Broadband a Civil Right, as Are Payphone Rates that Draw Clyburn’s Attention, Jackson Says

The adoption gap between African Americans and whites has narrowed in recent years, but improvement has been minimal for blacks with the least education and household income, Madura Wijewardena, National Urban League Policy Institute director of research and policy, said Monday. The next day at a different event, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said “removing bandwidth and location as constraints on innovation” is important. The U.S. is in a “global bandwidth race” and should develop ultra-fast network hubs with transmission speeds numbering in “gigabits, not megabits,” he said.

Minorities are “left behind” by lower rates of broadband adoption than whites, just like they're much less likely to own a radio or TV station, Jackson told a United Church of Christ event. “If we don’t deal with this divide, we run the risk of relegating a whole generation of young people to the fringes of society,” he said of fast Web service. In a nod to the higher rates of smartphone use among some minorities than whites, “there are limits to what can be accomplished” on a smartphone, Jackson said. They're good for “playing games ... not filling out college applications,” he said. Broadband’s a “lifeline,” he said. “Penetrating our inner cities and reaching those in rural settings present challenges that we're still working through."

"The faster we can connect our citizens, the faster our economy can grow,” Genachowski said at another event Tuesday. “The more people of all walks of life [who] have access to bandwidth, the more opportunity we spread for all.” Genachowski commended U.S. ISPs for making big strides in deployment over the last three years. He spoke of a 30 percent increase in investment in wired and wireless networks from 2009 to 2011, and “mobile innovation” that has created 1.6 million U.S. jobs in the past five years. But the country needs “world-leading digital infrastructure” to effectively compete in the global market, he said.

The U.S. broadband adoption rate gap between blacks and whites has narrowed in recent years, Wijewardena said Monday. He referred to National Urban League’s Policy Institute study released in May that found the gap was 11 percentage points in 2010 -- 56 percent adoption for blacks, 67 percent for whites; in 2009, the gap was 19 points (CD May 3 p4). “It’s fair to say things have improved,” Wijewardena, the report’s lead author, said this week. But the adoption rate has remained low for the poorest and least-educated members of the black community, he said. The NUL study found a 38 percent adoption rate in 2010 among blacks who are high school dropouts and make a household income of less than $20,000 per year. About 51 percent of whites in the same educational and income groupings had adopted broadband, according to the report (http://xrl.us/bm52br). “That’s the community on which solutions need to be targeted,” Wijewardena said, citing programs like Comcast’s Internet Essentials free and reduced-cost broadband program.

University of the District of Columbia Community College has partnered with the Internet Essentials program and other groups to offer free and reduced rate broadband to its students, the majority of whom are black and low-income, said UDCCC Deputy CEO Julie Johnson. As UDCCC rolled out the program, it sometimes encountered difficulty because students believed the free broadband offering was “too good to be true,” Johnson said. Others were suspicious when the school attempted to collect personal information, she said. UDCCC found the adoption rate improved when the school combined the program with jobs programs or other UDCCC offerings, Johnson said.

Bringing back tax certificates could help increase minority ownership of stations, though it’s still much lower than for other demographic groups when such breaks were allowed, Jackson said in the telecom ethics lecture. “It’s certainly worth considering again today.” Congress in 1995 ended issuing tax certificates to companies that sold radio or TV stations and cable systems to minorities. The last 30 years “witnessed an unabashed media consolidation, facilitated by the FCC,” with a loss of “diverse ideas” and “business opportunities for women and people of color,” Jackson said. With about 3 percent of TV and 6 percent of radio stations owned by people of color, “it should come as no surprise that content on local stations” doesn’t serve the need of those outlets’ “diverse” communities, he said: The FCC “can make changes to open up the system once again.” An FCC spokesman had no comment.

"NAB strongly believes in more ownership diversity in broadcasting,” with “a number of programs through” its Education Foundation “designed to achieve that,” an association spokesman said. NAB supports bringing back tax certificates, “which helped women and people of color gain entree into the media ownership ranks,” he said. “Access to capital is the biggest hurdle to bringing more minorities into media ownership.” The U.S. should explore “creative ideas” so “communications outlets reflect the diverse communities that we serve,” the spokesman said.

There should be a “march on the FCC,” Jackson said to our question about what other steps the agency can take on media ownership. “We might get the nation’s attention” if ministers of various faiths protest, he said. On prison payphone charges, “for 10 years now, the FCC has ignored pleas to fix this situation,” he said during the lecture of a petition made by the mother of an inmate. Genachowski has “been receptive” to the petition -- by Martha Wright of Washington, D.C., and others for the agency to lower prison payphone rates -- “about the next steps needed to move forward,” Clyburn said Monday. She voiced hopes Genachowski will circulate a rulemaking notice proposing to lower rates for such calls.

It costs $3 or $4 to connect a call made from behind bars, with interstate long distance as much as 89 cents a minute, Clyburn said in a written statement (http://xrl.us/bnrdg7). “Many cannot afford this.” It’s the FCC’s “responsibility to ensure that interstate phone rates are just and reasonable, and we have an obligation to ensure that basic, affordable phone service is available to all Americans, including low-income consumers,” Clyburn said. “Incarcerated individuals and their loved ones should not be the exceptions here, and as watchdogs of the public interest, this Commission must and should act expeditiously."

Costs to place an interstate call from prison range from 50 cents in Santa Fe, N.M., to $3.50 in Cumberland County, Ill., figures Securus gave the FCC in May show (http://xrl.us/bnrdqb).

Intrastate calls from the prison are 10 cents a minute in Santa Fe and 30 cents per minute in the surrounding county. Prison systems generally get between about 30 percent and 50 percent of Securus revenue for handling calls, with that money the company remits to the municipal and state governments used for things like inmate and victim funds, said Arent Fox lawyer Stephanie Joyce, representing the company. Large prison systems tend to have lower rates, because Securus gets efficiencies in larger volumes of calls, she said. “There are very low rates at a lot of large prisons, and inmates are certainly seeing the benefits of competition.”

Newer technologies like VoIP “keep down the transport costs,” as do more centralized call-handling systems, Joyce said: “Securus is doing everything it can to capitalize on efficiencies” to cut rates, and many state corrections departments want that, too. “Securus has experienced, however, an increase in overall costs of approximately 16.5 percent since 2008 due to increased costs of regulatory compliance and the costs associated with billing and collection agreements,” a company filing said (http://xrl.us/bnrdrk). How much it costs to call out of prisons is “largely” a “public policy decision” on how to fund jails, inmate funds and victims’ rights programs, Joyce told us. What Securus pays a corrections department as a site commission to handle phone calls largely is “defraying the cost of operating the prison,” she said. Global Tel*Link, another major provider of phone service to prisons, will respond to Clyburn and Jackson’s comments “in the context of the FCC’s ongoing administrative process,” said the company’s lawyer, Cherie Kiser of Cahill Gordon.