The FCC is likely to delay for up to two years a massive $9 billion subsidy program that will provide 5G wireless service in rural America because the agency’s broadband coverage maps are too flawed to credibly determine where the money is needed.

The delay is just the latest in a series of speed bumps that have slowed down rural wireless service expansion, hampered mostly by service coverage maps that typically over-promise service that just doesn’t exist in many areas.

A revised subsidy program would double the funds available for rural wireless service, but delay projects at least 18-24 months, with the first awards granted sometime in late 2022.

The wireless subsidy program is designed to enhance rural wireless/mobile coverage across the United States. The FCC estimates about 83% of rural America is currently covered by 4G LTE service providing an average of 10/3 Mbps. In urban and suburban communities, 97% of areas have 4G coverage and often at faster speeds. Small, independent wireless carriers have popped up to serve rural states and regions that have been ignored by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, but coverage gaps still remain far from well-traveled interstate highways or in mountainous regions. Carriers have typically considered those areas unprofitable to serve, failing Return On Investment formulas that expect investments to pay off within a certain number of years. Wireless subsidies cover a portion of the cost to build and operate unprofitable rural cell towers, coaxing wireless companies to be more willing to expand coverage.

The ongoing problem of wireless coverage accuracy has had a direct impact on rural funding programs that have rules forbidding spending in areas that already have coverage. Wireless companies with overeager marketing departments have routinely issued coverage maps claiming solid 4G LTE coverage in areas where many claim it doesn’t exist. The conflict over accurate coverage maps became so contentious, the FCC canceled plans to spend billions on wireless subsidies in late 2019 until more accurate coverage maps could be created.

Next week the FCC plans a vote to authorize the new $9 billion subsidy program, but funds will likely be held until wireless companies can prove their coverage claims and update coverage information so the FCC can pinpoint areas that can qualify for the funds.

“This approach won’t be the fastest possible path,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wrote. “But it will allow us to identify with greater precision those areas of the country where support is most needed.”

Pai’s parting gift

Fearing the potential of Joe Biden replacing Donald Trump as president in next month’s election, Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai will ram through a final vote to kill net neutrality while Republicans still have a majority on the Commission.

At the final commissioners’ meeting on Oct. 27, just days before the U.S. election, Pai intends to take up net neutrality once again, primarily to deal with a demand by the D.C. Court of Appeals to address outstanding issues that came up when Republicans rescinded net neutrality rules that were put in place by the FCC under the Obama Administration. To drive the final stake into the heart of a free and open internet, Pai plans to quickly dismiss three issues of concern to the Court:

• how net neutrality impacts public safety;
• if it affected how the FCC deals with pole attachment regulation;
• if it hurts the FCC Lifeline program’s ability to offer broadband to low-income Americans.

In Pai’s view, these are basically non-issues of concern and he intends to bring the matter before the Commission for a widely predicted party-line vote affirming the death of net neutrality policies under the Trump Administration.

Pai took to Medium.com to write a smug and condescending editorial about why the pro-corporate deregulation policies he and his Republican colleagues have supported over the last four years have made American broadband great again. He called net neutrality supporters a bunch of “Washington politicians, far-left special-interest groups, Hollywood stars, and Silicon Valley tech giants.” He blasted the media for “scaring the American people” about what would happen after Trump’s FCC killed the open internet order. He also claimed defeating net neutrality would lead to a renaissance of new investment in broadband.

In fact, many broadband providers elected to curtail investment even before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. Charter, Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon have all reduced investment in residential wired broadband services, in part because of a lack of competitive marketplace. Pai, a former lawyer for Verizon, has spent the last four years making life very comfortable for the country’s largest internet service providers. He eliminated mandated competition in set-top boxes, did nothing to stop data caps, eliminated net neutrality protections, and helped enact new rules allowing mobile providers to place future cell towers and other equipment in places that have never been acceptable before.

Most broadband providers today only compete on price for new customers. Once those promotions expire, customers face punishing bills. Internet pricing drew renewed scrutiny during the early days of the pandemic when schools and employers moved to at-home study and work. Many found internet pricing of $70+ a month unaffordable, while other suburban and exurban employees discovered they could not get suitably fast internet service at any price.

Pai’s tenure as chairman has been four years of smug arrogance and a complete disinterest in the input of consumers. Millions have told the FCC to leave net neutrality policies in place. Pai and his Republican colleagues ignored them. The Republican commissioners have delivered speeches at some of the most partisan right-wing groups imaginable, but won’t respond to ordinary Americans looking for actual evidence of competition and consumer protection. For much of this year, Pai’s two Republican colleagues have spent much of their time on Twitter pursuing their own agendas. Commissioner O’Rielly has made closing down low power community pirate radio stations his obsession. At least that is covered under the FCC’s mandate. Commissioner Carr has spent his time on Twitter complaining about people being mean to President Trump on social media, his obsession with China and freedom of speech, and his suspicions about the World Health Organization (WHO).

