Daily Digest 1/4/2018 (The Agenda)

Here’s a rundown of promises kept, partially fulfilled and in need of action come 2018. A promise fulfilled: President Donald Trump followed through on his stated information technology modernization goals by issuing an executive order on May 1 that created the American Technology Council. An expectation unmet: Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced legislation to increase the transparency of online political advertisements by requiring digital ads to include disclosures about the person or group who purchased them. Though the proposal picked up a prominent Republican supporter in Sen John McCain (R-AZ), it has not made any progress through the Committee on Rules and Administration. On tap for 2018: The FCC’s vote to repeal net neutrality rules has not ended the ongoing debate over the regulations, as Republican lawmakers look to codify net neutrality through legislation while Democrats pursue legal challenges to the agency’s ruling. House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced legislation that she says would prevent internet service providers from blocking and throttling online traffic. 

With network neutrality in the rearview mirror, is E-Rate next on the Federal Communications Commission’s chopping block?  Experts admit it’s possible, if unlikely, but suggest a more probable series of modest changes in the short term. “I understand there are concerns about [FCC Chairman Ajit] Pai,” says John Harrington, CEO of the E-Rate consultancy Funds For Learning. “But the tea leaves for E-Rate are pretty positive actually.” While Chairman Pai has sent mixed messages around E-Rate, Harrington is heartened by the fact that the FCC opened up a special filing window late in 2017 for schools directly impacted by the recent hurricanes impacting the Caribbean. In 2018, the FCC could move to begin a more general process of “remodernizing” the program by making changes to Category 2 funding, which covers discounts to defray ongoing broadband service costs for things like hardwired internet access, Wi-Fi and basic equipment maintenance. While a reduction in funding is possible, Harrington and others are hoping for a two-year pause to let the current Category 2 cycle play itself out. “My guess is if [the FCC] could get the administration of the program to run more effectively, you’ll see the demand rise,” Harrington says. “When the demand rises, they’ll see they need to keep the cap. It’s a crazy Catch-22 right now where it looks like the demand is lower than the cap.”

Along with pursuing lawsuits over irregularities in the Federal Communications Commission network neutrality comments process (like millions of fake citizen comments being submitted), several states are crafting their own net neutrality laws, which they will start debating as new legislative sessions commence in Jan. They would prohibit internet service providers from blocking or hindering access to legal online content sources, or from offering premium-bandwidth “fast lane” deals to others. Washington State was first to act, with Democratic and Republican state representatives debuting nearly identical bills back on December 13 and 14. Such bipartisanship is rare. In most cases, the charge is led by Democrats, often with anti-Trump overtones. “I would say California and New York are two deep-blue states where Donald Trump is the least popular president in modern history,” says New York state senator Brad Hoylman, who represents a large chunk of Manhattan. He’s teaming up with Wiener, whose district includes all of San Francisco, to craft legislation that each state can use. “We have very similar constituencies in many regards, including technology and immigrants and LGBT folks,” says Hoylman. It would be hard to find a bluer coalition. In all, 22 states have introduced some legislation responding to the rollback of ISP privacy regulations.

[Commentary] The repeal of network neutrality isn’t great news for consumers. Giant internet service providers that control their own media empires will be able to push you toward their content while serving up their rivals’ content at molasses-slow speeds. Consumers could be driven into walled content gardens where what you read and watch will be partly determined by which company provides your internet service. That’s probably bad for you. But it would be good for us. HuffPost is owned by a company called Oath, which in turn is owned by Verizon, one of the three largest internet service providers in the U.S. Oath was created after Verizon purchased AOL in 2015 and Yahoo in 2017 and combined them into one media corporation. It owns a wide range of media properties, including HuffPost, Yahoo News, TechCrunch, Engadget, Yahoo Sports and Tumblr. And now, absent the regulatory protection of net neutrality, Verizon and other internet service providers can favor our content while discriminating against the competition’s.

