Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Headlines Daily Digest
Big Data, Spectrum, and Rural Broadband on Today's Agenda
Don't Miss:
Pandemic Builds Momentum for Broadband Infrastructure Upgrade
FCC Approves Second Set of COVID-19 Telehealth Program Applications
Bill to Provide Internet Service to Students During COVID-19 Pandemic
Broadband/Telecom
Health
Education
Net Neutrality
Wireless
Labor
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Elections
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Agenda
Broadband/Telecom
The coronavirus pandemic is boosting momentum for major broadband legislation, highlighting the widespread lack of high-speed internet in US homes at a time when it has become more essential than ever. Leading lawmakers of both parties say the long-delayed issue of closing the so-called digital divide is gaining new prominence, as Washington weighs initiatives to help speed economic recovery and improve US competitiveness. “Having affordable broadband—it’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-PA). “Broadband infrastructure has to be one of the key elements to that, and this pandemic has brought that right to the forefront.”
Democratic lawmakers for their part worry that conservative Republican lawmakers will balk at spending more federal money on new broadband and other infrastructure initiatives, as they have in the past. It remains to be seen how much the pandemic will tip the political scales. “I know there is a great deal of interest among Republicans and Democrats in taking a small portion of the funds in the next phase” for broadband, said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS). He added, “The president is talking about a Phase 4 [of legislation] and Republicans and Democrats are talking infrastructure as a part of that. I do not think it will be enacted without a broadband component.”
This pandemic may define our generation, and the changes in our daily lives required by social distancing have highlighted the importance of broadband and the consequences of internet inequality. I’d like to discuss four points that I think are necessary to address the digital divide in rural America. First, the Federal Communications Commission must fund rural broadband with fixed maps. Second, to address rural connectivity we must incentivize providers to bring future-proof broadband to our communities. Third, we must hold auction winners accountable. More than a dozen CAF-II auction winners have already defaulted on their bids to provide service to rural areas. The high stakes are clear as communities receiving support under CAF-II will not be eligible to do so under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. Fourth is that to fully address rural broadband we must advance a more affordable way for our poorest Americans in rural areas to connect to the internet. Quite simply, the FCC should require Universal Service Fund auction winners to offer an affordable broadband service option.
As we address one of the worst health and economic crises in our nation’s history, the FCC needs to reexamine our policy towards Lifeline, the only federal program with the sole mission of bringing affordable communications to low-income Americans and a critical aspect of our social safety net. The FCC must take the helm in informing eligible Americans about the Lifeline program. We’ve already seen providers step up and increase their voice and data offerings; however, the FCC needs to view this as an emergency and step up ourselves to ensure that more is done to help our most vulnerable communities.
Gov. Jay Inslee’s “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order, which forced most employees to work from home and schools to shift to online learning to help stem the spread of COVID-19, has placed even more emphasis on the digital divide in rural areas. The lack of broadband access in rural communities is “a long-term problem and not an easy fix,” said Debra Hansen, director for Washington State University’s Stevens County Extension, and facilitator of the Stevens County and Spokane Tribe Broadband Action Team. “I think with COVID-19, it has really raised everybody’s awareness of (the lack of broadband access) because you can’t apply for unemployment benefits and housing assistance,” she said. “All those things – we’ve been talking about for years.” Although Chewelah, Colville and Kettle Falls in Stevens County have broadband access, a majority of Stevens County residents live in areas where internet is inconsistent and limited. Some students have to drive 20 miles to download homework from area schools, Hansen said.
The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) announced a new web tool that can assist users in finding free-to-use public broadband locations in their area. These "Emergency Internet" locations are for when a user's own internet is too slow or not available. While many of the identified location buildings are closed to the public, their Wi-Fi connections remain accessible. Users should stay in their vehicles while accessing the Wi-Fi and only use it long enough to access critical services. People looking for emergency broadband locations can use the web tool at https://maps.psc.wi.gov/apps/PublicWiFiLocations/. The web tool is the result of a collaboration to collect and map Wi-Fi location data between the State Broadband Office at the PSC and the Division for Libraries and Technology at DPI.
As jails and prisons suspend in-person visits, most incarcerated people and their families are paying outrageously high costs to simply stay connected. The Federal Bureau of Prisons just made voice and video visitation free in its 122 prisons, and while noteworthy, this isn’t enough to ensure that the majority of families can remain in touch at such a crucial time. The majority of the incarcerated population, upwards of 1.7 million people, are in state prisons and local jails, where they will probably face excessive fees to call home. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) needs to push prison phone companies to lower their rates so every family can maintain a connection during the COVID-19 pandemic.
