Sen. Wicker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Senate hearing to reform an internet law and hold tech companies accountable for how they moderate content quickly turned into a political scuffle as lawmakers not only went after the companies but also attacked each other.

Lawmakers are split on ways to hold Big Tech accountable under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – which protects companies from liability over content posted by users but also lets the firms shape political discourse.

Republican lawmakers used most of their time during the hearing to accuse the companies of selective censorship against conservatives. Democrats primarily focused on insufficient action against misinformation that interferes with the election.

In response to a limited number of questions discussing the law, the chief executives of Twitter, Facebook, and Google said it was crucial to free expression on the internet. They said Section 230 gives them the tools to strike a balance between preserving free speech and moderating content, even as they appeared open to suggestions the law needs moderate changes.

All three CEOs also agreed the companies should be held liable if the platforms act as a publisher but denied being the referees over political speech – a claim that angered some Republicans.

Senator Ted Cruz went after Twitter’s Jack Dorsey after the CEO said Twitter has no influence over elections.

“Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear,” Cruz said, referring to the platform’s decision to block stories from the New York Post about the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Ahead of the hearing, the senator released a picture on Twitter titled “Free Speech showdown Cruz vs Dorsey” that showed him and Twitter’s Dorsey pitted against each other.

Democratic Senator Brian Schatz said he did not have any questions, calling the hearing “nonsense”.

“This is bullying and it is for electoral purposes,” he said.

Other Democrats including Tammy Baldwin, Ed Markey and Amy Klobuchar also said the hearing was held to help President Donald Trump’s re-election effort.

Trump, who alleges the companies’ stifle conservative voices, tweeted “Repeal Section 230!” during the hearing.

Twitter’s Dorsey, who drew the most amount of criticism from Republicans, warned the committee that eroding the foundation of Section 230 could significantly hurt how people communicate online. Pichai said Google operates without political bias and that doing otherwise would be against its business interests.

Zuckerberg at today’s hearing.

Zuckerberg, who briefly had difficulty with his internet connection at the start of the hearing, said he supports changing the law but also warned that tech platforms are likely to censor more to avoid legal risks if Section 230 is repealed. Biden has expressed support for revoking the law.

NO MORE “FREE PASS”

Republican Senator Roger Wicker, who chairs the committee, said it was important to shield companies from liability without giving them the ability to censor content they dislike.

“The time has come for that free pass to end,” he said.

Wicker also criticized Twitter’s decision to block the New York Post stories about Biden’s son and Facebook’s move to limit their reach.

He and other senators such as Cory Gardner went after Twitter for not taking down tweets from world leaders that allegedly spread misinformation but going aggressively after Republican President Donald Trump’s tweets.

U.S. lawmakers are not the only ones pushing for reform. The European Union’s executive Commission is drafting a new Digital Services Act that, in addition to tackling market abuses by dominant platforms, would also address liability for harmful or illegal content. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager is due to unveil her proposals on Dec. 2.

Reporting by Nandita Bose and David Shepardson in Washington; Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington and Douglas Busvine in Frankfurt; editing by Kirsten Donovan and Lisa Shumaker

Even with the threat of COVID-19 and a virtual nationwide work-from-home initiative, the new owners of Frontier Communications’ network in Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho are moving rapidly to repair persistent network issues, create a backup network, and lay the foundation to bring fiber to the home service to 85% of its customers over the next three years.

Ziply Fiber of Kirkland, Wash., formerly known as Northwest Fiber, acquired the Frontier Communications service areas in the Pacific Northwest just as Frontier itself was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. It will waste little time upgrading Frontier’s copper wire network to get fiber service to customers fast.

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“After Frontier bought Verizon’s landlines and FiOS networks in Washington and Oregon in 2010, it felt like the last decade was a phone company driving in neutral,” said Dale Prescott, a FiOS customer in Washington State. “You could feel Frontier never wanted to spend any money out here. It was like they were a caretaker of Verizon’s network, and while we got some service improvements here and there, Frontier also took away a lot too.”

Service reliability suffered, especially in areas that remained served by copper over the last decade. Customers reported lengthy outages and waiting times for repairs, and DSL speeds were actually reduced in some areas because deteriorating network infrastructure could no longer support earlier, faster speeds. In a decade of service, Frontier only managed to provide fiber connections to about 33% of its customers, the vast majority of it acquired from Verizon.

“Frontier never invested much in its network, and what it did invest seemed mostly to keep the lines from falling off the poles,” Prescott said. “Businesses got slightly better service when Frontier boosted its fiber capacity, primarily to serve commercial customers. But if you lived in the sticks, your service got worse over time, not better.”

