The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Briefing.
US House Passes Bill on Open Internet Small Business Exemption
The US House of Representatives passed H.R. 288, Small Business Broadband Deployment Act, sponsored by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Walden (R-OR). The bill would exempt small Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with fewer than 250,000 subscribers from the FCC’s Open Internet Enhanced Transparency Rule for five years. It would also require the FCC to recommend whether the exemption should remain permanent and whether the definition of small business should be modified. The same bill passed the House last year. See the Regulatory Mix dated 3/17/16. The FCC’s version of the small business exemption (100,000 or fewer broadband connections as measured by their most recent Form 477, aggregated over all of the providers’ affiliates) expired on December 15, 2016, without being extended. TMI Briefing Service subscribers see Briefing dated 12/19/16.
NTIA Internet Use Survey
The National Telecommunications & Information Agency is seeking comment on its proposal to add 58 questions to the U.S. Census Bureau's November 2017 Current Population Survey (CPS) in order to gather reliable data on broadband use by U.S. households through the Computer and Internet Use Supplement (Supplement). For more than two decades, the CPS Supplement has been the primary data source for NTIA's research into who goes online, what devices and applications people use on the Internet, and what barriers stand in the way of all Americans effectively utilizing the latest information technologies. Moreover, researchers and policymakers inside and outside of government rely on NTIA’s surveys in part because of their large sample size--around 53,000 households--as well as their in-depth questions and public dataset availability. Comments are due March 10, 2017.
Colorado Broadband Grants
The Broadband Deployment Board within the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) has awarded $2.1 million in grants in an effort to close the broadband internet service gap between rural and urban Colorado communities. Seven recipients were awarded grant funding for eight infrastructure projects that will be completed over the next two years. As a result, over 4,700 households and 175 businesses in Eagle, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lake, Mesa, Montrose, Ouray, Prowers, Sedgwick, and Weld counties will benefit from Broadband Internet access.
