If your cable operator invites you to dump its TV service and switch to online streaming, its internet rates may hide a surprise that will be painful to you and profitable to your internet provider. Data caps limiting how much you can download per month are an unpleasant reality at too many providers, but small cable services can be significantly less generous with them. Those same companies also have the hardest time keeping programming costs in check and increasingly lose money on video. "(A)mong smaller cable operators, it has become commonplace to stop even trying to preserve the video subscriber base," a MoffettNathanson Research study observed. 

Members of the 4Competition Coalition met recently with Federal Communications Commissioners Brendan Carr, Michael O’Rielly, and Geoffrey Starks, as well as advisers to Chairman Ajit Pai and other FCC officials, to reiterate their opposition to the proposed merger. The 4Competition Coalition consists of Dish Network, AFL-CIO, Common Cause, Rural Wireless Association and more than a dozen other entities. Their meetings come as several Wall Street analysts have lowered the odds that the deal will go through. Opponents of the deal say that if allowed to proceed, the merger would lead to price increases for virtually all wireless customers, substantially raise wholesale rates and cause significant job losses, all while failing to deliver on promises to expand rural coverage. They also seized on Sprint executives’ comments about the status of its network and pointed to Chief Commercial Officer Brandon Dow’s testimony to the California Public Utilities Commission in Feb, with statements like: “Sprint will be here to compete whether we merge with T-Mobile or not,” and “[We] are a stable company. Sprint is not going bankrupt.”

House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) confirmed that anxiety over Chinese telecom giants’ wireless advances could creep into House lawmakers’ must-pass defense policy legislation. “There might be a couple things on 5G that we include,” said Chairman Smith. “Concern about Huawei and ZTE’s involvement in making sure we have domestic capability to build the infrastructure necessary.” Lawmakers “haven’t worked out the details yet.” One challenge: The Senate may be less inclined to follow suit. Senate Armed Services Chair Jim Inhofe (R-OK) doubts 5G security becomes part of the Senate defense bill, saying “people are jealously holding onto that jurisdiction.”

CTIA, the wireless industry trade group, called the recent 5G study presented to the Defense Department a “missed opportunity to collaborate” and contended it includes flawed information about the technology, in a letter to Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan. The study from the Defense Innovation Board warned about the potential for Chinese dominance in 5G and recommended the Pentagon explore sharing its mid-band spectrum with wireless operators. It also suggested the US was wrongly focused on high-band spectrum for 5G when the rest of the world is making lower-frequency airwaves available for next-gen networks. CTIA said the study would have benefited from outreach to the wireless industry. While acknowledging that midband is necessary for 5G, CTIA said the US approach to supply a mix of airwaves is the right one, and that efforts to free up midband airwaves should be geared toward exclusive licenses — not sharing models.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the progressive firebrand whose rebukes of the tech sector drew headlines on the 2018 campaign trail, supports the outlines of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) sweeping proposal to break up tech firms like Amazon and Facebook. “The idea itself is something that I am supportive of because taking an antitrust approach I believe is absolutely relevant and it’s appropriate to take,” said Rep Ocasio-Cortez. Amazon’s role as “both the marketplace, producer, seller … creates an antitrust issue,” she said. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez supports breaking up Facebook, though she declined to chart out a path for doing so. “Facebook as a basic communications platform while also selling ads and also being a surveillance platform, I think those functions should be broken up, but how that gets levied and how that gets approached is what we need to take a fine-tooth comb at.”

Warren’s proposal has been put to a number of 2020 Democratic candidates, with all who have spoken out thus far largely resisting the plan. But Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks signal a dose of support for it among the party’s surging left flank. The freshman lawmaker said she has yet to explore legislation on tech and antitrust, but indicated it’s a future area of interest. “I think what I’ve been doing more has been getting more overall briefs on this space from academic and legal perspectives,” she said, adding: “It’s something I’ve definitely been keeping an ear on the ground for.”

Apparently, Facebook has told the Federal Trade Commission it is willing to submit to greater oversight of its data-collection practices — from the launching of new services to the decisions of its top executives — in order to end a wide-ranging federal probe into a series of privacy abuses that came to light in 2018. The changes would accompany a record-breaking, multi-billion-dollar fine that the FTC has considered levying against Facebook. Under such a settlement, Facebook would have to complete a more rigorous privacy review of new products and services before launching them. The company would have to document its decisions, and its efforts to anticipate potential privacy pitfalls, which would help the FTC assess if the social-networking giant fully weighed the effects of its data-collection practices on users, the person said. Facebook also would take a more active role in policing third-party app developers, reviewing their offerings and ensuring that they comply with Facebook’s own rules.