Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Headlines Daily Digest
Today's Events: Why Black America needs a Tech New Deal and Broadband and the Biden Administration, Part 3
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More than nine months after the national COVID-19 emergency was declared, Congress has directed the Federal Communications Commission to create an emergency broadband benefit, a monthly discount on broadband internet access service for low-income people. On January 4, the FCC released a Public Notice asking for comment on how to best implement this new program which Congress expects to be up and running in the next two months. Here's a look at what the FCC is asking.
Dozens of state lawmakers from Massachusetts urged Comcast to halt enforcement of its 1.2TB monthly data cap, saying the cap hurts low-income people during the pandemic and is unnecessary because of Comcast's healthy network capacity. The letter to Comcast Senior VP Mark Reilly, spearheaded by MA State Reps Andy Vargas and Dave Rogers, disputed Comcast's claim that a 1.2TB cap only affects a very small subset of customers it calls "super users." The lawmakers also wrote that "Massachusetts has experienced the largest relative increase of food-insecure individuals in the nation due to COVID-19, and has suffered some of highest unemployment rates in the nation. The last thing our constituents need is to worry about paying more for the same quality of Internet service."
A new empirical study of net neutrality regulations in 32 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries found that the regulations suppress broadband subscriptions and investment in fiber optics. What’s the bottom line? If the Joe Biden administration is serious about following science, it won’t try to resuscitate net neutrality. And hopefully Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s investment in economics at the FCC will lead a Biden FCC to be more evidence-based in its decision-making than the last Obama FCC.
[Mark Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business.]
FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington said it is uncertain if he could participate in any Section 230 proceeding
The office of Federal Communications Commissioner Nathan Simington said it is uncertain if he could participate in any Section 230 proceeding. Simington’s office said FCC ethics counsel advised “as there is no currently-pending Section 230 matter before the commission to be discussed with specificity, it could not comprehensively rule out potential recusal in the future. However, no grounds were identified for recusal on this topic at this time.”
The Communications Act of 1934 outlines several reasons why our agency was created, including “for the purpose of the national defense” and “for the purposes of promoting safety of life and property.” Consistent with those charges, identifying threats to our communications networks and taking aggressive action to counteract those threats have been among the hallmarks of the Federal Communications Commission during my four years as Chairman. With communications technologies underlying virtually every aspect of our economy and society, and with the pace of technological change quickening, it’s become more important than ever that government be proactive. And that we have done.
The previous FCC...allowed federal subsidies to be used by US telecommunications carriers to purchase equipment from companies with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and military, like Huawei and ZTE. And it issued a non-binding white paper on cybersecurity—on January 18, 2017, two days before Inauguration Day—that had no concrete plan of action and didn’t mention China at all.
We can and must no longer consider foreign threats to be sufficiently addressed with aspirational talk, bureaucratic indifference, or a naïve approach to the world that simply pretends these threats do not exist. I am optimistic that there will be no turning back.
Buried in the recent pandemic relief bill passed just before the end of 2020 was the DOTGOV Online Trust in Government Act, a bipartisan attempt to make it easier for government agencies to set up official websites with a .gov domain, as opposed to other options such as .com or .org. If the bill works as intended, it could help combat fraud and add credibility to government websites, and proponents of the measure consider it a step in the right direction for cybersecurity. The DOTGOV Act shifts responsibility for administering official Web domains from the General Services Administration to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). It also requires CISA to come up with an outreach strategy and offer resources to local governments looking to migrate to .gov domains.
In what they say is a first, five electric cooperatives in three states have formed an association of broadband co-ops aimed at bolstering services in underserved rural areas. The Virginia, Maryland & Delaware Association of Broadband Cooperatives (VMDABC) is structurally modeled after existing cooperative associations. VMDABC will offer classes of membership based on types of co-op members and their goals. VMDABC classes of membership will include co-op affiliates offering retail fiber, co-ops pursuing middle mile or “backbone” fiber, other broadband entities, and vendors. The five class A founders are Prince George Electric Cooperative; BARC Electric Cooperative (and subsidiary BARC CONNECTS); Central Virginia Electric Cooperative (and subsidiary Firefly Fiber Broadband); Choptank Electric Cooperative (and subsidiary Choptank Fiber LLC) and Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative. Founding members of the new association all are in various stages of creating fiber-to-the-home networks. The association will provide management and technical support to members through a management services agreement and will have separate legislative representation in the Maryland and Virginia legislatures.
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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