Daily Digest 8/17/2020 (How COVID Changed the Internet)

Benton Institute for Broadband & Society
Table of Contents

Broadband/Internet

How Covid-19 Changed Americans’ Internet Habits  |  Read below  |  Lillian Rizzo, Sawyer Click  |  Wall Street Journal
How Internet Service Providers Fuel Inequality  |  Read below  |  Art Brodsky  |  Op-Ed  |  Washington Monthly
Bridging the digital divide has never been more critical  |  Read below  |  Bruce Mehlman  |  Op-Ed  |  
No more gut-based strategies: Using evidence to solve the digital divide  |  Read below  |  Gregory Rosston, Scott Wallsten  |  Hill, The
Rural families without internet face tough choice on school  |  Read below  |  Piper Hudspeth Blackburn  |  Associated Press
Illinois Addresses the Digital Divide  |  Read below  |  Kevin Taglang  |  Analysis  |  Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

Wireless

Houston startup pumps rural internet access through unused TV channels  |  Read below  |  Dwight Silverman  |  Houston Chronicle

Platforms/Content

FCC as Edge Regulator  |  Read below  |  John Eggerton  |  Multichannel News
Michael Hiltzik: The maker of ‘Fortnite’ complains that Apple and Google are monopolists. No kidding  |  Los Angeles Times
US Faces Bumpy Antitrust Road Despite Big Tech’s Emails, Memos  |  Bloomberg
Eileen Donahoe: Internet platforms should exercise their own free expression to protect democracy  |  Hill, The
Jennifer Jolly: Your social feed is crowded with misinformation about coronavirus. Here's how to spot it.  |  USA Today

Ownership

Charter can charge online video sites for network connections, court rules  |  Read below  |  Jon Brodkin  |  Ars Technica
Justice Department Brings Enforcement Action Against Centurylink  |  Read below  |  Press Release  |  Department of Justice

Education

"Historic" laptop demand leads to shortages ahead of remote school  |  Axios

Security

Order Regarding the Acquisition of Musical.ly by ByteDance Ltd  |  Read below  |  President Donald Trump  |  Public Notice  |  White House
WeChat Links Many Americans to Family Abroad. That’s Now in Jeopardy.  |  Wall Street Journal

Election 2020

Biden and Trump set to receive nominations in historic virtual DNC, RNC  |  C|Net
Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century  |  American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Telecom

Where Robocalls Hide: the House Next Door  |  Wall Street Journal

Policymakers

Names Surface for Possible O'Rielly Successor  |  Read below  |  John Eggerton  |  Multichannel News
Withdrawal of Michael O'Rielly's nomination creates uncertain future at FCC  |  Read below  |  Casey Egan  |  Analysis  |  S&P Global

Stories From Abroad

The Man Who Rallied India Against Facebook Worries Digital Nationalism Has Gone Too Far  |  OneZero
Google says Australian news rule threatens free search services  |  Financial Times

Life As We Know It Now

Ben Smith: The streaming services are in charge, and bringing a ruthless new culture with them.  |  New York Times
Op-ed: People Aren’t Reading or Watching Movies. They’re Gaming.  |  New York Times
Roblox: You May Not Know This Pandemic Winner, but Your Tween Probably Does  |  New York Times
Today's Top Stories

Broadband/Internet

How Covid-19 Changed Americans’ Internet Habits

Lillian Rizzo, Sawyer Click  |  Wall Street Journal

Internet usage soared 25% within a few days in mid-March as the coronavirus pandemic started forcing Americans to stay home and is bound to remain substantially higher than before the pandemic. The increased internet usage has pushed broadband providers to perform round-the-clock enhancements on their networks, in hopes of minimizing hiccups to connection and speed. Quarterly broadband subscribership and revenue for these companies have shot up as more people in need of at-home internet service and signing up for faster, and more costly, speeds. Internet usage gradually slowed after the end of March, and fell more rapidly as some states began reopening in May, only to rise again in June as coronavirus infections rebounded.

How Internet Service Providers Fuel Inequality

Art Brodsky  |  Op-Ed  |  Washington Monthly

That’s why the next item on the Congressional agenda, and on a prospective Biden administration’s agenda, should be a thorough review of a system in which Internet service providers have no obligation to provide service to the areas most in need. Providing an essential service like high-speed Internet should be a requirement enshrined in law. The big telecom companies don’t see sufficient financial incentive to invest heavily in rural broadband, and no one can make them do it. Congress needs to step up and not rely on the Federal Communications Commission to solve this problem. Lawmakers should start over, beginning with the premise that reliable, high-speed Internet service is a necessity in modern America. It must be both accessible and affordable.

  1. More than 100 years ago, the concept of universal service was created to ensure that everyone had telephone service. Bring that back and enshrine it in law.  It is already there in theory, but not in practice, because of the way the telecom laws are written.
  2. Enact new laws and regulations that enforce universal service in the digital age.
  3. Legislation must ensure that service is not only more widely available but that it is affordable. A number of programs subsidizing service by the telecom companies have proven successful, and they should be expanded and streamlined.

