Reporting

The rules of broadband are changing, and local governments want a say in how they evolve.

In an ex parte filing l with the Federal Communications Commission, several municipal officials, along with a representative of the National League of Cities, outlined a recent meeting with FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and a member of her legal staff. The city officials voiced their concern that the newly-formed Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) is lacking in representation from local municipal governments, and that industry executives and advisors make up an overwhelming proportion of the committee's membership. According to the letter, the officials "encouraged the Commission to work in the direction of partnership with, rather than preemption of, local officials, who share the Commission's goal of closing the digital divide."

The National League of Cities notes that more local representatives have been appointed to BDAC working groups of late, but the organization argues that working group participation isn't enough and that the Commission should "increase the number and diversity of local officials on the BDAC to a level comparable with the number and diversity of industry officials."

In the summer of 2016, American spies collected information revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald Trump through his advisers, according to three current and former American officials familiar with the intelligence. The conversations focused on Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman at the time, and Michael Flynn, a retired general who was advising Trump, the officials said. Both men had indirect ties to Russian officials, who appeared confident that each could be used to help shape Trump’s opinions on Russia.

Some Russians boasted about how well they knew Gen Flynn. Others discussed leveraging their ties to Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine living in exile in Russia, who at one time had worked closely with Manafort. The intelligence was among the clues — which also included information about direct communications between Trump’s advisers and Russian officials — that American officials received in 2016 as they began investigating Russian attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of Trump’s associates were assisting Moscow in the effort. Details of the conversations, some of which have not been previously reported, add to an increasing understanding of the alarm inside the American government about the Russian disruption campaign.

Approximately 140,000+ rural homes across four states -- West Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee -- have improved broadband access, due in part to Frontier and the Federal Communications Commission’s Connect America Fund (CAF) investments. Impacted states include. With 134,000 homes, West Virginia saw the bulk of these broadband improvements. The CAF directly funded new broadband expansion to 16,900 homes there, with an additional 117,000 households seeing improved broadband capability.

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) offered a head-slapping defense of a conspiracy theory he touted on CNN: It was something that he’d seen on the Internet.

Rep Farenthold was suggesting that questions about any link between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian actors was “deflecting away from some other things that we need to be investigating in.” “There’s still some question,” he said, “as to whether the intrusion at the server was an insider job or whether or not it was the Russians.” CNN’s John Berman interrupted. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The insider job — what are you referring to here? I hope it’s not this information that Fox News just refused to be reporting.” “Again, there’s stuff circulating on the Internet,” Rep Farenthold said. Co-host Poppy Harlow asked if it was responsible to cite Internet rumors as a rationale to launch a congressional investigation. Rep Farenthold replied that the media sometimes relied on anonymous sources for its reporting — so therefore it was.

Sen John McCain (R-AZ) says the media is frequently "ambushing" lawmakers, decrying the “30-second news cycles” created by social media.

"We are in almost a media frenzy. There are large numbers of reporters, cameras, microphones waiting as you go to vote," Sen McCain said. He added that reporters "are all waiting and ambushing for something that’s quotable." Sen McCain said he's "not a critic of the media," though he does “hate them." He said he sometimes gets himself into trouble because he is not careful when speaking to the press. Sen McCain also warned internet users to beware of fake online news stories, referring to a conspiracy theory about a DC-based pizza shop running a child sex trafficking ring. “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet. Check it out before you believe it,” Sen McCain added.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Restoring Internet Freedom notice of proposed rulemaking states: “Whether posting on social media or drafting a blog, a broadband Internet user is able to generate and make available information online. Whether reading a newspaper’s website or browsing the results from a search engine, a broadband Internet user is able to acquire and retrieve information online… In short, broadband Internet access service appears to offer its users the “capability” to perform each and every one of the functions listed in the definition — and accordingly appears to be an information service by the definition. We seek comment on analysis.”

Let’s just run down the obvious objections:

• First, most broadband providers simply don’t offer the services listed.
• Second, broadband providers often aren’t even aware what information they are transmitting, because it is encrypted.
• Third, most services that are in fact offered by the ISP, such as DNS lookup, error pages, caching and routing, all have to do with reasonable network management — the work of getting packets from one place to another properly.

Not all small broadband Internet access service providers are on board with the idea of repealing current net neutrality protections.

Dane Jasper, the CEO of Sonic, a large, independent ISP in California, said “incumbents will have a real advantage over new market entrants in the internet marketplace" if current rules are changed, which would create “a duopoly where consumers have only one or two choices when selecting an Internet provider as a result.” Jasper said the reclassification of ISPs as common carriers under Title II “has not impacted Sonic’s investment in infrastructure or our ability to serve customers.” “Only bigger carriers have enough subscribers to force content providers to pay additional fees,” Jasper said, “which is why these bigger carriers support the roll back of net neutrality regulations, while smaller ISPs support rules in favor of an open Internet.”

Service providers aren’t the only type of business to take into account when considering the effects of net neutrality. Edge providers — including websites, internet services, content providers — are all equally affected by how the internet is regulated. More than 1,000 such companies have signed on to an open letter to the FCC encouraging the commission to keep intact the Title II classification. The letter includes signatures from startups, investors and entrepreneurial support organizations in all 50 states.

Daryl Parks, the attorney representing "Cleveland Broadband Consumers" claiming AT&T is "redlining" service in Cleveland and elsewhere, is pledging to open a multi-front legal attack on the company, including raising questions about its fitness for the multi-billion-dollar contract to manage FirstNet.

AT&T has said it does not redline and continues to invest in wired and wireless broadband in Cleveland and elsewhere, but Parks is not persuaded. Parks has sent a letter to AT&T and its board warning that "in the near future" he plans to certify a class for a class action lawsuit, bring a formal redlining complaint at the FCC, and "raise with the nation’s governors the issue of AT&T’s suitability to manage the emergency communications service FirstNet, given the urgency of providing service to low-income communities by first responders in disasters such as Hurricanes Andrew, Katrina and Sandy."

Cable news, as a medium, is careening toward a defining moment that could transform it significantly or return it to the status quo of the past decade.

Several key questions could be answered in the near future. Will Fox News stabilize and return to dominance, or will a conservative rival snag Bill O'Reilly and maybe even Sean Hannity and become a viable competitor? Hannity has said on Twitter that he is under contract for the next four years, but he, like other Fox News stars, is widely reported to have a “key man clause” in the deal. That would allow him to leave early in the event of an exit by a “key man,” such as Shine or former chairman Roger Ailes. Could a Fox News disrupter come from the left instead of the right? Networks and the big-name personalities that fill their air have some major decisions to make — ones that will go a long way toward determining whether the future of cable news looks familiar or radically different.

What exactly is the web?

It seems like a stupid question because we all know the answer: the web is the thing Tim Berners-Lee invented in 1989. It's not the same thing as "the internet," which is what we use to access the web, apps, and streaming video. It's what we visit every day with our web browsers on our phones and laptops. Simple, right? Well, no. Traditionally, we think of the web as a combination of a set of specific technologies paired with some core philosophical principles. The problem — the reason this question even matters — is that there are a lot of potential replacements for the parts of the web that fix what's broken with technology, while undermining the principles that ought to go with it. The tech you think of as "the web" is HTML, Javascript, and CSS. (For simplicity, I'll just refer to it at the "HTML stack.") Those technologies are so open and flexible that they've taken over the world. That very flexibility also means that they've been abused, slowing down the mobile web with trackers that invade our privacy and deplete our batteries. So a lot of tech companies are flailing around looking for ways to fix this problem.