Next Century Cities’ just announced that Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will Keynote at the Digital Southwest event on April 18th. You can register now to attend the conference in Mesa, Arizona, at the Mesa Convention Center.

About the event:

This full-day event will bring together broadband champions from federal, state, and local government, as well as community leaders and broadband policy experts from the Southwest and across the nation. The event will feature stories of broadband deployment success, digital inclusion initiatives, financing opportunities, and more.

Participants will hear from mayors, other city officials, state and federal policymakers, rural and tribal representatives, as well as national broadband experts. From financing to infrastructure development to smart cities, panelists will share a wealth of practical information.

The full agenda and participant list is available online, but here’s peek at some of the topics:

• Stories of Success
• Small Cells and Poll Attachments
• Rural and Tribal
• Broadband Financing
• Models 101

Christopher, as Policy Director of Next Century Cities, will participate in the Broadband Infrastructure Panel.

There will be a welcome reception from 5:30 - 7 p.m. at the Media Arts Center in Mesa and the conference starts at 8:30 a.m. at the Convention Center. Register now and be sure to book your hotel.

On March 24th, Christopher was on episode 232 of the web show "This Week in Enterprise Tech." Christopher discussed the future of community broadband networks in the Trump era as well as shared information about the models of successful networks across the country.

Christopher begins his discussion of these issues at 29:45 with host Friar Robert Ballecer and guest co-hosts Lou Maresca and Brian Chee. Throughout the show, the group covers the beginning of the FCC Chairmanship of Ajit Pai, how the Senate is legislating against Internet privacy regulations, and how community networks are pushing ahead to achieve better connectivity for local businesses and residents.

The folks at TWiT.tv share excerpts from our video on Ammon, Idaho, and the guys get into a deeper discussion about the possibilities of local empowerment from community networks.

You can stream the episode at TWiT.tv, or watch here:

West Virginia rural communities struggle with access to broadband but a bill in the state legislature is taking some first steps to encourage better connectivity. HB 3093 passed the House with wide support (97 - 2) and has been sent on to the Senate for review. The bill doesn’t appropriate any funding for Internet infrastructure projects around the state, but adopts some policies that may help local communities obtain better connectivity.

Revenue Neutral And Popular

The state is facing a $500 million budget deficit and lawmakers don't have the appetite to appropriate finds for Internet infrastructure projects. As in most states, policy bills do well during times of financial strife. Elected officials still want to do what they can to encourage better broadband so, according to at least one lawmaker, the revenue neutral nature of the bill has contributed to its success in the legislature. Delegate Roger Henshaw, one of the bill's co-sponsors, told Metro News:

“Notice this is a revenue-neutral bill,” Hanshaw said. “That’s in fact one of the reasons we’re rolling it out now. We have other bills here in both the House and Senate that are not revenue-neutral bills that were on the table for consideration.

“But with the clock ticking on us, it became clear that we probably ought to be looking at options to advance service that didn’t even have the possibility of a financial impact. This bill does not.”

Check out the 3-minute interview with Hanshaw on Soundcloud.

The Broadband Enhancement Council

West Virginia’s Broadband Enhancement Council was created in a previous session and receives more authority and responsibility under HB 3093. They are tasked with the authority to, among other things, gather comparative data between actual and advertised speeds around the state, to advise and provide consultation services to project sponsors, and make the public know about facilities that offer community broadband access. 

Last week we shared an alert from Fight for the Future (FFTF) regarding the Senate vote on data protection. You’ve probably heard by now that the vote passed, which means the measure moved to the House. FFTF sent out a follow up with important information about that vote, that’s happening TODAY:

Congress has scheduled a vote TUESDAY to eliminate Internet privacy rules and allow ISPs to sell your data to advertisers without your permission. It already passed the Senate. This is our last chance to stop it.

Just last week, the Senate voted to gut internet privacy rules that prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from selling your sensitive personal information to advertisers without your consent.

The measure passed the Senate by only two votes. It was close, and there was significant public outcry which means we still have a chance to stop it.

Now the bill moves to the House of Representatives, and we just got word that they scheduled a vote on it TUESDAY. 

They’re trying to ram it through quickly without discussion or debate. We need to stop them.

Call Congress right now. Tell them to vote NO on repealing the FCC broadband privacy rules.

[FFTF] will connect you with your lawmakers and give you a simple script of what you can say. Here’s the number: (415) 360-0555

Even creepier, they’ll be able to install software on your phone to track you, and inject undetectable “cookies” into your Internet traffic to record everything you’re doing online.


If this bill passes the House, companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T will be able to constantly (and secretly) collect our online activity and sell our browsing history, financial information, and real-time location, and sell it to advertisers without our permission.


Call this number and FFTF will connect you directly to your representatives: (415) 360-0555

Our friends at Fight for the Future let us know that an important vote on privacy rules is happening today. We want to pass on the information so you know who to call to express your concern about who collects and disseminates your personal data:

Today at noon, Congress is expected to vote on whether to gut the FCC’s broadband privacy rules that prevent Internet Service Providers like Comcast and Verizon from collecting and selling your personal data without your permission.

