More Data, Coordination, Consumer Education and Community Outreach Sought to Trim Digital Divide

Speakers cited Comcast's experience with Internet Essentials, now in about 1 million households, which melds cheap prices with providing digital literacy training and working with community groups on outreach. They said this means showing those without service why it's important, how to use it and how those they know and trust are benefiting, and can involve local intermediaries who target a less-connected population. The so-called network effect -- where the more that people one knows use a social network, the more valuable it is -- was cited. "A big barrier to adoption" is trust by someone not online of those advocating they get net service, said TPI Senior Fellow John Horrigan. "If they hear from someone in the community they trust, that really makes a difference."

Access in rural areas to broadband with speeds of at least 25 Mbps increased about 37 percentage points since 2011 to 72 percent, according to FCC data, so rural areas are catching up, said Comcast Vice President-Global Public Policy Madura Wijewardena: "The free market has been delivering, and it's not like there is stagnation or there is a decline ... during a very, very deep recession" like last decade. Comcast's IE program took about six years to get to current subscriber levels, showing that digital divide solutions take time, Wijewardena and others noted. There are "many, many other structural issues" with poverty, and what works is "to not just ram it down people's throats" but to address cheap service, training and devices, he said. "There is no grand idea, there is no turnkey solution."

A "holistic" approach is needed, speakers said. "A low-cost solution is not going to do it alone," Wijewardena said. The cable executive, Brookings Institution Center for Technology Innovation Governance Studies Fellow Nicol Turner-Lee and an audience questioner agreed that having a sociological understanding of affected populations is needed. "The regular sort of marketing does not work," so "make it more relevant to people," Wijewardena said. "There are many ways of addressing this."

All panelists generally praised recent FCC actions on funding broadband buildouts, with some comparing them favorably with past steps. Commission competition for subsidies "has been a remarkable improvement," and some past efforts may have wasted money, said professor Mark Jamison of the University of Florida's Public Utility Research Center. He said there's a paucity of past efforts to gauge the cost-effectiveness and analyze the costs and benefits of other digital divide efforts.

While government can't build broadband networks, it can play an organizing and/or educational role, in addition to subsidizing ISPs of all types -- not just traditional telcos -- building out to unserved areas, speakers suggested. Here, too, the private sector has a role, panelists generally agreed. Turner-Lee sought an inventory of where "best practices" are happening. She would "love to see a national map that shows where these programs are operating" and where they aren't, to "put together a toolkit that allows us to move away from duplication of services."

"It really takes a village" in terms of different technologies and approaches, said an executive at the No. 1 U.S. wireless ISP, which has received some FCC funds for such efforts. "It's really not a one-size-fits-all," said Chief Development Officer Jeff Kohler of Rise Broadband, part of JAB Broadband. He appreciates that the agency is looking at alternative technologies, not just price-cap carriers: "They've got a fresh set of eyes working there and I think that's really going to help solve that problem."

TPI Notebook

FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly and others on a TPI panel said they're wary of other countries asserting too much control over the internet and its governance, and nations' actions within their borders on data localization and other issues can affect web traffic worldwide. O'Rielly suggested Tuesday that U.S. involvement in multistakeholder, multicountry entities can be good, as other countries ramp up their participation while at home sometimes cracking down on online expression. He and experts cited the ITU and ICANN, the latter of which went through transition away from NTIA involvement in a switch of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority authority from ICANN and drew concern from O'Rielly. "I have deep concerns about international organizations being involved in internet operations," O'Rielly said. Issues involving ICANN "may play out for years to come" and "you're seeing government involve themselves in greater control." ICANN didn't have a comment on his remarks, referring us to previous talking points. (See below in this report.) If the U.S. is to have a role in international groups, O'Rielly said, citing involvement with the ITU on international spectrum harmonization, "we must change our approach and our involvement." He said the Obama administration made some mistakes by underparticipation in such bodies. At the ITU, "we should be part of its management, we should be making decisions at the highest level," if one believes the U.S. should be more involved, the commissioner said. "The last administration sort of took a back seat for a number of reasons on these matters," he said. "Are we going to go forward in an aggressive, active role or are we going to back away?" He said the U.S. has an important role. International Trade Commissioner Meredith Broadbent sees parallels between trade and digital governance. In trade, governments have a role, balanced with nondiscriminatory least-trade-restrictive solutions, she noted. "The two worlds could probably learn a lot from each other," she said of international trade and internet issues. A professor and executives from Deutsche Telekom and Google also expressed fears about other countries' net policies.

An internal FCC group looking at how to create an economics office sought by Chairman Ajit Pai may wrap up its work this summer, a participant told us in response to our question from the audience at another TPI panel. At that point, the group would provide Pai recommendations, said group leader and FCC Office of Strategic Planning Chief Wayne Leighton. Then, Pai, "obviously reaching out to the other commissioners," will decide how to proceed, the aide told us. "There is a process whereby the chairman would reach out to the relevant committees on the Hill." On our question about when the economics office might begin operations, he said "it would be reasonable to expect that maybe toward the end of this year or the beginning of next year, the commission maybe would be in a position to take some action." Pai's goals would include using economics more in FCC decision-making, as the chairman has publicly sought, Leighton said. One slide shown during earlier remarks said: "Pai Speech (April 2017): Creation of Economics Office and Commitment for Greater Use of Economic Analysis to Inform Rulemakings -- Principles are Not New, but Commitment to Structural Reforms to Increase Independence of Economic Analysis" is. "We want to understand the consequences" of regulatory actions 'before we do it, not after we do it," FCC Chief Economist Jerry Ellig said on the panel. Also sought, he said: "some kind of assessment of what's the problem we're trying to solve," and ways to solve it.

The IANA transition proposal that drew concern at TPI didn't call for increasing "the role of governments over the Internet or ICANN as an organization," said the nonprofit's FAQs on the switchover, to which a spokesman referred us for comment: "There will be times where the ICANN Board must give special consideration to the public policy advice of governments. However, this will only happen when there is no objection from any government in the committee" and is "a stricter requirement than is currently in place."