[Mignon Clyburn is a former FCC Commissioner and current Board Chair of Full Color Future. She is also a Board Member for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.]
The Federal Communications Commission approved an additional five funding applications for the COVID-19 Telehealth Program. Health care providers in some of the hardest hit areas like New York and Michigan will use this $3.71 million in funding to provide telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic:
- Banyan Community Health Center, Inc., in Coral Gables (FL) was awarded $958,270 to serve 24 Medically Underserved Areas in Miami-Dade and Broward counties by providing telehealth services to approximately 2,000 low-income and highrisk patients so that patients can receive medical care at home during the pandemic.
- Health Partners of Western Ohio, based in Lima (OH) with sixteen locations in OH, was awarded $737,098 in funding to provide telehealth services targeted at lowincome patients by deploying telemedicine carts so that patients can receive medical care at 71 community locations.
- NYU Langone Health in New York (NY) was awarded $983,772 to employ telehealth in operating rooms and conference room spaces that have been converted into ICUs so doctors and health care providers can carefully monitor ICU patients from separate floors, thus magnifying the finite number of available ICU specialists, reducing exposure to the coronavirus, and maximizing the limited supply of personal protective equipment.
- St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in Los Angeles (CA) was awarded $382,331 to treat 21,000 patients in South Los Angeles and the City of Compton through remote patient monitoring, video consults, and voice consults.
- The University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor (MI) was awarded $649,000 to implement remote patient monitoring for high risk COVID-19 patients to reduce the need for hospital admissions, and to expand video visit capacity so that patients with and without COVID-19 can receive medical care at home during the pandemic.
Education
Rep Meng Introduces $2 Billion Bill to Provide Internet Service to Students During COVID-19 Pandemic
Rep Grace Meng (D-NY) introduced the Emergency Educational Connections Act of 2020 to ensure that students have internet access during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic emergency. The legislation would create a special $2 billion Emergency Connectivity Fund at the Federal Communications Commission to disburse funds to schools and libraries, and Tribal schools and libraries, to purchase Wi-Fi hotspots, modems, routers, and internet-connected devices for students and patrons.
“COVID-19 has forced over 55 million students to stay home during this national health crisis and adjust to a new future that requires internet access and a computer to continue their studies,” said Rep Meng. “Before this crisis occurred, students without internet access at home were part of the so called ‘homework gap’ and struggled to keep up with their peers who have internet access at home. Today, with schools across the country having moved learning entirely online, including class meetings, explanations of new content, virtual field trips, homework, and learning exercises, this gap seems more like a chasm. Students without internet service will fall further behind as students with internet service at home can continue advancing in their studies. Whether they live in urban centers, suburbs, or exurbs, or small communities in rural America, all students require internet connectivity to succeed during this pandemic. I urge my colleagues to support my bill and ensure it is included in the next coronavirus relief package.”
More than 700 telecommunications companies have signed on to the Federal Communications Commission's Keep Americans Connected Pledge. These collective efforts stand as a proud point of American solidarity, a silver lining in our hyper-polarized political climate. Unfortunately, these efforts do not go far enough to ensure that our most vulnerable students have online access. The fine print in many Internet service providers’ offers excludes those who enrolled within certain time frames or had debt histories with the company or other issues. The result is that too many of the poorest families still fail to qualify for the free Internet programs supposedly designed for them.
A simple update to the Keep Americans Connected Pledge would cue the nation’s Internet providers to follow Comcast’s lead and waive prior debts. (While they’re at it, they should also waive restrictions excluding families who subscribed to service within the past 90 days.) More than 12,000 people have signed a petition demanding just this from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. Meanwhile, the FCC should distribute the billions of dollars earmarked under its own power for helping schools and libraries get online. With many schools and libraries closed for the rest of the school year, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel made the common-sense suggestion that libraries and schools should be able to use those funds to buy WiFi hotspots for students and families and get them online.
More than a month into this crisis, we have seen no movement from the administration on these relatively simple changes. At this point, there is no question that the Trump administration has disastrously handled the onset and continued devastation of this pandemic and the concurrent economic collapse. But there is still a chance for Pai and this administration to show that when they say they want to keep Americans connected, they truly mean all Americans.
[Arne Duncan is a managing partner at the social impact organization Emerson Collective and a board member of the nonprofit Brightbeam. He was US secretary of education from 2009 to 2015.]
