Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Headlines Daily Digest
Democracy's Essential Infrastructure
Don't Miss:
President Biden faces looming deadline for FCC pick as acting chair's term winds down
Public Knowledge Calls on FCC to Oversee 3G Sunset
Hurricane Ida takes out cell towers in its path in Louisiana
Emergency Communications
Hurricane Ida’s Power Outages Hamper Efforts to Restore Cellphone Service | Wall Street Journal
First Responder Network Authority’s Public Safety Advisory Committee Reports Progress and Announces Interim Chair | First Responder Network Authority
Media & Democracy
Insurrection
Wireless/Spectrum
States/Local
Platforms
Health
Security
Content
Devices
Lobbying
Company News
Policymakers
Stories From Abroad
Emergency Communications
The Gulf Coast region is just beginning to recover from Hurricane Ida, with a significant impact on cell towers in the state of Louisiana. According to the Federal Communications Commission, 52 percent of cell towers in the hurricane’s path in the state are out of service as of August 30. That equates to 1,437 towers, most of them down due to loss of power, and some localities are far worse than others. Terrebonne Parrish has 100 percent of its 81 towers out of service, while Lafourche Parrish has 97 percent down. New Orleans is in the dark and may be that way for at least two weeks, with major power transmission lines completely down. Louisiana took the brunt of Hurricane Ida; only 14 percent of Mississippi cell towers are down, and only 1 percent in Alabama. The FCC reported that over 354 thousand customers have lost telephone, internet, and/or cable TV in the region, 338 thousand of those being in Louisiana.
The sad fact is that America’s news and information ecosystem is eating away at our democracy. And we are not paying attention, partly because neither traditional nor new media are living up to their responsibility to cover the issue. They’re not about to discipline themselves. (And how laughable it is to see expensive ads from Facebook saying that it supports updating internet regulations when, of course, they will fight to the death anything resembling real public interest oversight.) The larger point here is that successful self-government depends upon a well-informed citizenry. Democracy is premised on the belief that an informed electorate is best able to set the course of government. But if we the people are denied the news and facts needed to make sound judgments, we will make decisions that harm our nation. My preference is for a mix of actions. Antitrust, public interest rules and regulations, and greatly enhanced support for public media are each an essential part of a successful news and information strategy. Media that reflect the public interest, inform our civic dialogue, and advance the chances for successful self-government in a challenged nation are, I believe, the most important infrastructure of all.
Public Knowledge, Access Humboldt, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, the Center for Rural Strategies, and New America’s Open Technology Institute filed comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Notice seeking comment on a petition for emergency relief filed by the Alarm Industry Communications Committee. The petition for emergency relief requests the FCC act to delay the planned shutdown of AT&T’s 3G wireless network in February 2022 because security, fire, and personal medical alert systems all rely upon it to function. Because of COVID-19, the alarm industry has not been able to upgrade these systems to function on modern wireless networks. Without intervention from the FCC, the shutdown of AT&T’s 3G network threatens to leave some unknown number of alarm systems inoperable. In addition, an unsupervised shutdown of 3G systems by major carriers nationwide puts the phone service of millions of Americans – many of them elderly or low-income – at risk.
AT&T responded to the alarm industry’s attempts to keep the 3G network up and running, essentially chalking it up to a delay tactic designed to line the pockets of alarm companies. While all three of the major US wireless operators are shutting down their 3G networks, the alarm industry is especially reliant on AT&T. That’s in part because AT&T offered aggressive pricing deals back when 3G networks were just getting started. Fast forward to 2021, and those alarm companies are in no hurry to switch to newer networks. In fact, they blame COVID-19 for their inability to get into customers’ homes to do necessary upgrades. AT&T said it is dedicated to serving customers during the network transition and has followed the same playbook it used when retiring the 2G network back in 2017. AT&T’s nationwide 5G coverage currently relies on low-band spectrum – specifically, the 850 MHz blocks that aren’t being used for 3G. In the future, the operator will rely mostly on mid-band spectrum and in particular the C-band assets that it acquired in Auction 107. However, the C-band spectrum isn’t yet available, and in the meantime, AT&T will be converting the 850 MHz spectrum, currently used for 3G, to 5G for both coverage and capacity.