[Art Brodsky has more than 30 years of experience in telecommunications policy and advocacy]

Bridging the digital divide has never been more critical

Bruce Mehlman  |  Op-Ed  |  

Money spent getting high-speed internet into more people’s hands is money well spent. Every dollar invested in broadband returns nearly four dollars to the economy. In addition to expanding the reach of networks, we must focus on the cost issue. Broadband is surely an essential need for all Americans in the 21st century. Just as we help those who cannot afford food, housing or medical care to access these necessities, so should we ensure that online opportunities extend to those living on the economic edge. While there is much that Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on, they share a conviction in the criticality of broadband to economic recovery. Both parties have declared their commitment to reducing the digital divide, with myriad proposals before Congress in potential COVID-19 recovery legislation, infrastructure modernization bills and stand-alone telecom proposals. Despite this year’s setbacks, we have the opportunity to form a more perfect union, to set ourselves and future generations up for more robust and inclusive growth. Policymakers can take a critical step on that journey this year — immediately, in fact. It’s never too late to do the right thing.

[Bruce Mehlman served as assistant secretary of Commerce for technology policy and is a founding co-chair of the Internet Innovation Alliance]

No more gut-based strategies: Using evidence to solve the digital divide

Gregory Rosston, Scott Wallsten  |  Hill, The

The key missing component of nearly every proposal to solve the connectivity problem is evidence — evidence suggesting the ideas are likely to work and ways to use evidence in the future to evaluate whether they did work. Otherwise, we are likely throwing money away. Understanding what works and what doesn’t requires data collection and research now and in the future. It doesn’t have to be this way. The pandemic did not only lay bare the implications of the digital divide, it also created a laboratory for studying how best to bridge the divide. The most immediate problem was how to help kids without home broadband attend distance learning classes. Schools had no time to formally study different options — it was a race to find anything that might help. As a result, schools incidentally ran thousands of concurrent experiments around the country. We should be learning from those experiences. Unfortunately, to our knowledge, nobody systematically collected that data. In other words, while people have busily promoted their pet projects and ideas, nobody stepped back to study the vast amount of information being created by organizations that were trying to solve that very problem. There still is time to look at these experiments and learn from them, but it’s running out.

Rural families without internet face tough choice on school

Piper Hudspeth Blackburn  |  Associated Press

Roughly 3 million students across the United States don't have access to a home internet connection. A third of households with school-age children that do not have home internet cite the expense as the main reason, according to federal Education Department statistics. But in some rural places, a reliable connection can't be had at any price. The void is especially acute in eastern Kentucky. Many districts have been scrambling  to set up paper-based alternatives to online instruction or create WiFi hot spots in school parking lots and other public areas. Kentucky's two largest districts, in Louisville and Lexington, are starting the school year online and have pledged to give mobile hot spots to students who don't have internet at home. Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) said the state is exploring ways to expand internet access in hard-to-reach areas.

Illinois Addresses the Digital Divide

Kevin Taglang  |  Analysis  |  Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed many hard truths, and one of them is our nation’s digital divide. In Illinois, the Office of Broadband, through its Connect Illinois broadband program, is working to ensure broadband use by everyone in the state. The country’s largest state-matching grant fund is designed to achieve ubiquitous broadband access through local initiatives, private investment, and partnerships of all kinds. Today we take a quick break from federal digital divide efforts to focus on the work being done in Benton's home state. The Illinois approach balances short-term solutions with long-term strategic investment to achieve improved broadband mapping, community planning and capacity building, ubiquitous broadband access, and sustainable digital equity. The Illinois broadband strategy is anchored by distinct, yet interdependent goals providing short-term basic access, ensuring longer-term high-speed access, and demonstrating broadband leadership in service to community and economic development.

Wireless

Houston startup pumps rural internet access through unused TV channels

Dwight Silverman  |  Houston Chronicle

A Houston startup called Skylark Wireless is developing a new kind of internet service that relies on the unused frequencies normally associated with television stations. Known as TV white space technology, or TVWS, it’s seen as a real possibility to get high-speed data service to people in rural areas. While other companies are using TVWS to do rural broadband internet access, Skylark’s approach is unique. It uses software-enabled radios that can be programmed to run on different frequencies, making the tech less expensive to configure and change as conditions and customer needs warrant.

Platforms

FCC as Edge Regulator

John Eggerton  |  Multichannel News

Law firm Cooley LLP has broken out the ways that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's Sec 230 petition, if acted on by the Federal Communications Commission, would impose “sweeping changes.” For one, its requirement that websites disclose their moderation policies would subject edge provider content to the FCC’s authority for the first time. It could also affect review sites, gaming sites, and online advertising. Protection against liability for third-party content would be available only when an interactive computer service (such as a website or app) failed to remove information provided by a third party. Under the proposed rules, a provider that solicits content, chooses third-party content for its site or promotes third-party content to its users would lose its immunity. This could mean that there would be no immunity for advertising or for content that was recommended to users through a preference engine. Moderation would include restricting access to or the availability of content and barring users from posting temporarily or permanently. Warnings placed on user-generated content would be treated as content generated by the internet platform, rather than moderation, and would not be within the protections of Section 230.