Ziply Fiber plans to change that experience with a promise to regulators to spend about $500 million overhauling Frontier’s network in the region. Most of that spending will be devoted to upgrading customers to fiber optics. Just a few weeks after closing on its acquisition of Frontier landlines, Ziply told residents in 13 communities to expect fiber upgrades that began this spring. The majority long suffered with Frontier DSL, often at speeds as low as 3 Mbps.

Among the first towns to get fiber service are Kellogg, Moscow, and Coeur d’Alene — all in Idaho. Work has already commenced and is expected to be finished by fall. Ziply wants to keep construction costs as low as possible, so it intends to do aerial deployment of fiber by wrapping the optical cable around existing copper wire telephone cables already on the pole. This process, known as “overlashing” will simplify installation by not requiring additional space to place fiber cables next to existing telephone wiring or going to the effort of removing the existing copper wiring, which raises costs.

Overlashing has met with some controversy, however. Telephone companies are strongly in favor of allowing the process for optical fiber installation because they rarely need permission or costly permits from utility pole owners, often electric utilities. Opposition comes primarily from some electric companies, which claim overlashing can make existing installations “unsafe” by placing too much weight on existing wiring, which may have been installed decades earlier. Those electric utilities also stand to make money from forcing companies to seek new permits for placing fiber on poles, and that permission does not come free of charge.

Fiber customers will be able to select internet plans up to 1,000 Mbps. Enhanced DSL service in some areas is available at speeds up to 115 Mbps, but most of these service areas will probably be served by fiber to the home service, eventually.

Ziply Fiber Upgrade Projects (May, 2020)

• Washington—Anacortes, Kennewick, Pullman, Richland and Snohomish
• Oregon—Coquille, Coos Bay, La Grande, North Bend
• Idaho—Coeur d’Alene, Kellogg, Moscow
• Montana—Libby

To further speed fiber upgrades, Ziply acquired Wholesail Networks, already contracted to manage fiber network design for Ziply. Company officials quickly identified multiple weak spots in Frontier’s network, particularly relating to its resiliency when fiber cables were cut or copper wiring was stolen. Ziply is building in network redundancy, with each portion of its network served by at least two sets of fiber cabling and identical equipment in each of more than 130 central switching offices. In many markets, Ziply will maintain at least three redundant fiber connections to make certain if one (or two) networks go down, customers can still be served by a third with no interruption in service.

Ziply is also avoiding the usual nightmares customers experience when switching between one company’s systems to another. Frontier’s customers suffered significantly from a cutover from Verizon’s operations and billing systems, which often left them disconnected or mis-billed. To prevent that from happening again, Ziply literally cloned Frontier’s existing back office systems, so customers won’t experience any “cutover” problems.

Ziply executives have been candid about the network they are acquiring. They told regulators the network was in reasonably good condition in some places, but not all. Ziply promised to fix the network weak spots, resolve customer repair orders at least two-thirds faster than Frontier did, and make comparatively broader investments in network operations. Analysts predict Ziply has a better chance of success than Frontier did, primarily because Frontier’s operations were mired in debt, making new investment in network upkeep and upgrades difficult.

A stray bullet that hit a fiber optic line in late May eventually disrupted Altice/Suddenlink service in eastern North Carolina and caused a minor outage for the Beaufort County 911 Communication Center.

The bullet, recovered by the Washington, N.C. Police Department, damaged the overhead fiber optic line it struck, eventually bringing service down for nearly a day.

Suddenlink first detected the problem on a Saturday in late May, but did not identify the fiber line as “shot” until a day later, at which point WPD officers responded to the scene. The cable company evidently did not start repairs until after a widespread service outage began.

Most of the information about the outage was provided by the local police department, because Suddenlink has not responded to requests for details about the outage’s extent or duration. A police report about the incident shows that there were no calls to 911 to report the shooting, and a suspect has not been identified. The WPD classified the incident as “damage to property.”

The Washington Daily News reports that there was some disruption to the city’s public safety operations.

“911 operations are impacted by any interruption in internet service, but we can operate without it for a short period of time,” Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Charlie Rose told the newspaper. “We may receive notice if there is a planned outage for maintenance. Our service has been slow today, but hasn’t been out completely.”

Frontier Communications is selling its wireline and fiber assets in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington in a $1.35 billion all-cash deal with two private investment firms.

Frontier will continue operating its FiOS and traditional landline networks in the four states until the transaction closes with regulator approval.

