An FCC rulemaking on potential changes to the federal E-rate program has touched a political nerve in a Washington, where the debate takes place against the backdrop of a bigger fight between Republicans and Democrats over entitlement reform. The NPRM, teed up for a vote Friday, builds on a June speech by President Barack Obama urging the commission to make high-speed Internet available to enough schools and libraries to connect 99 percent of American students (CD June 7 p7).
An FCC rulemaking on potential changes to the federal E-rate program has touched a political nerve in a Washington, where the debate takes place against the backdrop of a bigger fight between Republicans and Democrats over entitlement reform. The NPRM, teed up for a vote Friday, builds on a June speech by President Barack Obama urging the commission to make high-speed Internet available to enough schools and libraries to connect 99 percent of American students (WID June 7 p4).
The FCC’s USF suffers from “spectacular abuses,” researchers concluded, provoking protests and dissent. A 54-page report from George Mason University Professor Thomas Hazlett, a former FCC chief economist, and Scott Wallsten, Technology Policy Institute vice president-research, points to billions of dollars in high-cost line subsidies, tying them to what the authors characterize as a history of problems. The FCC defended the fund, pointing to November 2011 reforms, and NTCA and the Western Telecom Alliance attacked the report’s claims.
The question of VoIP provoked sharp disagreement. The RLECs of the Iowa Telecom Association (ITA) do “not believe any of the commenters offered any compelling reasons to alter the Board’s precedent that interconnected VoIP is and should remain subject to certain regulatory requirements,” they said (http://bit.ly/15dzMgh). The Iowa Office of Consumer Advocate (OCA) pushed for certain VoIP regulation, running counter to Verizon, AT&T and the Voice on the Net Coalition. “Since virtually all retail rates have been deregulated in Iowa since 2008, the push for preemption or deregulation of VoIP services must be to free VoIP carriers from regulatory oversight of crucial consumer protections,” the consumer advocate said (http://bit.ly/1b5lZez). It pointed to “enforcement of service quality standards, consumer privacy protections, and access to connection to the entire network” and “carriers’ public safety obligations, including providing reliable access to 911 services” as well as the board’s complaint process. Providers are “at times unresponsive to consumer complaints,” it added.
Stakeholders outlined differing concerns about Iowa’s telecom landscape in reply comments before the Iowa Utilities Board this week. The board is considering how to change the state’s telecom rules, and in January solicited comments and replies in a notice of inquiry. Industry favored less regulation, with strong debates over the details of any Internet Protocol-enabled services regulation, as other stakeholders pointed to consumer concerns.
The push to keep states from regulating Internet Protocol-enabled services goes strong in 2013. Legislators in more than half a dozen states introduced such IP bills this year. More than two dozen states had already passed laws before 2013 began, California prominent among them(WID Oct 2 p4). The IP transition’s urgency escalated when AT&T introduced an FCC petition urging transition trials last November, and it’s widely accepted that much voice traffic will shift to VoIP and IP-enabled frameworks in the next decade amid these transforming state roles. Proponents and observers told us these state laws will keep appearing, while NASUCA and AARP fear they'll create public safety and affordability risks.
The push to keep states from regulating Internet Protocol-enabled services goes strong in 2013. Legislators in more than half a dozen states introduced such IP bills this year. More than two dozen states had already passed laws before 2013 began, California prominent among them (CD Oct 2 p7). The IP transition’s urgency escalated when AT&T introduced an FCC petition urging transition trials last November, and it’s widely accepted that much voice traffic will shift to VoIP and IP-enabled frameworks in the next decade amid these transforming state roles. Proponents and observers told us these state laws will keep appearing, while NASUCA and AARP fear they'll create public safety and affordability risks.
