Al Franken, D-Minn., and 10 other senators urged Attorney General Jeff Sessions Wednesday to reject AT&T's buy of Time Warner, saying it would result in far too much media consolidation and would hurt consumers. “While we cannot possibly predict all the harms that could arise from this deal, we maintain that AT&T's proposed acquisition of Time Warner would result in higher prices, fewer choices, and worse service for consumers,” the senators wrote Sessions. “We hope you'll take a stand for U.S. consumers and businesses and closely scrutinize the transaction. Should you determine that the substantial harms arising from the transaction outweigh the purported benefits, we urge you to reject it.” The letter follows a Franken-led push in January for AT&T to adopt a “public interest statement” on TW amid concerns that the FCC wouldn't review the takeover (see 1701250076). Nine of the senators who signed onto Franken's letter to Sessions -- Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Cory Booker, D-N.J.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; and Ron Wyden, D-Ore. -- also had pressed for the AT&T public interest statement. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., signed the Sessions letter but had not joined the earlier statement request. The person who sent us a draft of Franken's letter Wednesday ahead of its release noted Franken was trying to get all of the senators who had signed on to the AT&T letter to push Sessions to reject the TW deal. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill. and Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., had supported the AT&T statement but didn't sign the Sessions letter. AT&T has “addressed all of the issues raised by this letter in AT&T’s and Time Warner’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee” last year, its February response to the public interest statement request and in the course of DOJ's review, a spokesman said. “We’ve highlighted how our merger is about giving consumers more choices, not less.” AT&T “also detailed how the transaction will expand distribution and creative opportunities for diverse and independent voices,” the spokesman said.
Jimm Phillips
Jimm Phillips, Associate Editor, covers telecommunications policymaking in Congress for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications News in 2012 after stints at the Washington Post and the American Independent News Network. Phillips is a Maryland native who graduated from American University. You can follow him on Twitter: @JLPhillipsDC
A Tuesday Senate Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee hearing on the FCC FY 2018 budget focused largely on the direction of the commission under Chairman Ajit Pai, with subcommittee Republicans highlighting policy issues Pai championed. Democrats raised concerns with the future of 2015 net neutrality rules and Congress' rollback of ISP privacy rules. President Donald Trump's administration proposed last month that the FCC budget be cut by $18 million, to $322 million, after years of the agency maintaining $340 million in annual funding. The FCC's budget justification document noted a planned reduction of more than 100 employees (see 1705230041).
The Senate Commerce Committee penciled in July 19 as a “possible” date for a nominee confirmation hearing but hasn't targeted it yet for evaluating FCC Democratic commissioner nominee Jessica Rosenworcel or any other nominees, a committee aide told us Tuesday. An industry lobbyist pointed to chatter about the circulating hearing date as sign Senate Commerce is anticipating that President Donald Trump will soon announce a nominee for the vacant GOP FCC commissioner seat, as many in the communications sector hope given the assumption that a GOP nominee will need to be paired with Rosenworcel for either nominee to advance (see 1706190079). Trump nominated Rosenworcel last week and FCC General Counsel Brendan Carr is seen as the front-runner for the remaining vacancy (see 1706140065). It's possible Senate Commerce may try also to handle Trump's anticipated renomination of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai as part of the July 19 hearing, noted the industry lobbyist. The committee is unlikely to include him unless also handling a nominee for the vacant GOP seat given that a Pai-Rosenworcel confirmation pairing would result in a 2-2 FCC, the lobbyist said.
Additional fixes to FCC funding for USF programs that impact broadband deployment in rural and remote areas are needed to overcome ongoing shortcomings, said lawmakers and industry experts Tuesday at a Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing. Lawmakers noted concerns with USF's “stand-alone broadband” problem and the high-cost fund, as expected (see 1706160055), and questioned the accuracy of current broadband service measurements. The subcommittee also considered the FCC's Rural Health Care program.
