New Administration, New FCC, New Priorities… Now What?

Change is in order for Net neutrality, ISP regulation, and infrastructure investment.

A new sheriff is in Washington, D.C., at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and his arrival means all sorts of change is heading down the pike. This includes at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has a new acting chair, Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel. While the FCC  remains politically deadlocked for now, with two Republican and two Democratic commissioners, the fact remains that it’s a new day at the FCC.

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Biden Administration FCC Policy Priorities: A Look Ahead

It's going to be an interesting year.
With the announcement at the end of November that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Ajit Pai, as is customary, will step away from the FCC on Inauguration Day, it’s important to try to read the tea leaves of how a Biden Administration will change the trajectory of the FCC. While the Pai-directed FCC has taken major steps forward in the direction of 5G deployment, in other areas of communications technology policy and deployment, its actions hurt consumers the most, particularly with the horribly misnamed “Restoring Internet Freedom Act (RIFA),” which invalidated much of the original net neutrality provisions enacted in 2015 when Tom Wheeler was FCC Chairman and Barack Obama was President. Although a return to Obama-era policies, particularly in the area of actual broadband deployment, won’t come easy, they should, and for many, they can’t come quickly enough.

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Why “Vishing” is the Bad Word of the Week

This new wrinkle in cybercrime can create a target for your enterprise. Follow these six tips to avoid falling victim.

As if these times weren’t sufficiently challenging without creative criminals, it’s time for the introduction of a new bad word/cybercrime called ”vishing.”  Late last week, the FBI and the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an advisory to address a new wrinkle in cybercrime—that of vishing—a problem that has been exacerbated by the large number of people who are working remotely in the COVID-19 environment. 

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Managing Force Majeure Clauses: Fine Print Does Matter

Force majeure provisions might provide some relief when services go down, but it's seldom that simple

A current joke making the rounds reads: “2020 is a unique leap year: it has 29 days in February, 300 days in March, and [five] years in April and May.” This may be particularly true for enterprise end users who find themselves stuck in undesirable vendor agreements where contracted services aren’t meeting promises or expectations, and customers can’t do a whole lot about it. Isn’t that what force majeure provisions are for? The answer is a qualified “maybe.”

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A Short but Important Thank You to Our Vendor Community

In these trying times, it's important to give credit where credit is due.
I have a rule for myself. I don’t hesitate to write a nasty letter when one is earned (and I can write a doozy if I do say so myself). On the other hand, when I receive service that’s above and beyond, I need to write a positive letter of thanks and acknowledgment. For me, the ratio of those letters needs to be one-to-one. Broadly, I think we are very quick to complain when things go wrong and very slow to acknowledge good things, even though we all experience them.

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