Students who don’t have reliable internet access at home can do their remote learning in parking lots, the School District of Philadelphia (PA) says. “Parking Lot” Wi-Fi is one of the options listed on the distrct website for kids whose households aren’t yet connected. Included along with other free or low-cost alternatives from Comcast, Verizon and T-Mobile, it’s described as “accessible around the exterior of a building such as a school or library — and generally reachable from the facility’s parking lot.” One North Philly special education teacher said parents laughed at her when she suggested it. “You expect me to have my kid sitting in a parking lot with a laptop?” she recalled one parent saying. “In a community where there are high rates of community violence, we’re asking kids to be sitting ducks with pieces of technology that people could steal from them,” the teacher said, noting that 4 of her 25 students currently lack internet at home.
To make remote learning work for everyone, the district has handed out thousands of Chromebooks. Superintendent William Hite said recently that they’ll also distribute wireless hotspots to families that need them — but that hasn’t happened yet. Asked for an update on hotspot distribution, a district spokesperson has not yet provided an answer.
Net Neutrality
Free Press Weighs in on Harms of FCC's Net Neutrality Repeal in Response to Appeals-Court Remand
Free Press condemned the Federal Communications Commission’s abandonment of its authority to safeguard internet users and promote universal access to an open and affordable internet. The filing was in response to an Oct 2019 US Court of Appeals decision to remand for further consideration by the FCC three key issues related to the agency’s 2017 network neutrality repeal, which also rolled back other vital protections under Title II of the Communications Act.
The Free Press filing notes that the court decision found the FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai had “arbitrarily and capriciously failed to address the serious cascading implications of scrapping its Title II classification of broadband internet access service, with the Commission committing ‘straightforward legal error’ by refusing to consider these questions properly in its headlong rush to get rid of strong Net Neutrality rules and the legal framework on which they stood.” “[T]he Commission has only itself to blame for these errors,” Free Press adds, “and the best remedy for the harms they have caused would be a return to its proper authority in Title II.”
NCTA-The Internet & Television Association had some simple answers for the Federal Communications Commission, which is seeking input on the impact of its Restoring Internet Freedom (RIF) order. NCTA's answers: The order protects public safety, does not hinder its members' access to poles, and allows for continued support of the Lifeline subsidy. NCTA told the FCC that the order "has not adversely affected the public interest in any of these areas, and in any event has not caused any harms sufficient to outweigh the benefeits in broadband investment and innovation driven by the FCC's reclassification of broadband access as an information service not subject to common carrier based rules. NCTA said that in the two years since the order was approved, there have been no credible allegations of blocking, throttling or unreasonable discrimination, and no reason to think they are going to start coming in now or in the future.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA), New America’s Open Technology Institute, the Rural Wireless Association, NTCA - The Rural Broadband Association, the American Economic Liberties Project, and Free Press Action sent a letter calling on Congress to ensure that T-Mobile does not receive COVID-19 recovery funding to meet the merger specific build-out commitments it agreed to when it sought approval of the T-Mobile/Sprint merger from the Federal Communications Commission, Department of Justice, state attorneys general, and state public utilities commissions. “The New T-Mobile has repeatedly and emphatically claimed that as a direct result of the merger, it would have the necessary resources to deliver 5G to millions of square miles of the US and hundreds of millions of Americans, including those living in and traveling through rural America,” the letter says. “[T]o the extent there will be additional stimulus recovery measures Congress needs to make sure T-Mobile does not receive funding as a corporate handout to meet commitments it already made based on synergies that it lauded to get its deal done.” The groups also point out that the FCC specified that its decision to approve the merger “would be conditioned on the network build out commitments of the licensees to provide 5G service to a large portion of the US population, including rural areas.”
Employees at Charter Communications, the internet, cable TV and phone giant known as Spectrum, have been getting sick while adhering to a company policy that has required thousands of them to work in offices and call centers rather than from home. More than 230 Spectrum employees have tested positive for Covid-19 since the pandemic hit the US, apparently. They have fallen ill at a time when some rank-and-file workers and managers have questioned how many Spectrum employees must work in offices and call centers. The New York attorney general’s office said that it has opened an inquiry into the company because of its handling of employees during the pandemic. The company has been deemed an essential service because it keeps its 29 million customers connected and allows people and businesses across the country to function remotely.
On April 10, Apple and Google announced their response to the call for digital contact tracing, which would involve subscribers voluntarily downloading an app. While it is seemingly clear that widespread contact tracing and surveillance can help identify coronavirus cases and possible hot spots for new and recurring infections, several questions remain. The first one is related to the security and anonymity of one’s personal data. More discussion is needed on just how anonymous the data is and whether it can be easily de-anonymized, which may discourage individuals from downloading the app. The platform also needs to ensure that the collected location data won’t engender inferences about the infected person and his or her environment, i.e., the use of one’s location as an indicator of neighborhood quality.