Between the American Rescue Plan Act, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, and the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), billions of federal dollars are pouring in to fuel broadband deployments. But all of these funding sources have one thing in common: they all focus heavily on fixed and fixed wireless deployments. While there is a pot of funding on the table for wireless in the form of the Federal Communications Commission’s $9 billion 5G Fund for Rural America, that money has yet to be distributed as it depends on the creation of new, more accurate mobile coverage maps to help ensure funding is targeted at the areas most in need of support. Competitive Carriers Association CEO Steven Berry stated that the $9 billion total is an arbitrary figure and doesn’t necessarily represent all the funding that is needed. “I don’t know how you come up with that when you don’t have the data and information about where there is or is not mobile broadband," he said. "So I think we need to re-look at that.” Berry also sees Phase II of the FCC's RDOF auctions as an opportunity to free up funds for wireless operators, where they can potentially "rethink the underlying purpose of RDOF" in doling out the second phase's $11 billion-plus in funding.
In a two-year research project of the Rural Broadband Consortium, C Spire led a group of companies that included Nokia, Microsoft, Facebook, and others to explore the challenges of cost-effective rural broadband deployment as well as what technologies and additional business model changes might help. The Rural Broadband Consortium's report concluded that the most common business model for broadband is that of an “operator-only” internet service provider (ISP) in which a single operator designs, builds, operates, and maintains the network. Yet the limited revenue offered by rural markets compared to more populated urban markets, combined with how easily the cost of serving rural communities can skyrocket, results in a difficult business case for bringing broadband internet service to these locations. To solve this, the consortium offered an alternative business model called a “third-party enablement model.” In this model, there would be different iterations in which two parties collaborate to provide service, allowing “shared costs, different levels of expertise and more efficiencies in areas where owning the whole process is challenging.” The report explored three potential partner-types for operators: “Local stewards” who can be creative and flexible in helping to establish broadband service; infrastructure providers such as local governments, utility companies, or cooperatives; or partnering with an emerging or established ISP which could make increasing connectivity more cost-effective for both parties. C Spire has shared these findings with public policymakers at the local and state levels and as a way to open up a deeper conversation about how to better, and more collaboratively, address rural broadband.
More than 180,000 North Carolina households are getting critical assistance in affording high-speed internet service thanks to the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) Program. With 182,473 households enrolled in the Federal Communications Commission’s initiative, North Carolina’s level of enrollment ranks sixth among the 50 states. Gov Roy Cooper (D-NC) urges Congress and the North Carolina delegation to pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to make the monthly discount permanent for eligible households. The act would include a monthly discount of $30 for eligible households and give $14.2 billion to the program, renamed the Affordable Connectivity program. Additionally, Gov Cooper's Closing the Digital Divide plan would continue the $50 monthly discount for four years with $420 million from the state’s allocation of American Rescue Plan fiscal recovery funds in an effort to hit a target of 80 percent of North Carolinians subscribing to high-speed internet service.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit hard starting in 2020, residents of Fairlawn (OH) were well-prepared to work and attend school online, while people living in some of the surrounding towns struggled with slower, less reliable internet service. Fairlawn, a relatively affluent Akron suburb of about 7,500 residents, built its own fiber-based internet service called FairlawnGig in 2017. When FairlawnGig launched, it offered people in town gigabit-speed service at a time when the existing internet providers could provide service with a maximum speed of 25 megabits per second service to consumers—barely meeting a minimal definition of broadband—and 50 Mbps to businesses, according to Fairlawn's public service director Ernie Staten. Municipal broadband has been debated as one remedy to the digital divide, which becomes more evident as the pandemic continues. Local officials are hoping to extend FairlawnGig’s reach to the rest of Summit County (OH) with pandemic funds; using funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, Fairlawn built a broadband “ring” around the county, initially for criminal justice facilities. This fall construction will begin on a project that could eventually extend service to a number of additional communities in the region.
Decatur (IL) is moving forward with an Institutional Network (I-Net) expansion that will connect 11 school districts and 3 firehouses to its growing fiber-optic backbone, connecting potential commercial and industry customers along the way. The city of Decatur has been expanding its fiber network since 2014. The expansion is the result of a 5-0 city council vote in April approving a $915,000 contract with Bodine Electric to purchase and hang 144 strand fiber-optic cable. A portion of the funding for the contract will come from an $800,000 grant from the Connect Illinois grant program, an initiative aimed at expanding broadband access. The program launched in 2019 with $420-million investment in broadband infrastructure. The first round of grants totaled $50 million with a combined $9.25 million going to monopoly providers CenturyLink, MediaCom, Spectrum, and Comcast and the rest going to local providers and city and county governments. The remaining $115,000 allocated in the contract will come from the state’s portion of the American Rescue Plan fund.
