Daily Digest 2/23/2018 (News from the FCC)

The Federal Communications Commission initiated a proceeding to expand access to spectrum above 95 GHz. This spectrum has long been considered the outermost horizon of the usable spectrum range. Currently, the Commission has no rules to permit licensed or unlicensed communications use above 95 GHz, other than by amateur operators or on an experimental basis. New developments in radio technology hold the promise for productive use of these frequency bands.  To enable innovators and entrepreneurs to most readily access this spectrum, the Spectrum Horizons NPRM identifies specific frequency bands that could accommodate licensed, unlicensed and experimental use. By supporting multiple types of authorizations, the Commission will be better able to accommodate the diverse types of services and applications that may be developed for these bands. 

The Federal Communications Commission proposed to eliminate a broadcast filing requirement and instead rely on publicly available information in its periodic reviews of broadcaster employment practices. Currently, the Broadcast Mid-Term Report (Form 397) requires certain television and radio stations to submit information to the FCC about their Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) practices which they largely already provide in their FCC-maintained online public files. Because most of the information collected in Form 397 is now otherwise available to the Commission and the public via the online public file, the Commission has tentatively concluded that the requirement to file Form 397 is outdated and unnecessary for the Commission to conduct its mid-term EEO reviews. 

The Federal Communications Commission lifted outdated rules related to the payphone industry that are no longer justified as payphone revenues have plummeted due to a changing communications marketplace. The Commission eliminated costly payphone audit requirements as part of an FCC effort to cut unnecessary and wasteful rules so that industry resources can be put to more productive use. Technological and marketplace changes have made these expensive audits unnecessary to ensure that the few remaining providers are compensated fairly.

The FCC’s net neutrality decision is a study in just what’s wrong with Washington. This agency failed the American public. It failed to listen to their concerns and gave short shrift to their deeply held belief that internet openness should remain the law of the land. It turned a blind eye to all kinds of corruption in our public record—from Russian intervention to fake comments to stolen identities in our files. As a result of the mess the agency created, broadband providers will now have the power to block websites, throttle services, and censor online content. This is not right. The FCC is on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of the law and it deserves to have its handiwork revisited, reexamined, and ultimately reversed.

[Analysis] Can states force Internet service providers to uphold net neutrality? That's one of the biggest unanswered questions raised by the Federal Communications Commission vote to repeal its net neutrality rules. After the FCC vote, lawmakers in more than half of US states introduced bills to protect net neutrality in their states. The governors of five states have signed executive orders to protect net neutrality. The major obstacle for states is that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has claimed the authority to preempt states and municipalities from imposing laws similar to the net neutrality rules his FCC is getting rid of.Broadband providers that sue states to block net neutrality laws will surely seize on the FCC's repeal and preemption order. The FCC says it can preempt state net neutrality laws because broadband is an interstate service (in that Internet transmissions cross state lines) and because state net neutrality rules would subvert the federal policy of non-regulation. But the FCC's preemption powers are limited, and not everyone is convinced the FCC can actually stop states from protecting net neutrality. Even among legal experts who support net neutrality, there is no consensus.

When US District Court Judge Richard Leon hears the U.S. government’s lawsuit to stop the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, he will be deciding not just one media deal but two. Not only can his decision allow one blockbuster merger, but it could also lead to the unwinding of a second. After President Donald Trump and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, the person who will most closely watch the case will be Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast. If Judge Leon approves the deal, Roberts will likely lob in another bid for the assets that 21st Century Fox agreed to sell to Disney. Though Comcast bid higher than Disney, it was turned down. Analysts say one reason was regulatory concerns. A Comcast acquisition would add more cable TV channels to a company that is a powerhouse in channel distribution, making it a vertical merger of the sort AT&T is pursuing with Time Warner. (Disney’s acquisition would be horizontal, combining similar businesses in film and TV content.) That means that if Judge Leon approves AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, he may open the door for a Comcast-Fox deal. The  judge is clearly sensitive to the issues surrounding vertical integration. And by disclosing that it is considering reviving its pursuit of Fox, Comcast has effectively put him on notice that it will take that pursuit to the next level if he approves the AT&T-Time Warner deal. That isn’t great news for AT&T.

Twitter will no longer allow people to post identical messages from multiple accounts, cracking down on a tactic that Russian agents and others have allegedly used to make tweets or topics go viral. Twitter will also not allow people to use software to simultaneously perform other actions such as liking or retweeting from multiple accounts. Twitter said it would give users until March 23 to comply before suspending accounts. It made an exception for bots of broad interest such as earthquake alerts. Twitter’s new restrictions are aimed at improving “information quality,” Yoel Roth of the company’s policy team said. “These changes are an important step in ensuring we stay ahead of malicious activity targeting the crucial conversations taking place on Twitter - including elections in the United States and around the world,” said Roth. 

The Conservative Political Action Conference is usually a moment to hammer out what divides the fractious conservative movement. What it has revealed so far is what unites it: contempt for “#fakenews” and the journalists that the former Breitbart News writer Ben Shapiro memorably described as “advocates of leftism, masquerading as objective truth-tellers.” Perhaps the most fervent anti-media broadsides came from Dana Loesch, the spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, who used her remarks to accuse news organizations of rooting for gun massacres. The scorn toward journalists  reflected genuine concern from some attendees that mainstream news outlets willfully misunderstand conservatives. Several speakers expressed a sense of victimhood, that their beliefs were portrayed by reporters as intolerant or tantamount to bigotry. And there were reminders that the media-as-punching-bag trope among conservatives is a tactic that shows few signs of going away.

Could the swamp really be automated? The question feels almost alien. At the moment, if “automation” and “Washington” are used in the same sentence, it’s usually to decry how behind the curve policymakers are on a transformative economic issue like industrial robots or self-driving cars. In its own workings, Washington seems almost a uniquely un-automatable place, a constitutionally erected edifice of institutions and people driven by irreplaceable experience and relationships. FiscalNote is demonstrating that’s not true.