Second, who has access to the data also matters. While both companies have made assurances around their handling of collected data and the intent to stop tracking once the pandemic has ended, what expectations have federal and local public health authorities shared around their data collection and use? How long will the data be retained, and the longer that it is kept, what is the risk of this data being used for other purposes? In the absence of current federal privacy legislation, these are all important considerations. Full encryption and crytography of collected health information for those who are infected and the people with potential exposure must be the standard. Without the possibility of an enticing “back door” into the app, individuals that opt in to use the service will be better served and protected from potential misuse by government and other companies.
As lockdowns, shelter-in-place orders, and social distancing threaten to stretch out into the weeks, months, and even years ahead, there is a scramble to collect, in real time, the overwhelming abundance of information being produced online. Without it, the record of how we lived, how we changed, and how we addressed the global pandemic would be left incomplete and at the mercy of a constantly shifting internet, where even recent history has a tendency to get buried or vanish. The Library of Congress and the Internet Archive both know they’re going to miss broad parts of the covid pandemic playing out online. The LOC has to seek permission from site owners to collect and provide public access to an archived version of a domain, and the Internet Archive is up against a web that might shift more quickly than it is able to capture.
The process is already recording shifts in how powerful institutions are addressing the crisis. For example, the language on the government web page describing the National Strategic Stockpile was altered after Jared Kushner suggested that the store of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals wasn’t intended for states to use. The new description removed language that appeared to contradict this statement. Both versions were captured by the Wayback Machine, which was saving versions of that page every few hours. There may be many other small, but valuable, data points we might miss that could give future historians a fuller understanding of this period.
Tens of thousands of journalists are losing their jobs, newspaper chains are going under, and vulture capitalists are picking over the remains. We need a news bailout — but one that overhauls the existing corporate model and pushes the media to put the public before profits. Journalism needs more than just stimulus; it needs a major structural overhaul. And it requires permanent and public support.
Massive subsidies for local media could come in many forms. A new Works Progress Administration (WPA)–style program focused on jobs and infrastructure could return legions of unemployed journalists back to their beats and fund the build-out of necessary infrastructure such as municipal broadband networks and public media outlets. Devoting an average of $100 per US citizen to local media infrastructure would add up to more than $30 billion annually (similar to the public media budgets of many Western and Northern European countries and proportionate to US postal subsidies for newspapers in the 1800s). Existing public institutions, including libraries, universities, and public broadcasting stations, could also be harnessed to provide institutional support for local journalism. The news is a public good, and public goods require public investments. A noncommercial model — owned by and in service to the people — is journalism’s last, best hope.
[Victor Pickard is an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.]
Federal Communications Commission General Counsel Tom Johnson joined The Federalist to discuss why the commission quickly shot down a recent emergency petition from advocacy group Free Press asking the agency to investigate what it calls bogus coronavirus information from talk radio and White House task force briefings. (Free Press’ request cites a 1992 commission rule prohibiting the knowing broadcast of information that could cause public harm.) One key reason for declining the request: The FCC has often botched its judgments about communications networks over the decades, Johnson said. “If we often get it wrong even in the core area of our expertise, imagine us trying to make judgments about the results of clinical trials for potential treatments for COVID while those things are still ongoing,” he said. “It would be an absolute nightmare.” He called the attempt to get the FCC to probe coronavirus rhetoric on talk radio a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” for reviving the Fairness Doctrine.
Here We Go (Again): FCC Media Ownership Policy, Prometheus Radio Project and (now) the Supreme Court
On April 17, the FCC and the National Association of Broadcasters each filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to review the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit’s 2019 decision in Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC. The decision was the fourth in a line of intertwined cases dealing with the agency’s media ownership policies since 2004. In Prometheus IV, the Third Circuit remanded the diametrically opposed FCC’s media ownership decisions in 2016 and 2017, as well as the agency’s 2018 incubator program. Although the Third Circuit decisions in this line of cases have each discussed some evidentiary and procedural shortcomings within the FCC’s statutorily mandated quadrennial reviews, one of the key issues since the first decision in June 2004 has been the FCC’s failure to develop, implement and (empirically) support a policy to promote the ownership of broadcast stations by women and minorities.
[Christopher Terry is a publicly engaged scholar who is currently an assistant professor of media law and ethics in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. Caitlin Ring Carlson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Seattle University.]
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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