Facebook has constructed a vast infrastructure to keep toxic material off its platform. At the center of it is Accenture, the blue-chip consulting firm. The two companies have rarely talked about their arrangement or even acknowledged that they work with each other, but their secretive relationship lies at the heart of an effort by the world’s largest social media company to distance itself from its content moderation practices. Accenture has taken on the work — and given it a veneer of respectability — because Facebook has signed contracts with it for content moderation and other services worth at least $500 million a year, according to the New York Times. The company employs more than a third of the 15,000 people whom Facebook has said it has hired to inspect its posts. As a cost of doing business, it has dealt with workers’ mental health issues from reviewing the posts. It has grappled with labor activism when those workers pushed for more pay and benefits. And it has silently borne public scrutiny when they have spoken out against the work.
In 2017, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced his intention to dismantle the FCC’s hard-won network neutrality regulation. The 2015 net neutrality order owed its existence to the millions who submitted comments to the FCC demanding commonsense protection from predatory internet service providers (ISPs). After Pai’s announcement, those same millions flooded the FCC’s comment portal, actually overwhelming the FCC’s servers and shutting them down. Then millions of nearly-identical comments flooded into the FCC servers, all against net neutrality. All in all, 82 percent of the comments the FCC received were fake, and the overwhelming majority of fake comments opposed net neutrality. Sending all these fake comments was expensive and the telecommunications industry paid millions to corrupt the political process. That bill wasn’t footed by just one company, either - an industry association paid for the fraud. This is how it happens, and what needs to be done to shrink monopolies and restore net neutrality protections to ensure it does not continue.
[Cory Doctorow is a special advisor at EFF, science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger.]
Regional operator Horizon has acquired Consolidated Cooperative’s commercial fiber business in Ohio. The deal adds 450 fiber miles to augment Horizon’s existing Columbus (OH) network and extend northward through Delaware, Marion and Richland counties. Consolidated Cooperative’s separate residential fiber business was not part of the deal. Horizon said that Consolidated’s commercial clients will see no disruptions and will continue to be served according to the terms of their contracts. The company currently has more than 5,500 route miles of fiber in the Midwest. Glenn Lytle, Horizon’s Chief Revenue Officer, suggested that locality is a key benefit offered by Horizon; larger carriers, he said, tend to be “focused upstream.” Local businesses see the company as a good secondary provider because it is positioned to offer geographically diverse routes to its locations.
Since January, the Federal Communications Commission has been deadlocked in a 2-2 partisan split, and the White House has yet to nominate a new commissioner to complete the agency's typical five-person lineup. With Congress about to emerge from its August recess, President Joe Biden has four months before the end of the calendar year to make a pick. Policy experts indicated that September is a reasonable time to expect an announcement, notably when the House of Representatives votes on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package. The commission has a mounting to-do list ahead of it, with items stemming both from executive orders from the White House and a long-term broadband subsidy making its way through the House. President Biden must soon announce a nominee if the commission is to have any hope of tackling more ambitious — and contentious — policy items like restoring net neutrality protections or spurring competition in the broadband market, policy experts said. But the current vacancy is not the only pending empty seat. FCC Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's term is already running on overtime. Rosenworcel, who served as a commissioner under former Chairman Ajit Pai in the Trump administration, saw her term expire June 30, 2020. Since that time, she has been serving under a grace period known as a "holdover" that ends either when a replacement is confirmed or at the end of the congressional session the following year. Unless she is reconfirmed, she will have to leave the commission in January 2022.
"The delay is very problematic," said Andrew Schwartzman, senior counselor at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, adding that the slow selection process may keep the agency from performing normal business such as spectrum auctions or broadcast license renewals. For Schwartzman, many folks in the telecom space are "freaked out" about the selection delay, adding that the appointment gap seems "out of character" for the administration.
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.
© Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 2021. Redistribution of this email publication — both internally and externally — is encouraged if it includes this message. For subscribe/unsubscribe info email: headlines AT benton DOT org
Kevin Taglang
Executive Editor, Communications-related Headlines
Benton Institute
for Broadband & Society
727 Chicago Avenue
Evanston, IL 60202
847-328-3040
headlines AT benton DOT org
The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society All Rights Reserved © 2021