Reporting

For two days in a row, since returning from President Trump's trip abroad, the White House press secretary has held uncharacteristically short press briefings in which he claimed not to know the answer to questions, outsourced questions to other officials or dismissed the premise of questions entirely. Both briefings included less than 20 minutes for questions -- far less than most prior briefings -- and ended with Spicer abruptly exiting the room to the consternation of reporters. At May 31's briefing, which was off-camera, one reporter could be heard shouting after the departing press secretary, "How short are these gonna be!?"

Christopher Liddell, the White House director of strategic initiatives, was granted a 90-day waiver to conduct White House business while his trust divested assets that were deemed to be in conflict with his new position. Liddell, previously a CFO for Microsoft, has been a go-to on tech policy matters and helps run the newly formed Office of American Innovation. Also granted an ethics waiver is Charles Herndon, the White House information technology director. Prior to joining the administration, Herndon worked for IT contractor CSRA. The waiver will allow Herndon to provide technology services to the White House, though he is barred from participating in work related to a Defense Information Systems Agency contract in which he "participated personally and substantially while an employee of CSRA."

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker is delivering her annual rapid-fire internet trends report. Here’s a first look at the most highly anticipated slide deck in Silicon Valley:
Global smartphone growth is slowing: Smartphone shipments grew 3 percent year over year last year, versus 10 percent the year before. This is in addition to continued slowing internet growth, which Meeker discussed last year.
Voice is beginning to replace typing in online queries. Twenty percent of mobile queries were made via voice in 2016, while accuracy is now about 95 percent.
In 10 years, Netflix went from 0 to more than 30 percent of home entertainment revenue in the U.S. This is happening while TV viewership continues to decline.

President Trump has given at least 16 White House staff members dispensation to work on policy matters they handled while employed as lobbyists or to interact with their former colleagues in private-sector jobs.

The details on these so-called ethics waivers — more than five times the number granted in the first four months of the Obama administration — were made public after an intense dispute between the White House and the Office of Government Ethics, which had been pushing the Trump administration to stop granting such waivers in secret. The list of waivers includes high-profile names such as Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House adviser. They had to be granted waivers because of their prior work with organizations such as the Republican National Committee, which Priebus once ran, and because they continue to have contact with those organizations as part of their White House work. But the waivers granted by the White House are also going to former lobbyists, despite Trump’s campaign vow to try to reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington.

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when President Donald Trump refrained from flamethrowing messages on Twitter. That time is over. Never mind that his aides have asked him to stop. Never mind that now the lawyers have told him to stop. Even though his White House has been warned that tweets could be used as evidence against him, President Trump has made clear in the days after returning from a largely Twitter-free overseas trip that he fully intends to stick to his favorite means of communication. Throughout 2016’s campaign and into the early months of his presidency, the concern among Trump’s advisers was mainly political. Every time the president let loose with one of his 140-character blasts, it distracted from his agenda and touched off a media frenzy that could last for days. But now the worry has turned increasingly legal. With multiple investigations looking at whether the president’s associates collaborated with Russia to influence the election, any random, unfiltered tweet could become part of a legal case.

Data, data, data. Who’s got it? Tech giants like Google and Facebook, who provide a service directly to their users, and then use that data for ad targeting. It’s why they are dominating online advertising today. Who doesn’t? A traditional media giant like Time Warner, which owns brands like HBO and CNN, but which doesn’t have a direct connection with viewers because it sells its channels through a cable provider. That, in essence, is why Time Warner has agreed to sell itself to AT&T — a company that has a direct link with consumers — Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said.

Internet service providers have been among the fiercest critics of the Federal Communications Commission’s two-year-old network neutrality rules aimed at preventing companies like Verizon and Comcast from dictating how fast — or slow — online content can be accessed. That doesn’t mean ISPs oppose network neutrality — they just have a different definition for it, Comcast Senior Executive Vice President David Cohen said during a panel discussion in Washington.

Cohen endorsed the recent FCC move that begins reversing Obama-era rules that classified the internet as a “utility” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. “Getting rid of Title II does not mean getting rid of net neutrality,” Cohen said at Free State Foundation’s telecommunications policy conference. “You can support net neutrality rules, but you don’t have to do that under all of the baggage that comes with Title II.”

Licensed spectrum remains perhaps the most important building block in the wireless industry. As a result, nationwide carriers like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint are eager to both obtain suitable spectrum holdings across the country, and to use those spectrum licenses in the most effective way possible. But where exactly do these nationwide carriers own spectrum? And what type of spectrum do they own? And how much?

To answer these questions, FierceWireless has once again partnered with Allnet Insights & Analytics, a wireless spectrum research and analysis firm, to map out exactly how much spectrum each of the four Tier 1 nationwide US wireless carriers currently owns. Also included in this list is Dish Network, which for the past several years has been quietly accumulating a war chest of spectrum that today almost rivals that of T-Mobile. These maps and charts include all pending spectrum transactions filed before April 30, 2017 (the FCC reviews all license spectrum transactions). Importantly, these maps and charts also include the results of the FCC’s recently completed incentive auction of TV broadcasters’ unwanted 600 MHz licenses. For complete details on the results of that auction, click here. Allnet Insights' data also includes the spectrum AT&T is getting access to through its partnership with FirstNet.

[Commentary] On May 18, I had the privilege of joining a people’s protest outside Federal Communications Commission headquarters in Washington (DC). Inside on that same morning, two intransigent and backward-looking commissioners (they constitute the FCC majority) announced their intention to dismantle the good and court-approved network neutrality rules put in place by the previous FCC. Their intention is to close the open internet. Meanwhile more than 2,000,000 Americans had already contacted the Commission directly, the overwhelming majority seeking to keep the net neutrality rules and guarantee an internet that serves us all rather than kowtow to big cable and bloated telecom. In the May 18 match-up, 2 trumped 2,000,000, and the semi-final proposal was circulated, with final approval likely late this summer or early fall. Unless even more of us get involved.
[Michael Copps served as a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from May 2001 to December 2011 and was the FCC's Acting Chairman from January to June 2009.]

In order to understand what’s happening to the internet today and how we can keep it free and open in the future, we have to consult its past. It’s remarkably hard, however, to find that past in a single narrative thread, with a minimum of legal and technical jargon. That’s what I’ve tried to create with this series, Commission Impossible. Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.