  |  Read below  |  Jon Brodkin  |  Ars Technica
AT&T/Verizon lobby misunderstands arrow of time, makes impossible claim  |  Read below  |  Jon Brodkin  |  Ars Technica

Wireless

Poll: Smartphones are winning the internet  |  Read below  |  Sara Fischer  |  Research  |  Axios
We’re No Longer in Smartphone Plateau. We’re in the Smartphone Decline.  |  New York Magazine
Verizon Tests Interoperable 5G and LTE Technology, Achieves Mobile 5G Speed of 1.7 Gbps  |  Read below  |  Carl Weinschenk  |  telecompetitor
Verizon offers emergency first responders discounts on unlimited plans  |  Vox
Sprint may tackle market for in-home broadband internet  |  Fierce

Ownership

It is not looking great for the Justice Department appeal of the AT&T-Time Warner merger  |  Read below  |  Hamza Shaban  |  Washington Post
Tumblr, Consolidation and The Gentrification of Internet.  |  Read below  |  Harold Feld  |  Analysis  |  Tales of the Sausage Factory

Health

Chairman Pai Remarks at Veterans Affairs Telehealth Summit  |  Read below  |  FCC Chairman Ajit Pai  |  Speech  |  Federal Communications Commission

Platforms

Tech Critic Gets Pushback From Industry  |  Read below  |  Cristiano Lima  |  Politico
Facebook's Dirty Tricks Are Nothing New for Tech  |  Wired

Privacy/Security

More than 200 companies are calling for a national privacy law. Here's an inside look at their proposal.  |  Read below  |  Cat Zakrzewski  |  Analysis  |  Washington Post
Federal Agencies Met Legislative Requirements for Protecting Privacy When Sharing Threat Information  |  Government Accountability Office
National Security Adviser Bolton: White House knew about Huawei arrest  |  Politico
  • Arrest of Huawei's CFO Shakes Company as Global Skepticism of Its Business Grows  |  New York Times
  • Senate Intel Vice Chair Warner (D-VA) Response to Huawei Arrest, Seeks US Sanctions  |  US Senate
  • Meng Wanzhou, Huawei CFO and Founder’s Daughter, Has Been Face of Secretive Company  |  Wall Street Journal
  • The arrest of a top Huawei executive is 'a shot into the heart' of China's tech ambitions, analysts say  |  Los Angeles Times
Sens Portman (R-OH), Hassan (D-NH) Introduce Bipartisan Public-Private Cybersecurity Cooperation Act to Bolster Cybersecurity  |  US Senate
Don't Get Carried Away With Cybersecurity  |  New America
Analysis: NRCC breach sparks calls for transparency after cyberattacks  |  Washington Post
22 apps with 2 million+ Google Play downloads had a malicious backdoor  |  Ars Technica

Radio/Audio

FCC to Radio Licensees: We’re Watching You (or at Least Your Public Files)  |  CommLawBlog
Google wants to replace your radio as an audio news source  |  Vox

Television

At ‘60 Minutes,’ Independence Led to Trouble, Investigators Say  |  New York Times

Amid misogyny and alleged abuse, it’s a constant struggle for women in network TV  |  Washington Post

Advertising

Sen Warner (D-VA) Presses FTC on Inadequate Response to Digital Ad Fraud  |  US Senate

Communications and Democracy

Senate Intelligence Committee Grilled Steve Bannon About Cambridge Analytica  |  Daily Beast, The
Citizenship Begins at the Library  |  New America

Journalism

Charles Koch Institute fellowship funds journalists  |  Columbia Journalism Review

FCC Reform

Happy Birthday, FCC Office of Economics and Analytics  |  Read below  |  Katura Jackson  |  Public Notice  |  Federal Communications Commission

Policymakers

Jane Hinckley Halprin Will Serve As FCC's Administrative Law Judge  |  Read below  |  Press Release  |  Federal Communications Commission

The FTC’s top consumer protection official can’t go after Facebook — or 100 other companies  |  Vox

Opinion: Congress should revive the Office of Technology Assessment  |  American Enterprise Institute

Company News

Facebook Board Backs Sheryl Sandberg’s Handling of Research on Investor George Soros  |  Wall Street Journal

Stories From Abroad

Analysis: Can China have difficult conversations about the internet?  |  Brookings Institution

Australian Government Passes Contentious Encryption Law  |  New York Times

 

Today's Top Stories

Fun For Thought

Dispatch from the Chairman's Dinner

At the annual FCC Chairman's Dinner hosted by the Federal Communications Bar Association, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai took some obligatory shots at various industry players.

AT&T is here, following on the heels of its Tiger Woods/Phil Mickelson golf match last month," he said. "AT&T is now offering to settle the Justice Department's AT&T-Time Warner appeal through a winner-take-all, pay-per-view golf match between Randall Stephenson and Makan Delrahim. I'm not sure about some of the rules they proposed to be honest with you. Allowing [CNN White House correspondent] Jim Acosta to shout at Makan during his backswing doesn't quite seem fair."

