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[Commentary] The nomination of Thomas E. Wheeler, longtime president and CEO of the Cellular Telecom and Internet Association, to head the Federal Communications Commission has produced predictable bursts of praise and criticism. Both sides make some valid points, but the simple truth is that we don’t know where Wheeler stands on some of the most critical issues the FCC will face in the coming years — issues that will have a huge impact on consumers.
Before confirming Wheeler’s nomination, the Senate should insist on clear, specific answers to the following questions:
- Competition: In many communities, particularly in rural areas or lower income neighborhoods, there are fewer carriers offering service than in higher income, urban or suburban areas. At the same time, modern “basic” technologies like wireless and broadband are lightly regulated, as compared to the old copper phone network. What role should the FCC play in improving competition in currently underserved areas, so that we can get closer to universal service?
- Availability: In many areas of the country, especially in rural areas or tribal lands, you still can’t get broadband service even if you want it and could afford it — the network simply isn’t built there. This leaves millions of Americans with significantly diminished ability to grow and thrive. How can the FCC achieve universal broadband deployment?
- Affordability: In many areas where broadband networks do exist, low-income customers can’t afford to sign up, which perpetuates the digital divide. In an era when applications for even entry-level fast-food jobs are handled online, this stifles economic opportunities for those who need them most. What can the FCC do to make broadband more affordable for low-income consumers?
- Advanced Services: Increasingly, telephone service is moving to Internet-based (VoIP) systems, but to the customer, a phone call is a phone call. Customers aren’t concerned with what technology is involved; they care that service is reliable, available and affordable. Given that reality, how should the different technologies used to provide voice services be regulated? Should the type of wires determine the sort of regulation needed, or should the function the technology serves for the customer be the determining factor? And given that it is used to make phone calls, is VoIP a communications service or an information service? What should be the role of the states in regulating those services? Today the U.S. lags behind much of the industrialized world in broadband speed and quality. What can we do to guarantee subscribers in the United States the same quality and speed found in places like Japan and South Korea?
- Preemption: Should local governments be allowed to construct their own telecommunications networks, especially in areas where service providers have not built out their networks?
What the Senate needs to ask Tom Wheeler
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration introduced a new set of reports, the Broadband Briefs series, that use publicly available data collected by the U.S. Department of Commerce to examine broadband availability in greater detail. This report further examines improvements in broadband availability by speed, technology and location since 2010.
NTIA noted in January that most Americans (98 percent) now have access to basic broadband service, and this report explores the change in availability over the last two years -- and the consistency with which broadband speeds are now available across the country. Since June 2010, broadband availability at all speed levels has increased and basic broadband service is nearly universal in urban areas. While there is still a gap in broadband availability between urban and rural areas, 91 percent of rural Americans have access to basic broadband service as of June 2012. NTIA has been working to address gaps in availability and increase demand for services throughout the country through its Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), while the Rural Utilities Service’s Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) has targeted rural areas in particular. Both programs were part of a 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act initiative aimed at expanding broadband access and adoption. NTIA’s State Broadband Initiative (SBI) has also supported broadband expansion and adoption, state and local planning and capacity-building activities.
Other highlights from the Broadband Brief include:
- Changes: Between June 2010 and June 2012, national broadband availability increased at all advertised speed levels. During both years, the greatest rates of change occurred in the higher speed tiers, beginning with the 25 Mbps or greater tier. The percentage of Americans with access to broadband with speeds of 25 Mbps or greater has grown from nearly 50 percent in 2010 to more than 78 percent in 2012.
- Technologies: Cable is the primary technology that providers use to offer services of at least 25 Mbps or greater but less than 1 Gbps. At 3/768, 87 percent of the population has access to broadband via cable, 74 percent get this type of broadband from DSL providers and 20 percent get this broadband from fiber deployments.
- Rural/Urban: Almost 100 percent of urban residents have access to download speeds of at least 6 Mbps, while 82 percent of rural communities can access these speeds.
- Counties: In almost 59 percent (1,896) of U.S. counties, at least 95 percent of the population has access to speeds of 3/768; and in just under 10 percent (317) of counties, at least 95 percent of the population has access at 25 Mbps.
NTIA Explores Broadband Availability in New Report Series US Broadband Availability: June 2010 – June 2011 (read the NTIA report)
The effort in Europe to adopt the world’s strongest data protection law has drawn the attention of dozens of lobbyists from U.S. technology and advertising companies.
Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon and I.B.M., individually and through industry groups, have all sought to actively participate in a legislative process that could give half a billion consumers the right to withhold basic personal details while using the Web, putting a major crimp in the financial model that makes those business run. On May 13, their European counterparts showed up in force at a conference in Berlin to discuss the potential law, which is expected to come to a vote sometime next year. Representatives from European Aeronautics Defense & Space, BMW, Daimler and Rovio Entertainment, the creator of mobile apps like Angry Birds, filled a hotel meeting room and tried to figure out how new rules would affect them.
Firms Brace for New European Data Privacy Law
The old Web browser is being reinvented in a trend with implications for how consumers work and entertain themselves online.