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn spoke alongside several entrepreneurs in a discussion about how to promote innovative technologies and what regulatory structures should oversee them, at a lunch event Wednesday in Washington. In the State of the Union, President Barack Obama talked of jobs and other economic developments tied to “digital opportunity,” said National Coalition on Black Civic Participation President Melanie Campbell. “All of us have to be advocates.” Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter argued that “mobile innovators” flourished even as the recent recession hit and credited “communities of color” with leading the way in smartphone adoption, noting the data of the Pew Research Center on these trends. Clyburn, a former state regulator, discussed developments in the states, including a recent bill in Georgia that would make it “extremely difficult if not impossible” for a community to build its own broadband network, she said. Her home state of North Carolina already moved in that direction with a law in 2011, she said. She contrasted that bill with the broader stated mission of the government to encourage ubiquitous, affordable and high-speed service. House Bill 282 was introduced into the Georgia Legislature last Friday and proposes that any municipal networks, after July 1, “can only offer broadband service to unserved areas” unless they've already been serving census blocks prior to June 30 of this year (http://xrl.us/bogrny). It would give the Georgia Public Service Commission authority to oversee any such municipal networks, to deal with any petitions from municipalities interested in building them and to determine whether areas are unserved. Groups such as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance have asked Georgians to write to legislators objecting (http://xrl.us/bogroe). “The Kansas City examples are incredible,” Clyburn said of Google’s efforts to build gigabit-fiber in Missouri and Kansas. That project involved a company trying to work with local governments effectively and more such examples will follow, she predicted. On a national level, “the USF is how we're attempting to be smarter,” as the president advocated to the country, she said. Panelists emphasized education in furthering broadband adoption and the opportunities out there now. “Our mission is to break down the digital divide through creative and measurable ways,” said Kathryn Finney, founder of the minority-focused digitalUNdivided. CodeNow Executive Director Ryan Seashore described a major change: “I realized coding is the new literacy,” he said. His two-year-old startup focuses on teaching children how to be “builders” rather than merely consumers, he said. Education is important but organizers have to teach young people how to market and monetize the knowledge, said Marvin Dickerson, vice chairman of development for 100 Black Men of America and Dickerson Technologies CEO. He helps run weeklong camps to teach students about robotics and the fundamentals of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Politic365 editor-in-chief Krystal High described broadband as “a huge equalizing factor” in many communities and the importance of health apps: “There’s a huge economic tie to lack of adequate healthcare,” she said of their benefits to some users. “Mobile is everything to my business,” said Janine Hausif, responsible for an app that identifies black-owned businesses. Overly high wireless taxes and the need for more spectrum are key regulatory concerns, said High. Not only is broadband adoption important but a sense of broadband ownership and the need to make tech issues sexy in competing for attention with Beyoncé and Honey Boo Boo, she said: “You have to start speaking in the language that people care about.” Communities need Internet access “at their doorstep,” Dickerson said. Think of broadband as a utility, advised Finney, pointing to what she judged to be positive examples in the Kansas City area and in Chattanooga, Tenn. The world of tech and telecom needs to be fully inclusive and perhaps look to a new “evaluation matrix,” Clyburn said. Other panelists run good programs for fostering broadband adoption for young people but that’s only half the battle “if you don’t hire them,” she said of companies. She worried about the consequences of “lost opportunities” and encouraged seizing on innovation, mentioning a teen pancreatic cancer researcher who attended the State of the Union: “Are we doing all we can to be inclusive?”
The FCC’s November 2011 USF order reflected the goals in President Barack Obama’s Tuesday State of the Union address, said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn at a lunch event Wednesday in Washington. The president’s message, as Clyburn interpreted it, was “we need to do things smarter” and “more with less,” making use of coalitions, partnerships and more, she said. She framed the FCC’s actions in recent years as emblematic of this approach. At the event, hosted by Mobile Future, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and the National Association of Neighborhoods, she spoke alongside several entrepreneurs in a discussion about how to promote innovative technologies and what regulatory structures should oversee them.
Major changes in the U.S. telecom marketplace in the 15 years since passage of the 1996 Telecom Act highlight the need for reforms to that legislation, said Free State Foundation President Randolph May Wednesday during an event. The pro-deregulation think tank was promoting its new book, Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age, which focuses on how U.S. telecom law and policy should change over the next five years. Reforms should reflect changes to the marketplace since 1996 -- the switch from analog to digital, the switch from narrow-band to broadband networks and the switch from a mostly monopolistic marketplace to one that’s highly competitive, May said. “Those changes call for a new communications law, and certainly, absent waiting for the new law, changes in the direction of communications policy,” he said.