Markey Sees Broadband Money, Net Neutrality, Privacy as 1st Acts This Congress
Congress should provide billions of dollars in new funding for broadband, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said at a virtual FCBA conference Tuesday on the 25th anniversary of the Telecom Act. Some 42 million Americans still don’t have reliable broadband, “and that is a national tragedy,” he said. Too often, those left out are “brown, black and low-income,” he said. Markey is expected to soon be named Communications Subcommittee chairman (see 2101290049).
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Markey wants net neutrality legislation early this Congress. “It must be at the top of our agenda,” he said. It's “an essential step in our nation’s economic recovery,” he said: “We need net neutrality so that small businesses aren’t shoved into online slow lanes” and “powerful social media companies can’t step on their competition by cutting deals with big" ISPs.
The senator also wants a comprehensive privacy law, which he sees as a civil rights issue: Address “discriminatory data uses, biased algorithms that are harming vulnerable populations in our country.” No website “should be able to use information about your race or your gender in discriminatory ways,” he said. “It’s time to deal with the systemic inaccuracy issues in facial recognition.”
Despite complaints from the political right, social media platforms aren't taking too many posts down, Markey said: "They're leaving too many dangerous posts up.”
Last year, Markey introduced the Emergency Educational Connections Act, for at least $4 billion in E-rate support for Wi-Fi hot spots, modems, routers and connected devices, and he's now pressing for distance-learning support to be included in the next COVID-19 funding bill. Markey said he's working with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on a bill that would fund an NTIA program to increase the resiliency and efficiency of communications networks.
“Focus on the children,” Markey said. E-rate has been a success but has too many gaps, he said. Studies show that up to 12 million students don’t have “the home internet access and devices they need to fully participate in online learning” during the pandemic, he said.
The ’96 act was a success and changed everything, “from virtually no broadband” to “a debate over how can we make sure that everyone has access,” Markey said: “That’s quite a transformation in a relatively brief period.” The U.S became the leader because the act “triggered paranoia-inducing Darwinian competition,” he said.
On a panel, former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly wished Congress had answered more questions in the act, with “more specificity,” allowing less room for agency interpretation. “I’m a fan of Congress answering affirmatively what it wants and also affirmatively what it doesn’t want,” he said: “That’s where the problems have been.” O’Rielly was a congressional staffer when the law was approved. Congress trusted the FCC then, though now many legislators “are less comfortable with how the commission addresses things,” he said. The trust “has eroded over time,” and “you probably wouldn’t see that again,” he said.
Some of the act's biggest ambiguities reflected disagreements between the House and Senate, said Harris Wiltshire's John Nakahata, who was at the FCC when the act was implemented. “The Senate Rural Caucus was in a very different place than many members of the House,” he said. That posed problems when the FCC drew up rules, he said. “That’s a natural outcome of the legislative process.”
The FCC should put more focus on better integrating USF, said Quadra Partners’ Ruth Milkman. “We have four stovepiped programs that don’t really relate to each other.” They “are not run in a way that would maximize the benefits,” she said.
“Unfortunately, the 96 Telecom Act also brought irresponsible deregulation and mass consolidation, which turned broadcasting licenses into financial instruments to the detriment of listeners and viewers,” Stop the Cap tweeted Tuesday: “Broadband grew abroad just as well.”