Today marks a full year since Gigi Sohn was nominated to fill the fifth and final seat on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Since her nomination, Sohn has gone through two confirmation hearings and a constant barrage of right-wing attacks pushed by the big cable and telecom monopolies. 

With the lame duck session of Congress just weeks away, an array of public interest groups are ramping up a campaign to push Sen. Chuck Schumer and the White House to schedule a vote to confirm her nomination before the end of the year.

Time is Running Out

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Dozens of press releases are being issued today to bring attention to the apparent foot-dragging of the U.S. Senate and White House that has left the FCC in a 2-2 deadlock for nearly two years.

Public Knowledge issued a statement today calling on Senate leaders to confirm President Biden’s nominee:

The agency has not had a full five-member commission for the entire Biden administration, which has effectively stalled key consumer protection priorities as well as our nation’s work to provide high-speed broadband to those on the wrong side of the digital divide. Public Knowledge urges Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to call the vote confirming Gigi Sohn to the FCC to get the nation’s broadband agenda back on track.

For more than a year and a half, the nation’s top telecommunications regulator has been stuck in limbo, thanks to a combination of federal dysfunction and industry lobbying. Now the nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC is facing a full frontal assault by telecom monopolies dedicated to preventing the agency from standing up to monopoly power.

After an inexplicable nine-month delay, President Biden nominated consumer advocate Gigi Sohn to the FCC late last year. Sohn, Co-Founder and CEO of consumer group Public Knowledge and a former advisor to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, is well versed in media and telecom policy, and broadly popular across both sides of the aisle. 

Yet since her belated nomination, Sohn has been met with a bevy of telecom, media-industry, and politically constructed allegations designed to derail her nomination, ranging from false claims that she’d harm rural America, manufactured allegations that she hates police, and false assertions that she’s looking to censor conservative voices in media. 

All of these efforts serve one function: to ensure the nation’s top telecommunications regulator remains mired in partisan gridlock and a 2-2 commissioner voting split. Without a clear voting majority, the agency can’t embrace reforms that are widely popular with the public, whether that’s restoring the FCC’s consumer protection authority, or restoring recently-discarded media consolidation rules.

The Biden Administration is poised to celebrate the nation's largest telecommunications monopolies today even as these companies do the bare minimum for digital equity while undermining his administration's broadband agenda.

Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Community Broadband Networks Program at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, had this to say today about the undue influence of Big Telecom and its effort to block the confirmation of GiGi Sohn as an FCC commissioner: 

As we enter the third year of a pandemic that has supposedly redefined the crucial importance of broadband, the Federal Communications Commission has failed to update the definition of broadband it set in 2015. Few expect the FCC to publish accurate maps of where broadband is until 2023. It might help if President Biden seated his third commissioner. 

The Biden Administration took a painfully long time to nominate the most obvious candidate for the position - Gigi Sohn - and has done precious little to have her confirmed in a reasonable time frame. Though it would be easy to blame Republican opposition, the truth is that it simply does not appear to be a priority for the Administration.

We join the effort to praise all companies that are helping move toward digital equity, but if simply discounting the cost of service from cable and telephone providers were sufficient, we might have less of a problem now, 11 years after Comcast launched Internet Essentials. To actually connect everyone, we will need an effective FCC as well as local engagement. However, some of the very companies being praised by the President today are spending millions in lobbying and ad-blitzes to prevent Gigi Sohn from being confirmed and to stop needed investments.

If they succeed in blocking Gigi, they will have confirmed something else: that they are the actual regulator of telecom services and the Biden Administration is not serious about the lofty goals it set in 2021. 

Gigi Sohn is still up for confirmation by the Senate to complete the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - an independent agency in the executive branch of the federal government that has been stuck at a 2-2 split of Democrats and Republicans since President Biden took office. The FCC is supposed to operate with five commissioners, with the party of the President in power having 3 seats. 