Citing the erroneous missile warning that had Hawaiians ducking and covering at the beginning of the year, Chairman Pai pondered what the people in the room would do "if we all received a warning that a missile would strike us in 30 minutes."

He said net neutrality activist Fight for the Future would "immediately start organizing a net neutrality '25 minutes of action.' CTIA, the wireless industry lobby, would issue a press release lamenting the impact the missile strike would have on US leadership in 5G. The National Association of Broadcasters would ask the FCC to extend the 39-month repack deadline before Washington is destroyed." Then there would be those demanding an Inspector General investigation into whether he had anything to do with the strike," he added.

Pai pointed out that commissioner Michael O'Rielly was leading the FCC's review of its kidvid rules. He said children's programmers are rolling out some new shows to curry favor with the commissioner: Milton Friedman's Neighborhood, Inspector Gadget Investigates Pirate Radio Operators, and Pai's favorite, "a Schoolhouse Rock episode about federal preemption."

John Eggerton  |  Multichannel News

Summary on Benton.org

Broadband

Native Americans On Tribal Land Are 'The Least Connected' To High-Speed Internet

Just over half of Native Americans living on American Indian reservations or other tribal lands with a computer have access to high-speed internet service, according to new estimates from the US Census Bureau. The low rate of subscription to a high-speed internet service — 53 percent — in these often rugged, rural areas underscores the depth of the digital divide between Indian Country and the rest of the US Between 2013 and 2017, 82 percent of households nationally with a computer reported having a subscription to a broadband internet service. The latest data from the bureau's American Community Survey also show a stark national gap in high-speed internet subscription rates between Native Americans generally (67 percent) and those who do not identify as American Indian or Alaska Native (82 percent).

Hansi Lo Wang  |  National Public Radio

Summary on Benton.org

FCC Releases Draft Appendices to Communications Marketplace Report

The Federal Communications Commission released a draft of the appendices to the Communications Marketplace Report. A draft version of the Communications Marketplace Report, scheduled for consideration at the FCC’s December 12, 2018 Open Meeting, was released on November 21, 2018. The appendices include the data collected and analyzed by FCC staff in developing the draft Communications Marketplace Report. The broadband deployment data in the appendices reflect updates to data received and processed after the release of the draft Communications Marketplace Report on November 21, 2018. The updated data will be used to prepare the final version of the Communications Marketplace Report. Accordingly, certain figures reported in the final version of the Communications Marketplace Report may differ from those in the publicly released draft. For example, some of the numbers reported in Figure D-3 of the publicly released draft will need to be amended by 0.1% to reflect amended data in Appendices C-1 and C-3. Further, the mobile wireless market appendices released today include various static mobile wireless coverage maps. Similar to other mobile wireless coverage maps released in past years, dynamic versions of these coverage maps will be published online after adoption and release of the Communications Marketplace Report.

Press Release  |  Federal Communications Commission

Summary on Benton.org

Chairman Pai buries 2-year-old speed test data in appendix of 762-page report

On Nov 4, the Federal Communications Commission released broadband speed test data for the first time in two years, after ignoring months of inquiries about why the annual speed test reports hadn't been released since Ajit Pai became chairman. The FCC's Measuring Broadband Program hadn't issued a new report since December 1, 2016. Now, the FCC has released a draft of two Measuring Broadband America reports, one for 2017 and one for 2018. Instead of releasing each annual report individually once per year as the Obama administration did, Chairman Pai stuck the 2017 and 2018 reports into the final appendices of a new "Communications Marketplace Report" that essentially consolidates a bunch of reports that were formerly released individually. You can find the 2017 Measuring Broadband America report in Appendix F-1 on page 349 and the 2018 report in Appendix F-2 on page 463.  "We're all frustrated when our broadband speed doesn't live up to what was promised," said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. "So it's downright unacceptable that the FCC—which has been collecting data on broadband speeds nationwide—is slow to make this information public and, when it does so, buries it in the appendices to a larger report. This is essential data for every consumer in the digital age. The public deserves better."

Jon Brodkin  |  Ars Technica

Summary on Benton.org

AT&T/Verizon lobby misunderstands arrow of time, makes impossible claim

USTelecom, the telecommunication industry lobby group that represents AT&T and Verizon, has consistently claimed that network neutrality rules hurt broadband investment. Yet the same lobby group has released data showing that fiber deployment grew significantly while net neutrality rules were in effect. Even more surprising is that USTelecom also recently claimed that an increase in broadband network investment that happened before the net neutrality repeal was somehow caused by the repeal that hadn't yet taken effect.

