Multichannel News

The Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition has come up with an "action plan" for getting those institutions connected to next-generation high-speed broadband, and making that a national priority. In “Connecting Anchor Institutions: A Broadband Action Plan," the coalition look to highlight gaps in connectivity and make it clear just how important broadband access is. It is also part of a larger effort to make gigabit speeds for anchor institutions the table stakes of connectivity.

According to SHLB, the key takeaways from all the papers are the need for sharing -- "such as aggregation and public-private partnerships that eliminate silos and reduce costs"; competition -- "promoting competition to incentivize growth and bring more affordable options"; and funding -- "funding strategies that help communities meet up-front build-out and deployment costs, and ongoing monthly fees."

Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council president Kim Keenan called on attendees at the 14th annual Access to Capital and Telecom Policy Conference July 13 to help make important DC telecommunication issues understandable to the wider public they are affecting. In opening remarks for a Federal Communications Commission luncheon, Keenan said she was deeply concerned about the spectrum auction and that, in terms of minority ownership, the media landscape following that auction could look like it did "100 years ago."

The two-day MMTC conference includes a panel session on the impact of the auction on diversity. One concern is that the auction will reduce the number of channels -- including multicast channels -- owned by or programmed for minorities, given that the FCC is incentivizing broadcasters to give up spectrum. Keenan said that while policymakers tend to have "wonky conversations with ourselves" about those issues, when she talks to groups outside Washington about issues like set-top boxes or network neutrality, their eyes "glaze over." She suggested it is important to open those eyes to the digital future and called on her audience to help make those issues understandable and encourage dialogue. "If we have a digital future that does not connect everyone, we don't have a digital future," she said, adding, "We don’t want it to be easier to be stopped by police than to get access to capital by people of color."

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission is conducting a rulemaking proceeding right now in which the agency explains that it is trying to come up with additional regulations for Internet service providers (ISPs) that will protect consumer privacy online. It's a compelling sound byte, but upon closer examination of the FCC's proposal, it appears the agency's focus is on shaping the digital advertising market, not protecting privacy.

The stakes are high among the existing, dominant players so it is not surprising that the FCC wants to wade in. But it is surprising that the FCC seems to want to shield the dominant players from additional competition, an odd motivation when you read the continuous stream of FCC releases on any number of issues heralding its laser focus on increasing competition, not minimizing it. The only thing that the FCC's proposal will do is distort the digital advertising market and protect the dominant market position of the existing providers – the very anathema of American competition policy. Everyone is clear that the "privacy as a currency" business model is here to stay. Let's expose it to more rather than less competition and let's give Americans what they want – a consistent, comprehensive regime that protects them as well online as anywhere else.

[Roger Entner is founder and lead analyst at telecom consulting firm Recon Analytics]

[Commentary] The growing racial tensions over officer-involved shootings that have racked the country in recent days, from Dallas (TX) to Minneapolis(MN) to Baton Rouge (LA), are not going to be defused without a concerted effort on the part of everyone involved, which is everyone in this country. As President Barack Obama has said, there is a problem that needs addressing. Broadcasters remain the "go to" medium for local news and public service in their communities and can be a part of the solution -- or at least part of figuring out what the solution is. They should join with cable news outlets to televise -- and roadblock if necessary -- a town hall meeting or meetings between communities and the police sworn to protect and serve.

CenturyLink and Frontier have teamed up with a handful of other telecommunications companies in a new coalition to push back on the Federal Communications Commission's proposed reforms of special access market (the business services market the FCC has rebranded BDS or business data services). Also in the coalition are Cincinnati Bell, Consolidated Communications, and FairPoint.

The coalition, dubbed "Invest in Broadband for America," called the FCC proposal sweeping and questionable--it is also being questioned by cable operators providing BDS competition. "First and foremost, it is crucial that the FCC get the data right on competition in the marketplace before flying blindly into a major policy decision,” said John Jones, CenturyLink SVP, in announcing the new effort. “Important decisions are best made with accurate data. What is at stake here is the definition of ‘competition.’ That definition will have a substantial impact on the telecom and national economy for years to come. Think investment, suppliers, employees, infrastructure and contractors.”

Sens Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Ed Markey (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Al Franken (D-MN), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) called on the Federal Communications Commission to finalize its broadband privacy proposal. “An [Internet service provider] has a duty to protect the privacy of consumers who use the company’s wired and wireless infrastructure to connect to the world,” the Sens wrote in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “We strongly support the commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and believe that this framework will strengthen the privacy protections for consumers’ personal information.” They told the FCC it needed to:

Adopt a comprehensive definition of customer proprietary information.
Apply protections to both current and former ISP customers.
Promote transparency by requiring ISPs to disclose what information is being collected and how it is used.
Require ISPs to obtain consent before using or sharing consumers’ proprietary information.
Establish data security protections and breach notification requirements.
Mandate that the FCC and ISPs create clear complaint processes if consumers believe their privacy has been violated.

Republican and Democratic Reps took their fight over various Federal Communications Commission proposals and actions to the House floor as they debated the omnibus Financial Services Bill that includes the FCC's appropriation. Democratic Reps tried to block FCC-targeted efforts, but were rebuffed. Republican Reps even added the FCC's broadband privacy proposal to the list of actions blocked by the bill. The House's Republican majority are looking to undo through riders on that must-pass bill what the FCC's Republican minority could not defeat with their dissenting votes, including new network neutrality rules, the set-top box proposal, and the broadband privacy framework. The bill also prevents the FCC from tightening joint sales agreement rules, as it has proposed in its quadrennial media ownership review circulated the week of June 27. Those proposals are unlikely to make it into legislation that gets past President Barack Obama's desk, given his support for Title II reclassification and "unlocking" set-top boxes in particular.

Democratic Reps tried to head off the Republican efforts with amendments offered on the floor to strike some of the offending FCC portions, but were defeated. The bill as it currently stands would not allow the FCC to spend funds to enforce its Open Internet order. House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) introduced the amendment to strike the moratorium on funding for the Open Internet order, but it was defeated.

NewWave Communications is gearing up to bring 1 Gbps speeds to a handful of rural markets in 2015, and said it will use the emerging DOCSIS 3.1 platform to deliver them.

NewWave will start the deployment in the fourth quarter of 2014 and intends to boot up Gigabit-class services to residential and business customers in a handful of markets -- Poplar Bluff (MO), where it competes with AT&T, and in Monroe, Rayville, Delhi and Tallulah (LA), where it tangles with a mix of municipal and local service providers.

Phil Spencer, CEO of NewWave and Rural Broadband Investments, said it made sense to focus on those initial markets first because the infrastructure there is well-prepared to take on the upgrade.

The Comcast/TWC deal poses vertical harms, horizontal harms, and spot cable ad market harms that need more than arbitration to remedy. That was the message from the American Cable Association to the Federal Communications Commission in comments on the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

That means the FCC needs to either impose conditions to protect competition and consumers, particularly when it comes to program distribution or just say no to the deal.

Comcast said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it now expects to gain the necessary regulatory approvals for unionist acquisition of Time warner Cable in early 2015.

That is a few months later than the company rather optimistically expected when it announced the deal in February.