FCC Diversity Panel Opposes Subsidized 'Overbuilding,' Seeks Better Broadband Maps
The FCC should prevent government dollars from funding broadband buildout in areas with a provider offering 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps up, recommended the Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment in the final vote at the last meeting of its current charter Monday. The group will be rechartered (see 1906110048). The “2.0” version is expected to begin meeting by the fall, said the committee's Designated Federal Officer, Jamila Bess Johnson, in an interview. The agency is “well into the process of rechartering and soliciting new members,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in a videotaped message.
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The committee said the FCC should collect better broadband mapping data, act against “digital redlining” and to encourage broadcast ownership diversity. But the vote on “government subsidized overbuilding” was the only recommendation that wasn't unanimous. The item -- presented by Lerman Senter attorney Jenell Trigg, representing the Wireless ISP Association on the ACDDE's Digital Empowerment and Inclusion Working Group -- appeared to discourage competition and not directly apply to helping diversity, said lone dissenter Hispanic Federation Senior Vice President-Institutional Development Brent Wilkes, in an interview. “We want to make sure everyone has service before funds are allocated” to areas that already have 10/1 service, said Trigg, appearing at the meeting via phone.
The ACDDE also adopted recommendations that the FCC improve its broadband mapping to prevent areas with a high concentration of minorities from being left out of broadband deployment and to ask Pai to task the next iteration of the panel with continuing to identify further strategies to prevent government subsidized overbuilding. “If we don't know how people are being served, we can't address this problem,” said Brookings Institute Fellow Nicol Turner-Lee.
The meeting included recommendations for the next ACDDE. Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council President Maurita Coley Flippin said the next one should pursue engagement on diversity with tech companies, and Turner-Lee said the ACDDE should begin a “collaborative process” to fight digital redlining. National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters President Jim Winston said the agency should invite major broadcast CEOs to the commission to discuss ownership diversity.
Flippin's call for a further look at the tech industry was part of an ACDDE report on interviews working group members held with six tech-industry companies on their diversity practices. The report said a tech company's level of growth is linked to how actively it pursues diversity initiatives, Flippin said. Larger, more mature companies are more likely to dedicate more resources to diversity and inclusion than smaller companies focused only on their products, she said.
ACDDE member and US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce CEO Susan Au Allen asked the committee to release the names of the companies interviewed. National Urban League Executive Director Clint Odom and ACDDE Chair Diane Sutter said the interviews were granted on condition of anonymity. Identifying the “shadow companies” would expose them to more scrutiny, Au Allen told us. “There's a long tradition of creating a space for discussion,” Odom said.
Virtually every member of the current ACDDE we queried hoped to join the rechartered committee. This ACDDE has been one of the most active, said Turner-Lee, who started on the committee under then-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Sutter said the broadcast incubator program was one of the best things to come out of the group. The incubator program is the subject of a legal challenge (see 1906110073)
Turner-Lee conceded the FCC majority didn't follow many of the ACDDE's recommendations on the broadcast incubator program, but said its implementation, rechartering and diversity symposiums and workshops that have taken place under Pai show progress. Under then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler -- now a colleague of Turner-Lee's at Brookings -- “we didn't even get chartered,” she said.