The White House Office of American Innovation hopes the American Technology Council’s inaugural meeting Monday will help “unleash the creativity of the private sector to provide citizen services in a way that has never happened before,” said Director Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, before the meeting’s official start: “We will foster a new set of startups” and “be a global leader in the field making government more transparent and responsive to citizens' needs.” The ATC meeting, which was to have gone past our deadline, was to focus on its primary goal of working on federal IT modernization, but smaller working groups also would look at a range of other sector-specific issues like big data, cybersecurity, H1-B visas and tech recruitment, a White House spokesman said. “We certainly know the problems,” said White House Director-Strategic Initiatives Chris Liddell in public remarks. “We have some of the ideas about what the solutions are. But we really want to engage your minds and get the best of the private sector applied to these problems.” The White House confirmed that the ATC meeting would include: MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, OpenGov CEO Zachary Bookman, Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Kleiner Perkins Chairman John Doerr, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, Akamai CEO Tom Leighton, SAP CEO Bill McDermott, Qualcomm CEO Steven Mollenkopf, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Google parent Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet and Trump tech sector ally Peter Thiel.
Industry lobbyists are hopeful President Donald Trump will announce a nominee as soon as this week for the remaining GOP FCC seat but hadn't received additional signals to indicate a nomination announcement was imminent. Chatter increased since the White House formalized Jessica Rosenworcel’s nomination last week to again be a Democratic commissioner (see 1706140065).
House and Senate Democrats spoke out Monday and this weekend against the FCC May NPRM on the 2015 net neutrality order and reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service (see 1705180029). “There’s nothing broken” that "needs to be fixed,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., Monday during a Mozilla-sponsored roundtable discussion with Gigi Sohn, ex-aide to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, and other neutrality supporters. Eshoo draws “great comfort and confidence in the legality of the 2015 rules" given the FCC victory in USTelecom v. FCC, which upheld the order. Industry supporters of the 2015 order should lean on Congress to enact net neutrality legislation since the FCC is likely to divide along partisan lines in favor of rolling back the existing rules despite the proliferation of comments to the commission in favor of keeping them, Eshoo said. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai “thinks like a 110-year-old guy” and millions of pro-neutrality comments are unlikely to sway him to keep the 2015 rules in place, she said. The FCC has received almost 5 million comments. House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., began circulating an e-newsletter to supporters Monday decrying the potential rollback. “At its most basic level, net neutrality means that we, the people, can decide for ourselves what we do online,” Pallone said. “Nobody gets to influence that choice: Not the government, and not the companies that run the networks.” Sens. Al Franken, D-Minn., Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called in a Saturday joint NowThis opinion video for citizens to speak out against rescinding the 2015 rules. “This is insane,” Franken said in the video. “We need your voices heard.”
The Senate Communications Subcommittee's Tuesday hearing on the USF and its rural broadband deployment capabilities is likely to focus on whether problems affecting funding for broadband deployment in rural areas have been fixed, but it could also examine opportunities to expand use of USF for technologies like telehealth, said lawmakers and industry experts in interviews. The hearing is one of two on Capitol Hill this week on broadband deployment issues, with the House Communications Subcommittee planning a Wednesday hearing on the accuracy of the existing National Broadband Map data on unserved and underserved areas of the U.S., plus other mapping efforts (see 1706150058). The Senate Communications hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in 253 Russell.
Full Senate consideration of the Mobile Now Act (S-19) spectrum bill “will be front and center” as the chamber's top telecom policy priority if it's able to act on Jessica Rosenworcel's FCC nomination, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., told us Thursday. President Donald Trump sent to the Senate Thursday Rosenworcel's nomination "for a term of five years from July 1, 2015," the day after her previous term expired. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had been blocking passage of S-19 until a Rosenworcel renomination was processed (see 1705020061 and 1706140065). “We'd like to get [S-19] done,” Thune said. “I've spoken with [Schumer] about it, and he's expressed his support for it and that [as] soon as we've figured out a pathway forward to deal with the Rosenworcel nomination, they want to work with us to get it passed.” Thune confirmed earlier reports that internal White House vetting of candidates for an open GOP seat at the FCC delayed a nomination announcement, but he hopes “it comes closely on the heels of Rosenworcel because I think it makes sense” to process them together.
The path forward for Senate Commerce Committee consideration of Jessica Rosenworcel's nomination (see 1706140002) to be an FCC commissioner remained uncertain, with industry lobbyists seeing traditional pairing of Rosenworcel with an as-yet-unnamed third Republican commissioner the likeliest possibility. President Donald Trump said Tuesday night he planned to renominate Rosenworcel to a new term as a Democratic FCC commissioner, months after the White House withdrew her and other nominees held over after former President Barack Obama left office (see 1703020067). The Rosenworcel announcement didn't mention a nominee for the FCC's vacant GOP seat.