Companies from Google to small startups are introducing new features, such as taking and syncing notes and files within the browser, voice-recognition, video calls and messaging. They are also reinventing the browser for newly connected devices like cars. The browser industry may have appeared staid in recent years, with the market dominated by tech giants such as Microsoft, Google and Apple. Microsoft's Internet Explorer remains the market-share leader for desktop browsers, according to Net Applications, with a 56% share of the desktop market globally. Apple's Safari browser leads on mobile phones and tablets, with 59% share, thanks to the popularity of the iPhone and iPad. But behind the scenes, many companies have quietly been enhancing and reimagining the Web browser, as new technologies have made it possible to do numerous activities in the browser instead of through software downloaded to a computer or mobile device. The set of new programming techniques enabling the features is often referred to as HTML5. Companies have opened up to "add-ons" and apps, allowing users to access features like games and third-party software from a homescreen.
Web Browsers Are Reinvented
Kids start watching porn from as early as the age of 6, and begin flirting on the Internet from the age of 8, according to a survey of over 19,000 parents worldwide.
What's more, kids are accessing instant messaging and computer games at a much younger age than just a few years ago. At the extreme, 3.45% of kids covered in the analysis used Instant Messaging to chat with friends while 2% of computer game addicts were just 5 years old. The study results were released exclusively to CyberTruth by Bitdefender. The Bucharest-based antivirus vendor correlated results of an online survey of parents with data compiled from its parental control services, such as which sites parents choose to block, and which sites children access regularly.
Kids access porn sites at 6, begin flirting online at 8
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the appointment of Sonja Reece and Susie Allen to fill open seats on the Intergovernmental Advisory Committee (IAC), bringing the IAC to its full strength of fifteen members.
Sonja Reece, Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member of the Town of Normal, Illinois, has been appointed to fill the open municipal seat, and Susie Allen, Information Technology Division Project Manager of the Colville Confederated Tribes in Nespelem, Washington, has been appointed to fill the open Tribal seat.
The IAC’s mission is to make recommendations to the Commission on the many communications issues affecting local, state and Tribal governments that are within the jurisdiction of the Commission. The current IAC term commenced with its first meeting in December, 2011 and will conclude with its last meeting in December 2013.
FCC Announces New Municipal and Tribal Representatives to the Intergovernmental Advisory Committee
The 2008 Farm Bill directed the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, in coordination with the Secretary of Agriculture, to submit to Congress a report describing a “comprehensive rural broadband strategy” in 2009. The 2008 Farm Bill also required the Chairman, in coordination with the Secretary of Agriculture, to “update and evaluate” the Rural Broadband Report in 2011. This Report constitutes that update and evaluation.
It focuses on key actions at the FCC, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Rural Utilities Service (RUS), and the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to meet the demand for affordable, high quality broadband services in rural communities, including historic investments made under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act). While significant progress has been made to increase rural broadband deployment and adoption since the publication of the 2009 Rural Broadband Report, and a number of private- and public-sector initiatives are underway, additional efforts and new policies—including major universal service policy reform—are still required to ensure that rural America fully shares in the benefits of the emerging broadband economy.
FCC Updates Report on a Rural Broadband Strategy
Following the new Open Data Executive Order signed by President Barack Obama and the federal release of new Open Data Policy Guidelines, analysts have been speaking out, many of whom appear to be in favor of both the order and its new guidelines.
The federal open data policy requirements state that federal agencies must use data standards and machine-readable open formats, and must build information systems to support interoperability and information accessibility, to name a few. One of the new policy’s most substantial provisions, according to the Sunlight Foundation, is the creation of a public listing of agency data based on an internal audits of information holdings. But is this list provision a first of its kind? It may very well be, as the foundation notes that its creation is "part of the next evolution of open data policies." But it is important to note that individual federal departments have released open data prior to the Open Data Executive Order announcement. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Transportation released high-value open data publicly in part with its Open Government Plan.
Analysts Assess Federal Open Data Policy
On May 15 in Lima, representatives from 11 countries are gathering to hammer out something called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It's an international treaty, and the latest entry in the ongoing battle between copyright holders and the open web.
Already, the treaty has been compared to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), with the Electronic Frontier Foundation describing it as the biggest threat to the global web in years. As in previous years, they're raising the alarm, and hoping that the global outcry will be enough to shoot down the treaty. The biggest red flags in the TPP are familiar from previous agreements — the inflated penalties, the prohibition on even temporary copies of protected intellectual property (IP), all the worst parts of the DMCA — but the larger concerns are how little we actually know. The negotiations are all secret, with only a small advisory committee kept in the loop on what's proposed. The public is only aware of the ACTA-like provisions because of a leak last summer that unveiled an early draft, but otherwise we'd still be in the dark.
Internet advocates say the TPP is the biggest threat yet to open web
Mignon Clyburn, a veteran policymaker from the Public Service Commission of South Carolina, has been appointed acting chair of the Federal Communications Commission, the first woman to ever hold the post. Since joining the FCC in 2009, Chairman Clyburn remains a leader in the fight to reduce telephone rates for prison inmates throughout the country and, in her first interview since being appointed by President Barack Obama to her new post, she vows to continue that battle.
"Tens of thousands of consumers have written, emailed, and telephoned the Federal Communications Commission, pleading for relief on interstate long distance rates from correctional facilities and I intend to keep pushing this issue," said Chairman Clyburn. She is miffed that rates make it cheaper to place a cellular telephone call from as far away as Singapore than it is for an inmate to make an interstate collect call from prisons in the United States.
New FCC Chair Continues Prison Phone Battle