In one of his last appearances as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai decided to stick to the FCC’s 6-year-old broadband standard of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds.
The decision was announced yesterday in the FCC’s annual report on broadband distribution, which was released one day before Pai’s departure from the FCC. As in all previous years of Pai’s presidency, the report concludes that the telecommunications industry is doing enough to expand broadband access to all Americans – despite the fact that FCC Democrats said the facts do not support that conclusion.
Pai’s report reads:
We find that the current speed measure of 25/3 Mbps is an appropriate measure to determine whether a fixed service offers advanced telecommunication capability. We conclude that fixed services with speeds of 25/3 Mbps still meet the legal definition of advanced telecommunications capability; that is, “enable such services”[] users to receive and receive high quality voice, data, graphics and video telecommunications. “
Under U.S. law, the FCC must annually determine whether “advanced telecommunications capabilities are deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely manner” and “take immediate action to accelerate deployment” and promote competition if the current deployment fails. ” reasonable and timely. ‘Maintaining the 25 / 3Mbps standard for home internet services, which has not changed since January 2015, makes it easier for Pai to give the telecommunications industry and FCC a pass rate on the annual report. In Pai’s annual reports, the deployment of mobile internet was evaluated at different speeds, but he did not adopt a speed measure to determine whether a mobile service was ‘advanced’.
FCC Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel, who could be the next chair of the commission, has repeatedly argued that the FCC should adopt a benchmark for higher-speed Internet services. “With so many of our country’s providers deploying gigabit service, it’s time for the FCC to adjust its baseline upwards as well,” she said last year, calling for a download standard of 100 Mbps and a upload standard which is higher than 3 Mbps.
“Right now, our default is 3 megabits per second,” she said. “But this asymmetric approach is dated. We need to realize that with extraordinary changes in data processing and cloud storage, recharge speeds need to be reconsidered.”
Pai: ISPs do enough despite rural gaps
The report released yesterday concluded that ‘advanced telecommunications capabilities are being deployed on a reasonable and timely basis’ and that the’ gap between rural and urban areas is rapidly closing; the gap between the percentage of urban Americans and the percentage of rural Americans with access to 25 / 3Mbps fixed broadband has almost halved and dropped from 30 points at the end of 2016 to just 16 points at the end of 2019. “
In a press release, Pai played his alleged role in expanding broadband access, saying, “From my first day as chairman, the FCC’s top priority is to close the digital divide.” In addition to expanding home Internet services, he pointed to FCC data that showed that “at the end of 2019, 5G service offered about 60 percent of Americans 5G services, a figure that is significantly higher today.”
Pai also unveiled today a list of what he sees as achievements as FCC chairman, including ‘Restoring Internet Freedom’ – his phrase to deregulate the broadband industry and eliminate rules of net neutrality.
Pai’s victory rounds are ‘shameful’
FCC Democrats objected to Pai having to finalize the broadband deployment report yesterday instead of passing the task to Biden’s government.
“For the past two years, I have denied that the unjustified victory rounds look like these reports,” FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said. “Now – as tens of millions of Americans are unable to access online school, work and health care during the pandemic – it’s uncomfortable to knock on our backs.”
Despite Pai’s rosy conclusions – and the inaccuracy of FCC data, which tends to undercut Americans without broadband access – the report provides evidence to support Starks’ concerns about the continuing digital divide. At the end of 2019, only 4.4 percent of Americans live in areas without access to 25 / 3Mbps home Internet services, but the data for rural and tribal areas paint a much uglier picture. With 25 / 3Mbps home internet speed, there is no coverage for 17.3 percent of rural areas and no coverage for 20.9 percent of tribal areas. Overall, there are about 65 million people in rural areas in FCC data and about 4 million people in tribal areas.