The buyers are WaveDivision Capital, a private investment firm run by the founder of Wave Broadband, an independent broadband provider serving the Pacific Northwest and Searchlight Capital Partners, a Wall Street investment firm seeking to “accelerate value creation” for its investors. The new owners plan to launch a new company to service existing Frontier customers and will honor existing contracts and service commitments.

“The sale of these properties reduces Frontier’s debt and strengthens liquidity,” said Dan McCarthy, Frontier’s president and CEO, in a statement. “We are pleased to have a buyer with extensive experience building and operating advanced fiber-based communications assets in these regions. We will be working very closely with the new owners to ensure a smooth, successful transition for our customers and the communities we serve.”

About 150,000 fiber, 150,000 copper and 35,000 fiber video customers are impacted by the sale in the four affected states. Frontier’s service area in the region is made up of large former Verizon service areas, many upgraded to fiber-to-the-home service, and a significant number of rural telephone exchanges operating with traditional copper wire networks. WaveDivision Capital claims it wants to invest in Frontier’s existing network to upgrade service and potentially retire additional copper infrastructure in favor of fiber.

Frontier service areas in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

“We are excited to transition these operations to a local ownership team and to invest in building out the network of next generation fiber throughout our region,” said Steve Weed, CEO of WaveDivision Capital, and founder and former CEO of Wave Broadband. “We are big believers in the Northwest’s future growth opportunities and that future runs on broadband. As the former leaders of another successful Northwest internet provider, Wave Broadband, we know what it takes to bring fiber and other advanced services to residential and business customers, give them choices, and keep them happy.”

Frontier, which has been struggling with a tremendous debt load and underinvestment in its network, sees the sale as a way to improve its balance sheet and cut both debt and expenses. The Pacific Northwest is a difficult region to serve because it is sparsely populated and can be a high cost area because of difficult terrain or long distances between customers. Although Frontier had committed to spending on upgrading its fiber customers, it promised little for its copper wireline customers still relying on low-speed DSL. Weed says his company hopes to change that.

“Our plan is to invest further in our markets, specifically by extending fiber to more homes and businesses, to bring them the high speeds they want,” Weed said in a statement.

Frontier’s Montana operations are in the northwest corner of the state, near the Kootenai National Forest.

The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals by the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), applicable state regulatory agencies, and certain local video franchise authorities where Frontier FiOS operates. Frontier expects little opposition to the deal.

Weed’s involvement in Wave Broadband is no more, but at the time he left the company, Wave had reached 140 cities and towns in Washington, Oregon, and California. Wave was formed in 2003 with a series of strategic acquisitions of “distressed” independent cable systems and those owned by pre-bankruptcy Charter Communications, Northland Communications, and Cedar Communications. In May 2017, Wave Broadband was sold to TPG Capital for $2.36 billion, and today operates under TPG’s leadership with its close cousins RCN and Grande Communications.

Weed has a reputation for successfully deploying fiber networks in a region where capital can be difficult to find and easy returns on investment are rare, so there is considerable good will he will successfully upgrade Frontier service areas that have been neglected for years.

Although the transaction could deliver temporary fiscal relief for Frontier, shareholders remain displeased with the current leadership team at the company, and there are still significant signs Frontier remains in serious financial and operational distress, especially because of its ongoing customer losses. Frontier is likely to be pressured to find other sales opportunities, assuming it can find willing buyers.

Comcast and an independent contractor the cable giant relied on to perform repairs and installations in northern California and Washington have agreed to settle a class action lawsuit on behalf of 4,500 technicians who claimed they were forced to lie about meal breaks they could not actually take and were underpaid $8.7 million dollars.

O.C. Communications of Elk Grove, Calif. and Comcast have jointly agreed to settle the lawsuit with a settlement payment of $7.5 million to provide restitution to thousands of contract technicians who were ordered to lie about their work hours and mandatory break times.

The plaintiffs claimed the contracting firm repeatedly ordered workers to claim meal breaks they were rarely allowed to actually take — forced to continue working at job sites to fulfill an unreasonable work schedule. The plaintiffs also submitted evidence that workers’ time cards were forged or manipulated to undercount work hours and paperwork showing reasonable work-related expenses went unreimbursed.

The plaintiffs claimed they were well on their way to proving O.C. Communications, hired by Comcast, flagrantly violated the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act and state laws governing wages and labor conditions in California and Washington.

“The gross settlement amount of $7,500,000 […] represents more than 86% of the approximate $8.7 million that we calculated in unpaid wages that would have been owed to all class members if each class member had been able to prove that he or she worked 2.5 hours off the clock in every workweek during the relevant time period,” the plaintiffs said.

The lawsuit was dispensed with through an elaborate mediation process involving both O.C. Communications and Comcast.