Expanding access to broadband has emerged as one of the few issues that enjoys bicameral and bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, and 2018 is shaping up to be the year in which the White House, Congress, and the private sector unite to bridge the digital divide. The White House has pledged to turn its attention to an infrastructure package once Congress passed legislation reforming the tax code, and members of the Trump administration focused on infrastructure have been working with Capitol Hill to address the president’s infrastructure priorities, which include broadband access. The details of the infrastructure package, expected in January, haven’t been revealed, but a White House official said the plan will include a “dedicated portion of funding” for rural projects, with "no limit" on how much can be spent on broadband. The White House is also awaiting a report, due in 2018, from Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue that identifies legislative, regulatory, or policy changes that in part promote technological innovation and infrastructure improvements in rural parts of the country. President Trump plans to roll out the details of his infrastructure package before the State of the Union on Jan. 30, and Congress will then be tasked with implementing the president’s priorities.

Broadband providers--including both wired and wireless providers--complete Form 477 to report where they offer service, as well as what speeds they offer and the technologies they use, among other information. The data collected through Form 477 constitute a critical resource for the National Telecommunication & Information Administration, as well as other policymakers and researchers who are interested in understanding Internet access in the United States. This week, in response to the Federal Communications Commission seeking ideas for how to improve its Form 477 data collection, NTIA filed comments recommending specific measures the FCC can take to enhance the program. In the filing, NTIA recommends improvements to two aspects of the Form 477 program. First, the FCC should bolster the accuracy of the broadband availability data. During every reporting period, numerous providers from across the country, using a range of different methodologies, submit data on every Census block they serve. Such extensive data are bound to include some inaccuracies and differences based on providers' interpretations of reporting instructions. We recommend that the FCC implement a data validation program, and suggest looking to NTIA's previous work on the State Broadband Initiative, as well as the ongoing practices of various state programs, for examples of how it might verify broadband availability data. Further, we suggest creating a streamlined process through which members of the public can report possible inaccuracies. Second, the FCC could increase the accessibility of Form 477 data by making more information available and usable by a wider audience. Local and federal policymakers and researchers would find it helpful for the FCC to release datasets more quickly and have access to more information, such as the lowest--in addition to the highest--upload and download speeds being advertised by providers.

In most of the Twin Cities, where about 60 percent of Minnesotans live, the internet is oxygen — at once ubiquitous and unnoticed. But for somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of Minnesotans, according to recent estimates, the internet is still ephemeral.  The state has been involved in broadband since the Gov Tim  Pawlenty (R-MN) era. There is an Office of Broadband Development, and a Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force, and Border-to-Border Broadband grants that have supported community efforts to get high-speed internet with $65.58 million in the last three years. And there has been progress: In 2009, the state estimated that only 55.13 percent of Minnesotans had broadband access; that number is now officially 87.94 percent. But those final percentage points, translating to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across Minnesota, will be the hardest to connect. “If it were easy,” said Danna MacKenzie, who heads the state broadband office, “it would have been done by now.”

[Commentary] I was sitting in the nearly empty restaurant of the Westin Hotel in Alexandria (VA) getting ready for a showdown with the federal government that I had been trying to avoid for more than seven years. The Obama administration was demanding that I reveal the confidential sources I had relied on for a chapter about a botched CIA operation in my 2006 book, “State of War.” I had also written about the CIA operation for the New York Times, but the paper’s editors had suppressed the story at the government’s request. It wasn’t the only time they had done so. As I took the stand, I thought about how I had ended up here, how much press freedom had been lost, and how drastically the job of national security reporting had changed in the post-9/11 era.

While USAC is encouraged that its information technology systems delivered continual reliability and availability improvements for our universal service program participants and contributors in 2017, we agree with your assessment that USAC must redouble its efforts to ensure that we are adequately planning, coordinating, testing and reviewing our systems to ensure that they are functional, reliable, and secure.