Nearly 99 percent of urban areas had access to 25 / 3Mbps, and 95 percent of urban areas had access to even 250 / 25Mbps. But only 66.8 percent of rural areas and 63.7 percent of tribal areas had access to 100 / 10Mbps speeds, while 55.6 percent of rural areas and 49.6 percent of tribal areas had access to 100 / 10Mbps speeds :
This data is based on census blocks and counts an entire census block as served, even if only one house in the census block can be serviced. Pai’s FCC has begun collecting geospatial data from ISPs to improve accuracy, but the task will be completed among whom President Biden prefers to serve as FCC chairman.
Evidence that Pai contradicts is ‘all around us’
Rosenworcel said that Pai’s report obscures “the hard truth that the digital divide is very real and very large”, and that it confuses logic that today the FCC decides to release a report that states that broadband is deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely manner. ‘
The evidence that contradicts Pai’s conclusions is ‘all around us’, Rosenworcel continued:
There are people sitting in parking lots who use free Wi-Fi signals because they have no other way to get online. There are students who fall into the homework gap because they do not need the speed service to participate in distance education. There are mayors in towns across the country who want better broadband so that their communities have a good chance of succeeding in the digital age.
When Biden defeated Trump in the election, the Congress Democrats called on Pai to follow up on the use of the previous work to stop “work on all biased, controversial items” during the transition period. Pai never committed himself to that – although he had taken the opposite view four years earlier when then-President Tom Wheeler complied with an equal request from Congress Republicans.
Starks argued that yesterday’s report was too controversial to be approved when the FCC was about to change from Republicans to Democrats. Starks said:
I am obliged to note that this report should not have appeared at all. After the November election, congressional leaders wrote to President Pai demanding that the Commission suspend work on all biased and controversial items during the presidential transition. This item is both.
Chairman Pai nonetheless wanted to withdraw the report as I and Commissioner Rosenworcel requested. Its rationale – that the report has no legal meaning – is apparently in line with the Telecommunications Act, which commands the commission to take ‘immediate action’ if it stipulates that advanced telecommunications capabilities are not deployed to all Americans on a reasonable and timely basis. The determination had to be left to the next administration, which could address the question before the legal deadline.
“Rabbit and waste” in FCC subsidies
Pai has consistently claimed that its deregulation agenda has boosted broadband deployment, despite evidence to the contrary found in statements ISPs have made to investors and recent cuts in major ISPs’ network spending. Pai also pointed to information showing progress with broadband, even after FCC staff warned that it was based on incorrect submissions by an ISP.
Even Pai’s most direct attempts to close the digital divide have been controversial. Pai replaced the FCC’s Connect America Fund with a similar Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and recently allocated $ 9.2 billion in funding that will be spread over ten years. But instead of waiting for more accurate broadband data to better target funding in areas that need it most, Pai continued distributing funding weeks before leaving the FCC.
The subsidies are supposed to go to ‘high-cost’ areas where ISPs would not have a good case for deployment without government funding. But Free Press examined the funding allocations in a series of reports and said in one report that Pai’s program was ‘subsidiz’.[ing] broadband for rich. ‘
Some funding went to census blocks located within of the service footprints of Comcast “and other ISPs, places with little demand for broadband” either because no one lives or even works there, or because they mostly do not have residential properties and the few businesses there may not require advanced services, ” Free Press wrote in another analysis yesterday that Pai’s broadband legacy is one of “haste and waste,” the group said.
A two-party group of 157 members of Congress sent a letter yesterday urging Pai and other FCC commissioners to make sure the money is not spent incorrectly:
We call on the FCC to confirm that each provider has the technical, financial, managerial, operational skills, capabilities and resources to deliver the services they have promised to every American they plan to serve, regardless of the technology what they use.
Americans need an FCC fighting for them ‘
Advocates for stricter regulation of broadband providers are pleased that Pai is leaving. In four years as chairman, Pai has “embraced a far-reaching agenda that has eroded consumer protection, suppressed the rubber-stamped corporate wish lists, and even weakened the legal authority of his own agency,” said Joshua Stager, senior adviser to the United States. Open Technology Institute, said in reference to Pai’s decision to abandon the FCC’s title II authority over broadband providers. “We look forward to flipping through the chapter of FCC history and urging new leadership to take a new course. The American people still need an FCC that fights for them.”