This final attempt to destroy net neutrality just before the election is the ultimate insult, one that Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel fumed about:

“This is crazy. The internet should be open and available for all. That’s what net neutrality is about. It’s why people from across this country rose up to voice their frustration and anger with the Federal Communications Commission when it decided to ignore their wishes and roll back net neutrality. Now the courts have asked us for a do-over. But instead of taking this opportunity to right what this agency got wrong, we are going to double down on our mistake.”

“The FCC is going to make it easier for broadband companies to block websites, slow speeds, and dictate what we can do and where we can go online. It’s insane that this is happening now, during a pandemic when we rely on internet access for so much of day-to-day life. It’s also cruel that this is our priority when this crisis has exposed just how vast our digital divide is and how much more work we have to do for broadband to reach 100% of us—no matter who we are or where we live.”

Simington

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump, pressing for new social media regulations, plans to nominate a senior administration official to be a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the White House said on Tuesday.

The nomination of Nathan Simington, a senior adviser at the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), comes after the White House abruptly announced in early August it was withdrawing the nomination of Republican FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly to serve another term.

Trump issued an executive order in May requiring the NTIA to petition the FCC asking the commission to impose new regulations on social media moderation practices after Twitter Inc warned readers to fact-check his posts about unsubstantiated allegations of fraud in mail-in voting.

Simington helped draft the May executive order, the Washington Post reported.

By contrast, O’Rielly expressed skepticism about whether the FCC had authority to issue new regulations covering social media companies. In July, he said the “the First Amendment protects us from limits on speech imposed by the government – not private actors – and we should all reject demands, in the name of the First Amendment, for private actors to curate or publish speech in a certain way.”

O’Rielly, who has not commented on the White House withdrawal of his name, congratulated Simington Tuesday in a Twitter post on his nomination “and offer best wishes for a smooth confirmation process and successful term.”

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai opened NTIA’s petition to public comment. The comment period expires this week. He has declined to comment on its merits.

A group representing major internet companies including Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc urged the FCC to reject the petition, saying the effort “is misguided, lacks grounding in law, and poses serious public policy concerns.”

NTIA asked the FCC to limit protections for social media companies under Section 230, a provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users and allows them to remove lawful but objectionable posts.

Reporting by David Shepardson and Eric Beech; Editing by Peter Cooney and Christopher Cushing

The Federal Communications Commission has announced a new updated version of its FCC Speed Test app, helping consumers evaluate their internet connection while also sharing performance data with the Commission.

The new version is designed with more accurate measurements of users’ mobile internet connections in mind, including emerging 5G services.

“This new and improved app is an important tool that will empower consumers to collect information about the services they are receiving,” said Monisha Ghosh, the FCC’s chief technology officer. “These improvements will build on the success of this effort over the years and help the FCC bridge the digital divide.”

Versions are available for iOS in the Apple App Store and Android in the Google Play Store.

Users running the app will be able to check upload and download speed, network latency, packet loss, and jitter on both wired and wireless networks. Results are shared anonymously with the FCC, which compiles network performance data as part of an agency mandate, the Measuring Broadband America program. That program reports whether the nation’s service providers are delivering internet speeds that match their advertising claims.

President Trump

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Commerce Department agency on Monday petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to reinterpret a 1996 law to require transparency in how social media companies moderate content, after President Donald Trump asked it to intervene in the matter.

Trump directed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to file the petition after Twitter in May warned readers to fact-check his posts about unsubstantiated claims of fraud in mail-in voting.

Trump’s executive order asked the NTIA to petition the FCC to write regulations stemming from Section 230, a provision of the Communications Decency Act that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users and allows them to remove lawful but objectionable posts.

The NTIA said in Monday’s petition it wants the FCC to require social media firms to “publicly disclose accurate information regarding its content-management mechanisms” to “enable users to make more informed choices about competitive alternatives.”

Trump, a Republican who is running for re-election on Nov. 3, has repeatedly expressed anger at social media companies. On Monday, he said Twitter’s trending topics feature was unfair.

“They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend,” he wrote.

So disgusting to watch Twitter’s so-called “Trending”, where sooo many trends are about me, and never a good one. They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend. Really ridiculous, illegal, and, of course, very unfair!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2020

Both Democratic commissioners on the five-member FCC said the commission should quickly reject the petition.

“The FCC shouldn’t take this bait. While social media can be frustrating, turning this agency into the President’s speech police is not the answer,” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said in a written statement.

Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr said the “petition provides an opportunity to bring much-needed clarity to the statutory text.”

Twitter has called Trump’s executive order “a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law.”

A spokesman for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who has said in the past he does not see a role for the FCC to regulate websites like Twitter, Facebook or Alphabet’s Google, said on Monday the agency “will carefully review the petition.”

The FCC could take a year or longer to finalize any rules.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a Georgetown University lecturer, said Trump was on shaky legal ground.

“The FCC has no authority to interpret Section 230, and even if it did, the rule that Trump wants is utterly incompatible with the plain language of the statute,” he said.

Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Sandra Maler and Sonya Hepinstall