Wall Street Journal

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, made a big bet on Hillary Clinton winning the 2016 presidential election. Employees donated $1.6 million to her campaign, about 80% more than the amount given by workers at any other corporation, and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt helped set up companies to analyze political data for the campaign. Schmidt even wore a badge labeled “STAFF” at Mrs. Clinton’s election-night bash. His support of the losing side didn’t go unnoticed among the victors.

CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications' proposed merger cleared its last government hurdle nearly a year after the two telecommunications companies announced their combination. The Federal Communications Commission approved the deal after similar nods by state regulators and the Department of Justice earlier in 2017. Worth $25 billion when it was announced in 2016, the deal’s close was delayed for weeks as regulators took their time to review its competitive effects.

President Donald Trump’s aides have also been pressing for more restraint by the president on Twitter, and some weeks ago they organized what one official called an “intervention.”

Aides have been concerned about the president’s use of Twitter to push inflammatory claims, notably his unsubstantiated allegation from March that his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, had wiretapped his offices. In that meeting, aides warned President Trump that certain kinds of comments made on Twitter would “paint him into a corner,” both in terms of political messaging and legally, one official said. Ken Duberstein, a former chief of staff to former President Ronald Reagan, said President Trump should not “take the bait of a shouted question or the shiny silver dollar of being able to tweet. Because then the rest of the agenda gets left on the cutting room floor.”

The Federal Communications Commission is set to move forward with a plan that would blow up the rules that have governed the internet in recent years and essentially start anew, opening the door to fundamental shifts in consumers’ online experiences.

The final regulation is expected to take some time to develop. The FCC’s planned action begins a rule-making process that will likely take months, meaning the broadband internet business won’t change overnight. But eventually the new rules, depending on how the commission fills in the details, have the potential to allow new alliances between broadband providers and major entertainment, shopping, search and social media platforms. Those deals could allow cable and wireless broadband providers to lure consumers with higher speeds and better quality video for favored services, even as their choices are potentially narrowed. Critics note that the providers’ profits would probably grow in the meantime. Even supporters of the changes acknowledge the new rules could give internet providers broad latitude to offer new services that arguably are inconsistent with recent ideas about net neutrality. The biggest potential change would allow providers to offer paid prioritization, a practice that would allow some internet traffic to move more quickly or more reliably in exchange for payment to the carrier. The current rules bar paid prioritization.

[Commentary] Every new administration complains that the daily briefing is a charade that allows the media to batter the White House’s policy. Yet no matter how badly the press secretary is doing, no president has gone so far as to cancel it. The reason is that the briefing is a powerful weapon against the opposition and Congress.

Since President Donald Trump is willing to serve as his own unfiltered spokesman, giving interviews and pecking out late-night tweets, he doesn’t need the briefing to inform the world about the ever-changing presidential agenda. But the briefing still offers the White House a chance to control the political conversation and play out its chosen narrative: that unfair reporters are trying to bully an administration they don’t like. What’s in it for the press? Under President Trump the briefings have become ratings dynamite, as journalists try to one-up each other and catch the White House in any contradiction. Still, there’s no reason the media should make them such major events.

The big stories aren’t going to be broken in the briefing room, through an official statement or at a scheduled time. Instead of being stuck for an hour trying to ask a single pointed question to a harried and seemingly ill-informed spokesman, the White House press corps would be better off going out and looking for stories. For the country as a whole, ending the briefing would be a positive step. It would help break the public’s presidential obsession and free the press corps to pursue other stories. Without the distraction of a daily performance by the press secretary, Americans might learn more about what’s happening in Washington beyond the briefing room.

[Spivak is a public relations executive and a senior fellow at Wagner College’s Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform]

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission is launching initiatives that will shape the fate of America’s wireless industry. It started to examine competition in the market, and it will propose taking Depression-era utility regulations off mobile broadband networks while protecting an open internet. This is only the beginning. The FCC is acting on a rare opportunity to correct its recent mistakes and restore the Clinton-era light-touch regulatory framework that will drive economic growth and job creation. The FCC should begin by liberating wireless from the heavy-handed rules of a 1934 law called Title II, which was created when phones were held in two hands. This antiquated law imposes powerful economic regulations on the internet, chilling investment in broadband.

The FCC will propose to unshackle the net from this millstone of a law. This would restore the bipartisan light-touch policies that nurtured the burgeoning internet Americans enjoy today. The FCC can take a few other discrete steps. It would accelerate the mobile revolution if it streamlined rules that slow the construction of wireless infrastructure—and deprive consumers of the benefits of next-gen technologies. The agency should also update rules that dictate how much of a particular radio frequency a carrier can own in a market. America’s brilliant wireless engineers are inventing new ways to turn yesterday’s junk frequencies into tomorrow’s gold, rendering current regulations obsolete.

[Robert McDowell is a partner at Cooley LLP and chief public policy adviser to Mobile Future; he served as a FCC Commissioner 2006-13.]

Verizon Communications will buy Straight Path Communications for about $3.1 billion, after beating rival AT&T in an unusually intense bidding war for the wireless-spectrum holder.

[Commentary] The first wireless deal after a government-imposed hiatus is bad news for the biggest carriers and could scramble the likely outcomes of other anticipated combinations.

Cable operators Comcast and Charter Communications said they would form a year-long partnership to expand their wireless offerings. The deal signals the two companies are serious about expanding into the industry. It also ensures that the two biggest cable companies will work together—and not bid against one another—when it comes to wireless deals. For Comcast and Charter, which are more peers than rivals because their coverage areas don’t overlap, teaming up makes sense. It will allow them to integrate their networks of Wi-Fi hot spots, which cover about 80% of the country, according to New Street Research. This should help them offer better service to subscribers and considerably lower the cost of running wireless networks on Verizon Communications’ airwaves. The partnership could also signal a desire for a deeper relationship between the two cable giants—even possibly a merger down the line. The success of the venture would make things much worse for the industry’s two giants, Verizon and AT&T , which are already losing subscribers to T-Mobile US and Sprint amid a bruising price war.

Apparently, Comcast and Charter will announce a wireless partnership, agreeing not to make a material merger or acquisition in wireless without the other’s consent for one year.

That agreement could stoke Wall Street speculation among investors and analysts that the two largest U.S. cable companies together could decide to make a play for a carrier like T-Mobile US or Sprint. Neither company as a single entity could buy another wireless carrier for that time period as a result of that agreement without the other’s blessing or involvement.

Federal prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into Uber’s use of software as part of the company’s program known as “Greyball” that helped drivers avoid local regulators.