The Senate Communications Subcommittee will take a swing in the months ahead at a Communications Act overhaul, FCC oversight and making more spectrum available, Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said Tuesday at Comptel’s Washington summit. He emphasized the FCC’s responsibility “to encourage expansion of rural broadband” and cited a letter he wrote the agency last year to make sure rural consumers receive access to Mobility Fund II support.
Despite FCC discussions about adding broadband to Lifeline, "there should be adequate controls and deterrents in place before considering a revamp of the program,” Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said in a blog post Friday. There's a “legitimate debate whether the Lifeline program should be abolished or significantly scaled back rather than expanding its mission,” he said. O’Rielly proposed a number of principles in examining the program. Lifeline should have a budget, he said, saying it’s the only USF program without one. If broadband is expanded, the reimbursement rate shouldn’t be increased to pay for it, he wrote. The commission should decide what services should be supported, he said. To prevent “double-dipping,” a household should be able to get a subsidy for a voice plan or a combined plan with voice and broadband, but shouldn't be able to get subsidies for both, he wrote. O’Rielly also proposed tightening eligibility requirements, requiring financial contributions from recipients and making carrier involvement voluntary.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai disputed Chairman Tom Wheeler’s claims that the net neutrality draft order wouldn't result in rate regulation as “flat-out false.” Pai also assailed Wheeler at a Tuesday news conference and in a fact sheet for not making the document public before the commission’s scheduled Feb. 26 vote. Saying he was “correcting the record” and last week’s “carefully stage-managed rollout” of the draft order (see 1502040055), Pai highlighted what he said are some previously undisclosed aspects of the order that made it “worse than what I imagined.” Among them, Pai said data usage plans would “now be subject to regulation."
The FCC assertion that Chairman Tom Wheeler’s draft net neutrality order would impose no taxes or fees was disputed Friday by Commissioner Ajit Pai, who claimed in a statement it “explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband.” An economist also claimed in a Forbes op-ed that the plan would lead to at least $500 million in federal fees and potentially more in state charges. An FCC spokesman Friday stood by a Wednesday fact sheet’s assertion, telling us the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) applies to broadband, even at the state and federal level.
Proposed new net neutrality rules based on classifying the Internet as a Title II utility under the Communications Act look like they'll disproportionately burden smaller cable operators and leave cable ISPs open to blocking by leaving out edge providers and content companies, officials at several cable companies and American Cable Association President Matt Polka said in interviews Wednesday. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler indicated in unveiling some details of the draft net neutrality order that day that forbearance will relieve many of the more burdensome aspects of Title II regulation (see 1502040055). But Polka said that might not immediately alleviate the rule's effect on cable operators. It also remains unclear how Title II rules will affect satellite broadband providers, industry officials said.
The FCC portrayed the reclassification of broadband in Chairman Tom Wheeler’s net neutrality proposal as a modernized Title II. But pledges from senior agency officials not to impose traditional Communications Act common-carriage regulations like rate regulation didn't ease the concerns of reclassification’s opponents.
The FCC’s FY 2016 budget proposal provides additional details on commission plans to move or “restack” agency headquarters and a move to modernize its IT system, which was pushed beyond the breaking point when net neutrality comments flooded into the agency last year. The FCC also proposed to trim 45 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees between FY 2014 and 2016, with only the Office of Inspector General (IG) seeing an increase. The FCC would have its smallest staff in decades, at 1,671, under the proposal. The commission's own budget document provides much more detail than the larger administration budget released Monday (see 1502020051).
Though widely considered to be a likely supporter of the Communications Act Title II net neutrality approach FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is expected to unveil later this week, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said in an interview that she wants to make sure “everyone is able to point to something in the order that benefits them.” By that, Clyburn, who acknowledged she backed Title II in the 2010 net neutrality order, said she doesn’t want only the “well-heeled” to benefit, and wants the commission to maintain a regulatory backstop if needed. She also doesn't want to damage the continued deployment of broadband, Clyburn told us Friday.
The FCC raised to 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload the standard for determining whether broadband is being sufficiently deployed around the country Thursday, over objections of Republican commissioners and ISPs. The 3-2 vote had been expected (see 1501280056). The commission accepted the conclusion in the agency’s broadband progress report that, under the new standard, broadband is not being deployed in a reasonable or timely fashion. That finding requires the agency to take “immediate” steps to improve deployment under the Telecommunications Act's Section 706. A separate party-line 3-2 vote approved a notice of inquiry seeking ideas on how to improve broadband deployment.
Expected FCC approval Thursday of a higher speed standard for broadband was portrayed by cable and telco ISPs as a power grab. But public interest groups were hailing the likely passage of the 25 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload standard as an attempt to more accurately reflect expectations around broadband speeds that could also push the cable industry to reach the 100 Mbps download speeds envisioned in the FCC National Broadband Plan. The vote, approving the higher standard along with the issuance of a notice of inquiry on how to promote broadband deployment, is widely expected to be along party lines.