Ownership

Charter can charge online video sites for network connections, court rules

Jon Brodkin  |  Ars Technica

Charter can charge Netflix and other online video streaming services for network interconnection despite a merger condition prohibiting the practice, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled. the decision overturns two merger conditions that the Obama administration imposed on Charter when it bought Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016. The Federal Communications Commission under Chairman Ajit Pai did not defend the merits of the merger conditions in court, paving the way for the ruling. The case was decided in a 2-1 vote by a panel of three DC Circuit judges. The lawsuit against the FCC seeking to overturn Charter merger conditions was filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a free-market think tank, and four Charter users who claim they were harmed by the conditions. The FCC unsuccessfully challenged the suing parties' standing to sue, and it did not mount a legal defense of the conditions themselves.

Justice Department Brings Enforcement Action Against Centurylink

Press Release  |  Department of Justice

The Department of Justice announced that CenturyLink has agreed to settle allegations that CenturyLink violated the court-ordered Final Judgment designed to prevent anticompetitive effects arising from its acquisition of Level 3 Communications. Despite provisions in the Final Judgment barring CenturyLink from soliciting customers that switched to the buyer of the divestiture assets, CenturyLink failed to comply, initiating contact on over 70 occasions over more than a year with former Level 3 customers who elected to switch to the divestiture buyer in the Boise City-Nampa, Idaho MSA (Boise MSA).  CenturyLink does not deny the United States’ allegations and has agreed to the Amended Final Judgment. As part of the settlement, CenturyLink has agreed to:

  • extend the non-solicitation period by two years for the Boise MSA;
  • the appointment of an independent monitoring trustee; and
  • pay the United States to defray the costs of the department’s investigation of CenturyLink’s violations of the court order.

Security

Order Regarding the Acquisition of Musical.ly by ByteDance Ltd

President Donald Trump  |  Public Notice  |  White House

The transaction resulting in the acquisition by ByteDance of Musical.​ly, to the extent that Musical.​ly or any of its assets is used in furtherance or support of, or relating to, Musical.​ly’s activities in interstate commerce in the United States (“Musical.​ly in the United States”), is hereby prohibited, and ownership by ByteDance of any interest in Musical.​ly in the United States, whether effected directly or indirectly through ByteDance, or through ByteDance’s subsidiaries, affiliates, or Chinese shareholders, is also prohibited. In order to effectuate this order, not later than 90 days after the date of this order, unless such date is extended for a period not to exceed 30 days, on such written conditions as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) may impose, ByteDance, its subsidiaries, affiliates, and Chinese shareholders, shall divest all interests and rights in: 1) any tangible or intangible assets or property, wherever located, used to enable or support ByteDance’s operation of the TikTok application in the United States, as determined by the Committee; and 2) any data obtained or derived from TikTok application or Musical.​ly application users in the United States.  Immediately upon divestment, ByteDance shall certify in writing to CFIUS that all steps necessary to fully and permanently effectuate the actions required under sections 2(a) and 2(b) have been completed.

Policymakers

Names Surface for Possible O'Rielly Successor

John Eggerton  |  Multichannel News

Carolyn Roddy, a senior advisor at the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, and Hill staffer Crystal Tully, are two names that have surfaced as potential nominees to replace Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly. Roddy was a member of Trump's FCC transition team following the 2016 election and was Metro Atlanta Regional Deputy Coordinator of the campaign. She was briefly an FCC lawyer in 2017. Her resume also includes regional regulatory counsel for Sprint; Counsel at Troutman Sanders, LLP in Atlanta; and director of regulatory affairs at the Satellite Industry Association in Washington. She has also been an adjunct professor at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School. 

Tully is the deputy staff director of the Senate Commerce Committee. She was formerly the on the committee's communications and tech policy teams and before that counse to former-Chairman John Thune (R-SD) and senior advisor to current chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS). She was also an FCC law clerk. Tully is said to be Wicker's choice for the job.

Withdrawal of Michael O'Rielly's nomination creates uncertain future at FCC

Casey Egan  |  Analysis  |  S&P Global

President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw his nomination of Michael O'Rielly, a Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission, for a new term has thrown into question the coming political balance-of-power and policy agenda at the agency. Republicans on the commission currently hold a 3-2 majority, but that could change depending on the outcome of the November presidential election and whether someone is appointed to O'Rielly's seat by the end of the year. Without a 2020 appointment, which policy experts think is unlikely unless President Trump reverses course on Commissioner O'Rielly, the FCC would potentially be left with a 2-2 political split that would only be broken by whichever party wins the White House after the election.

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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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Kevin Taglang

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