She was the obvious choice in December of 2020, when it was clear that Joe Biden would take office. With decades of history in telecom and media-related policy as well as a recent stint as Counselor to Tom Wheeler when he was Chair of the FCC, she would be among the most-qualified people to serve on it since I began working in telecom in 2007. And by among, I mean at the top.

I’ve known Gigi for many years and respected her from the first time I saw her in action. She isn’t a political agent trying to figure out the best path to the top. She has strong beliefs, and she’ll tell you what they are in a wonderful Long Island blur of passion. She respects other beliefs and ideas but she isn’t going to pretend she agrees with you when she doesn’t. 

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Maybe my word isn’t that persuasive, because I tend to agree with Sohn on many issues. But a lot of people with far more credibility among conservatives have spoken up on Gigi. So I hadn’t written anything about this because I assumed it would take time but Gigi would get confirmed. Plus, I focus my work outside DC and there is a lot going on that is keeping us busy. 

Podcasts can be a great way to glean important insights on all things broadband – from the policies and politics that shape the digital landscape to the pathways and platforms that connect us to or keep us from the Internet.

If you haven’t already tuned into our own weekly podcast, "Broadband Bits", consider this an invitation to do so. (Or the brand new Connect This show.) But, we also want to highlight two new limited podcast series that we think are worth checking out.

#SpreadtheTech

One is #SpreadtheTech created by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) and Digital Charlotte – a ten-episode series that “showcases interviews with digital inclusion stakeholders and practitioners from across the country highlighting their community-based efforts to address the digital divide.” This Verizon-sponsored podcast is hosted by NDIA Executive Director Angela Siefer, Digital Charlotte’s Executive Director Bruce Clark, and the Director of Operations for Digital Charlotte, Andrew Au.

In the first four episodes, #SpreadtheTech covers how digital inclusion advocates have pivoted their work to focus on the significance of Internet connectivity as we deal with the on-going Covid-19 pandemic.

The first episode looks at how the North Carolina Department of Information Technology is responding to connectivity challenges brought on by Covid-19. The featured guest of that episode is Amy Huffman, Digital Inclusion and Policy Manager for the Broadband Infrastructure Office within the North Carolina Office of Information and Technology Services.

Huffman reports on how the state created an interactive searchable map that allows North Carolina residents to enter their address to see if they have access to one of the discount or low-cost programs the state’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are offering. The map also shows the locations of community anchor institutions (libraries, schools, and community colleges) which have Wi-Fi hotspots in their parking lots that allow residents to access the Internet from their cars.

As federal, state, and local leaders increasingly recognize the need to make Internet access universal, they are also realizing that adoption is a separate issue. Programs such as the ReConnect and Connect America Funds I and II Auction have helped to expand infrastructure, but even in places where Internet access has been available for years, 100 percent of households do not subscribe. In an effort to better understand digital equity, the House Subcommittee on Communications & Technology of the Committee on Energy and Commerce recently sat down to listen to experts on digital equity. They discussed common misconceptions, hurdles that make wide-scale adoption difficult, and offered policy recommendations to help us achieve digital equity.

Not Only a Rural Problem

Angela Siefer, Executive Director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) described how her experience as a digital equity warrior has changed from working with people to learn the basics of computer use to the additional problem of helping people get online. Angela's statement addressed some of the most common myths associated with the digital divide that NDIA, through boots-on-the-ground research, has discovered, including:

The digital divide is a rural problem: Census results show that populations in urban areas do not have Internet access subscriptions of any kind; these are often low-income households.

5G will bridge the digital divide: Lack of infrastructure and devices deployed in areas where existing problems with digital inclusion continue with regards to this new technology.

People don't subscribe because they don't think the Internet isn't valuable: Accomplishing day-to-day tasks often require access to the Internet, which is a fact not lost on those who don't subscribe, but the cost is out of reach for many of those same people.

When his Twitter feed announced the “arrival of 5G” last December, tech reporter Chris Matyszczyk made a beeline for the nearest T-Mobile store and asked, “Can I have some of this 5G, please? I will become a much more desirable, admirable person if I have 5G!” From there, it was all downhill.

