Today: NHIS Report on Wireless Substitution, FCC Denial-of-Service Attacks, FCC Commissioner Clyburn on Open Internet
NHIS Report on Wireless Substitution
According to the latest estimates from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the second six months of 2016 was the first time that a majority of American homes had only wireless telephones. Preliminary results from the July–December 2016 NHIS indicate that 50.8% of American homes did not have a landline telephone but did have at least one wireless telephone, an increase of 2.5 percentage points since the second 6 months of 2015. More than 70% of all adults aged 25-34 and of adults renting their homes were living in wireless-only households. The report presents the most up-to-date estimates available from the federal government concerning the size and characteristics of this population.
More than seven in ten adults aged 25–29 (72.7%) and aged 30-34 (71.0%) lived in households with only wireless telephones. These rates are greater than the rate for those 18–24 (61.7%). The percentage of adults living with only wireless telephones decreased as age increased beyond 35 years: 62.5% for those 35–44; 45.2% for those 45–64; and 23.5% for those 65 and over. Adults living in poverty (66.3%) and near poverty (59.0%) were more likely than higher income adults (48.5%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones. Geographic differences were also noted. Adults living in the Midwest (53.0%), South (55.5%), and West (53.4%) were more likely than those living in the Northeast (34.2%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones. Adults living in metropolitan areas (53.0%) were more likely than those living in nonmetropolitan areas (47.0%) to be living in wireless-only households.
FCC Denial-Of-Service Attacks
FCC Chief Information Officer Dr. David Bray released the following statement regarding delays experienced by consumers recently trying to file comments on the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS): “Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos). These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host. These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC. While the comment system remained up and running the entire time, these DDoS events tied up the servers and prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments. We have worked with our commercial partners to address this situation and will continue to monitor developments going forward.”
FCC’s Clyburn On The Open Internet Process
Commissioner Clyburn’s office issued a document entitled Open Internet Process: Then and Now that contains the “advice” then Commissioner Pai gave to the FCC in a 2014 dissent from a Open Internet/Net Neutrality rule Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The document asks “Will Chairman Pai take Commissioner Pai’s advice?” It compares Pai’s 2014 “advice” to the actions being taken in 2017 as the FCC is poised to consider an item at its May 18, 2017, Open Meeting that would reverse the FCC’s 2015 order classifying broadband Internet access service as a telecommunications service. See the Regulatory Mix dated 4/28/17. Among other things, the release quotes Chairman Pai as having said in 2014 that “We are not confronted with an immediate crisis that requires immediate action” and contrasts that with 2017 where it claims he is “Rushing ahead to repeal net neutrality and Title II without any immediate need to do so.”
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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.