In just a few hours Congress could roll back these landmark rules that many of us fought hard for last year.

And get this-- the 22 senators behind this controversial resolution have received more than $1.6 million from the very same companies that would profit from us losing our broadband privacy rights.

Here are the names and phone numbers of the lawmakers who we need to side with us to protect broadband privacy rights:

We can’t let this happen. Call Congress right now.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (202) 224-6665 @lisamurkowski

Sen. Susan Collins (202) 224-2523 @SenatorCollins

Sen. Jerry Moran (202) 224-6521 @JerryMoran

Sen. Cory Gardner (202) 224-5941 @SenCoryGardner

Sen. Benjamin Sasse (202) 224-4224 @BenSasse

Sen. Dean Heller (202) 224-6244 @SenDeanHeller

If these privacy protections are removed, ISPs will be able to do the following :

Monitor and sell all your location data, search history, app usage, and browsing habits to advertisers without your permission, hijack your search results, redirecting your traffic to paying third parties, and insert ads into web pages that would otherwise not have them
.

This is going to be a close vote. We’ve included the names, numbers, and twitter handles of key members of Congress who could vote to uphold current broadband privacy rules.

Call them now. Tell them to protect our privacy. Here’s a sample script you can use:

“Hi, my name is ______, I’m calling to ask Senator _____ to vote against the CRA proposal to roll back the FCC’s broadband privacy rules. Please don’t let Internet Service Providers sell my personal information without my permission.”

This vote is happening very soon, please call or contact these key members of Congress now.

A new report from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and Connect Your Community concludes that the telecom giant AT&T has redlined low-income neighborhoods in Cleveland. The company has cherry-picked higher-income neighborhoods for new technology investments and skipped over neighborhoods with high-proverty rates.

AT&T’s Digital Redlining, uses publicly available data from the FCC and the American Community Survey to expose how AT&T has failed to invest in low-income communities in Cleveland.

See With Your Own Eyes

Read the report and explore the interactive maps on digitalinclusion.org. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance and Connect Your Community spent six months uncovering how AT&T has systematically passed over communities with high poverty rates. The five maps paint a stark picture of the digital divide. 

The extent of AT&T’s failure only came to light after the AT&T and DirecTV merger. As part of the merger, AT&T had to create an affordable Internet access program for low-income residents. The lowest speed tier in the program was 3 Megabits per second (Mbps) download for $5, but many low-income communities in Cleveland were considered ineligible; infrastructure in their communities only allowed access to speeds that maxed out at about 1.5 Mbps download. (Read more in "AT&T Gets Snagged in Giant Loophole Attempting to Avoid Merger Responsibility")

Public Data Can Share Some Insights 

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance and Connect Your Community noticed a pattern and began investigating. The FCC Form 477 data used in the report provides maximum speeds and technology by each census block, which typically overstates the quality of service actually available to households.

On March 7th, Christopher participated in a panel discussion sponsored by Politico and Qualcomm as part of an event called "The Future of the Wireless World." The panel was moderated by Politico Technology Reporter Alex Byers and included the following participants:

• Steven Crowley, P.E., Consulting Wireless Engineer
• Mindel De la Torre, former Chief of the International Bureau, Federal Communications Commission
• Christopher Mitchell, Director of Community Broadband Networks Initiative, Institute for Local Self-Reliance
• Joan Marsh, Senior Vice President of Federal Regulatory, AT&T

Watch the video at Politico's website.

Highlights from this conversation include Christopher's interaction with the AT&T representative about their claim that a "one touch make ready" policy was specific to Google Fiber. This interaction is at 36:20 in the conversation.

Jonathan Chambers from Conexon works with rural electric cooperatives as they bring high-quality Internet access to rural America. When he spoke with Christopher for episode 229 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast last November, he had some choice words to say about how the FCC chose to continue to subsidize big telcos for little return.

They Propose "A Huge Mess"

In a recent post on the Conexon blog, Chambers analyzes “The New Trumpfone Program,” and reveals how proposed Connect America Fund (CAF) subsidies, when applied to real world data, creates outrageous financial waste. While providers can receive up to $17,500 per location in CAF funding, when applied to a per subscriber formula, the figure is $100,000:

There are no U.S. communities where satellite or fixed wireless provides broadband to 100% of the homes and small businesses. Not 80% either, which is the FCC assumption. Not 50% or 25% or 15% or 10% or even 5%. The FCC has data on this. Let’s say, for this arithmetic exercise, that a satellite or fixed wireless subscriber achieves a 15% market share of telephone and broadband service in a rural community.

A 15% market share while receiving $17,500 for every location in an area translates into over $100,000 per subscriber. Should there be insufficient competitive pressure in the auction, the $17,500 per location is a realistic outcome, as is the likelihood of $100,000 per subscriber by some technologies.

Reimburse Per Subscriber

Chambers offers a sensible solution to save CAF funds and direct public dollars in the right direction: reimburse providers for actual subscribers, rather than by location.