The Pain of the Hype 

We aren’t the only ones who have pointed out the hype around 5G as telecom companies rush to outdo each other. In another case of marketing mayhem overtaking technical truth, Matyszczyk shares his rain soaked pursuit in the Bay Area. Expecting fanfare, he was met with a surprisingly subdued store:

I wandered into a T-Mobile store that was emptier than a politician's tweet.

Oddly, there weren't 99 pink balloons hanging from the ceiling to celebrate 5G. There weren't even five.

He goes on to describe how the less-than-enthusiastic salespeople didn’t seem very well informed about when, where, or why 5G isn’t available to him when the company indicated that it arrived nationwide:

"But isn't it a bit annoying to be told there's this incredibly exciting 5G when you can't get it for at least another six months?"

They seemed neither to agree or disagree. They seemed like they were annoyed it was raining and that I was there, dripping.

Read the full article, "I went to T-Mobile to ask about 5G. The response was painful" here. You can also watch an interview with Matyszczyk.

He expressed sympathy for the salespeople. After all, he says, “it’s hard for them to present something they can’t actually sell you.”

Marketplace spoke with experts, including Gigi Sohn and our Christopher Mitchell, about the hype surrounding 5G. Sohn said, "5G is 80% marketing and 20% technology. The hype around this technology is enormous, and also the hype around needing to win a so-called race around 5G."

Listen to the story here:

It’s not too late to make your plans to attend "Connected New England: A Regional Broadband Convening" in Hartford, Connecticut. The November 8th event will bring an impressive list of broadband leaders to the Nutmeg State to share their expertise on all things broadband.

Register now and check out the agenda.

Special Local Focus

The theme of the event is “Local Solutions for Broadband Development” and is hosted through a partnership between Next Century Cities, the State of Connecticut Office of Consumer Counsel. If you’re a government, academic, or nonprofit employee, you can attend at no charge. Topics at the event will revolves around the most difficult challenges obstructing deployment in New England.

A mayor’s panel will include Mayor Luke Bronin and State Representative Josh Elliot along with elected officials from New Haven, Stamford, and East Hartford.

Gigi Sohn, former FCC advisor, and a Distinguished Fellow at Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, will deliver the Afternoon Keynote. We love Gigi!

Additional panels will hit on:

• Municipal Gain Update from the state’s Office of Consumer Counsel
• 5G & Small Cells Panel - Josh Broder from Tilson will moderate
• Successful Models Panel - Christopher Mitchell will moderate
• Financing & E-Rate Panel - Deb Socia from Next Century Cities will moderate

Check out the full agenda and register online for this interesting day in New England.

Special Viewing

You still have about two weeks to plan your trip to Fairlawn, Ohio, to attend Great Lakes Connect and now the agenda has fully developed to help you plan the specifics of your visit. “Creating Intelligent Network Infrastructure to Compete in the Global Economy” runs from September 24th - 26th at the Hilton and DoubleTree Hotels. You can still register online to attend.

Arrive on Monday for a tour of the city’s municipal network facility. Spend the afternoon hours touring FairlawnGig then rub elbows with experts and policy advocates at the Welcome Reception in the evening.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, you can attend a series of conversations and panel discussions focused on smart city issues, funding, and infrastructure. Organizers have speakers lined up from all sectors to discuss national, state, and local matters. 

A few of the topics:

• Stories of local projects from Holland and Sebewaing in Michigan and Ohio’s Fairlawn and Dublin
• Open access networks financing and success stories
• Conversations about fiber, including outside plant architectures, the benefits, and its interaction with fixed wireless
• Digital equity, customer satisfaction, and community anchor institutions

Check out the rest of the packed agenda here.

Gee, it’s Gigi!

Gigi Sohn, our favorite FCC Maven will join Christopher for the Tuesday Keynote, titled “The FCC: Can’t Live With It, Don’t Want to Live Without It.” Need we say more?

Register now for Great Lakes Connect.