USTelecom released a new analysis last week, saying that, "from the end of 2015 to mid-2017, US fiber deployment grew from 21 percent to 29 percent of homes and competitive availability of wired broadband at 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload [speeds] increased from 31 percent to 55 percent." 2015 to 2017 "was the exact period in which the industry keeps telling us it suffered from 'unprecedented' and 'heavy-handed regulation' like net neutrality that stifled industry investment," wrote Techdirt's Karl Bode. "And yet here USTelecom is insisting that the exact period exhibited 'rapid' growth 'driven by competitive upgrades.' Why, it's almost as if the telecom sector's top lobbyists aren't ideologically or ethically consistent."

Jon Brodkin  |  Ars Technica

Summary on Benton.org

Wireless

Poll: Smartphones are winning the internet

Nearly 8 out of 10 smartphone users in the US use their phones to access the internet at home more than or as much as a computer, according to an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll. It's a sign of how much people's online habits have evolved, as smartphones and smart TVs are becoming the primary gateway to internet at home compared to desktops and tablets. More than twice as many people said they use smartphones more often than computers to connect with the internet, compared to those who use computers more often. Other findings:

The overwhelming majority (80%) of those who use their smartphones more often say they do so because it is more convenient, compared to just 4% that say they do so because it's cheaper or 12% that say they do so because they don't have access to a computer.

More than 7 out of 10 say they can do all or most of what they want to do online on a smartphone.

About one-quarter (24%) of respondents who do not have broadband at home (which represents about 13% of U.S. households) say the primary reason they do not use home broadband is that their mobile device lets them do everything online they would do with fixed broadband.

Roughly one-fifth (20%) say it's because the monthly cost of home broadband service is too expensive.

Sara Fischer  |  Research  |  Axios

Summary on Benton.org

Verizon Tests Interoperable 5G and LTE Technology, Achieves Mobile 5G Speed of 1.7 Gbps

In what they characterize as a successful test, Samsung, Qualcomm Technologies and Verizon said they have achieved a mobile 5G speed of 1.7 Gbps using a 400 MHz swath of millimeter wave spectrum in the 28 GHz band. The companies used 5G New Radio (5G NR) compliant equipment and Evolved-Universal Terrestrial Radio Access-New Radio Dual Connectivity (EN-DC), which takes advantage of 5G and LTE technology. The demonstration used Samsung commercial 5G NR and 4G LTE equipment to deliver data over Verizon spectrum to a Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G modem and antenna modules with integrated RF transceiver, RF front end and antenna elements. 

Carl Weinschenk  |  telecompetitor

Summary on Benton.org

Ownership

It is not looking great for the Justice Department appeal of the AT&T-Time Warner merger

The Justice Department urged a federal appeals court to reconsider AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, arguing that the judge who approved the deal in June misunderstood fundamental economic principles and ignored how AT&T could unfairly extract higher fees from rivals by threatening to black out popular TV channels. The Department of Justice delivered oral arguments in its appeal of a lower court decision that handed the agency a major defeat in one of the most closely followed antitrust trials in decades. The blockbuster case — the first time since the Nixon era that the government has gone to court to challenge this type of deal — was seen as a landmark legal dispute because it signaled how regulators and courts might treat mergers between companies that don’t compete with each other.

“A threat of blackout will allow Time Warner to increase the prices for its rivals,” said government attorney Michael Murray. But the three-judge appeals panel was quick to push back on the government’s case, questioning how the lower court failed to apply the law properly in siding with AT&T. "You have to show that there was plain error in the district court,” Judge David Sentelle of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit told the government’s side. “You have to show that there is going to be a harm to competition.” Judge Sentelle added that the government had to present evidence beyond economic theories to show that the merger would substantially lessen competition. Judge Judith Rogers also expressed skepticism as she prodded the government’s case.

Hamza Shaban  |  Washington Post

Summary on Benton.org

Tumblr, Consolidation and The Gentrification of Internet.

Tumblr recently announced it will ban adult content.  Although partially in response to the discovery of a number of communities posting child pornography and subsequent ban of the Tumblr ap from the extremely important Apple ap store, a former engineer at Tumblr said the change has been in works for months. The change was mandated by Tumblr’s corporate parent Verizon, in order to attract greater advertising revenue.

I can’t blame Verizon for wanting to make more money from Tumblr. But the rendering of Tumblr “safe for work” (and therefore safe for more mainstream advertising) illustrates one of the often under-appreciated problems of widespread content and platform consolidation. Sites that become popular because they allow communities or content that challenge conventional standards become targets for acquisition. Once acquired, the acquirer seeks to expand the attractiveness of the platform for advertisers and more mainstream audiences. Like a gentrifying neighborhood, the authentic and sometimes dangerous character rapidly smoothes out to become more palatable — forcing the original community to either conform to the new domesticated normal or try to find somewhere else to go. And, as with gentrification, while this may appear to have limited impact, the widespread trends ultimately impact us all.

Harold Feld  |  Analysis  |  Tales of the Sausage Factory

Summary on Benton.org

Health

Chairman Pai Remarks at Veterans Affairs Telehealth Summit

The Department of Veterans Affairs has been aggressively implementing telehealth services. And at the Federal Communications Commission, we’ve been working to seize the opportunities of connected health for all Americans, including veterans. So it’s fitting that we gather this morning to reaffirm our shared belief that telemedicine can improve the quality of health care that our veterans receive. We can’t realize the promise of telehealth without connectivity. This is one of the reasons that, since day one as FCC Chairman, my top priority has been closing the digital divide. Every American—and every veteran—who wants Internet access should be able to get it. 

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai  |  Speech  |  Federal Communications Commission

Summary on Benton.org

Platforms

Tech Critic Gets Pushback From Industry

Sen-elect Josh Hawley (R-MO), who launched investigations into top tech players like Google and Facebook during his tenure as Missouri attorney general, is already drawing backlash from the industry over his critical remarks. During an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Hawley took aim at tech companies over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a liability protection for online platforms cherished by the industry. “My question is, should they really be getting this special immunity from the government if they’re also going to act like censors? I think we need to take a hard look at that,” he said. NetChoice Vice President Carl Szabo said he is “blown away that leaders of the conservative movement want increased government regulation of business and increased government regulation of free speech.” And the libertarian-leaning TechFreedom tweeted that in “suggesting government meddle in a private companies business,” Hawley was taking a stance that “true conservatives are against.”

Cristiano Lima  |  Politico

Summary on Benton.org

Privacy

More than 200 companies are calling for a national privacy law. Here's an inside look at their proposal.

A broad coalition of more than 200 retailers, banks and technology companies is releasing new recommendations for national privacy legislation in a clear push to get out in front of lawmakers promising to rein in their data collection practices in the next Congress. The Business Roundtable’s consumer privacy legislation framework calls on the United States to adopt a national privacy law that calls on companies to give consumers more control of their data and form a national standard for breach notification. Recommendations to lawmakers include: 

Streamlining existing federal data collection laws so there aren't conflicting regulations

Ensuring any law has flexibility to determine what kind of consent consumers need to have for their data. It does specify that companies should recognize consumers' right to transparency about how their data is being used and provide ways for them to access and change their data, and delete it under certain circumstances. 

Creating a national standard for breach notification laws that would take the place of state laws. 

Putting the Federal Trade Commission as lead agency to enforce the law.

Cat Zakrzewski  |  Analysis  |  Washington Post

Summary on Benton.org

FCC Reform

Happy Birthday, FCC Office of Economics and Analytics

Establishment of the Office of Economics and Analytics. This action is taken to enhance the role of economic analysis, the design and implementation of auctions, and the use and management of data at the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC determined that the proper dispatch of its business and the public interest will be served by creating an Office of Economics and Analytics. In the Order, the FCC amended its Rules to reflect the new organizational structure, describe the Office’s functions and delegated authority, and make other conforming changes. The FCC found it appropriate to make these organizational changes to integrate the use of economics and data analysis into the FCC’s various rulemakings and other actions in a more comprehensive and thorough manner. The Office will be charged with ensuring that economic analysis is deeply and consistently incorporated into the agency’s regular operations, and will support work across the FCC and throughout the decision-making process. Specifically, it will: (A) Provide economic analysis, including cost-benefit analysis, for rulemakings, transactions, adjudications, and other FCC actions; (B) manage the FCC’s auctions in support of and in coordination with FCC Bureaus and Offices; (C) develop policies and strategies to help manage the FCC’s data resources and establish best practices for data use throughout the FCC in coordination with FCC Bureaus and Offices; and (D) conduct long-term research on ways to improve the FCC’s policies and processes in each of these areas. The FCC will eliminate the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis and generally shift OSP authorities and functions to the Office of Economics and Analytics.

DATES: Effective December 7, 2018.

Katura Jackson  |  Public Notice  |  Federal Communications Commission

Summary on Benton.org

Policymakers

Jane Hinckley Halprin Will Serve As FCC's Administrative Law Judge

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that Jane Hinckley Halprin will serve as the agency’s Administrative Law Judge. Halprin will replace Judge Richard Sippel, who retired on Dec 1. The Office of Administrative Law Judges of the FCC is responsible for conducting the hearings ordered by the Commission.

Halprin joined the FCC in 1987 as a staff attorney in the former Common Carrier Bureau and has occupied positions in the former Mass Media Bureau, the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, and the Office of General Counsel. For the past 14 years, she has served in the Office of General Counsel as an Ethics Counsel and for the past year has led the agency’s ethics team as Assistant General Counsel for Ethics.

Press Release  |  Federal Communications Commission

Summary on Benton.org


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