The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC) is telling the FCC not to limit rules prohibiting digital inequity only to discriminate or to conclude that because it is available, it is accessible.

That view of discrimination is a different tack from AT&T and wireless ISPs, which told the FCC this week that intent should be a determining factor.

Both MMTC and AT&T were filing comments in the FCC's congressionally directed proceeding, which must come up with regulations preventing discrimination based on "income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion and national origin."

"[I]f the Commission were to adopt rules that only looked to the intent of the actor and their disparate treatment of subscribers, the Commission would capture a very small subset of the discrimination that subscribers often face," MMTC told the FCC.

MMTC also wants the FCC to take a broad view of "equal access" that goes beyond technical quality of service -- speed, latency, etc. --to non-technical issues that extend to evidence of disparate treatment.

MMTC says the FCC should define the statute's equal opportunity to subscribe from a consumer perspective and should look beyond whether comparable services on comparable terms and conditions are available.

MMTC also says mere "availability" is not equity if the cost prohibits its adoption in low-income or minority neighborhoods.

"Given that there are multiple barriers from multiple actors preventing Americans from actually accessing the internet, the Commission must be careful to not conflate broadband availability with broadband access," MMTC says.

MMTC says when the FCC looks at the "other quality of service metrics" that must be equitably provided, according to Congress, it should look at procurement, transactions and advertising policies.

The group also says the FCC needs to act with dispatch. "All told, it may be several years before final rules in this proceeding become effective, unless the Commission acts expeditiously," it warns. "It is important to complete this rulemaking with a sense of urgency, as it will create important protections for those who are being left behind as the world moves more and more online."

How quickly the FCC can act is somewhat circumscribed by process requirements, including vetting the responses to its inquiry, then deciding on whether to proceed on a rulemaking, which must then be noticed and public comment solicited, as MMTC recognizes. Then there is the Office of Management and Budget, which must review and sign-off on any rules that require additional data collection. ■

Broadcasters are pushing back hard on the Federal Communications Commission’s potential restoration of the mandate that broadcasters file data on the diversity of their workforces and that the data be available to the public, including by blaming Big Tech for some of broadcasting's diversity recruiting problems.

The annual collection of Form 395-B data on workforce composition (race and gender) has been in limbo for two decades. The filing of the form was suspended in 2001 following an appeals court decision vacating part of the FCC's Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) requirements. Even though the FCC in 2004 revised the regulations on filing the form, broadcasters still did not have to file it due to unresolved issues about data confidentiality, issues the FCC is trying to resolve under chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

In a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) issued last July, the FCC said it wanted to “refresh” the record on Form 395-B data collection and related ”legal, logistical and technical issues” of potentially lifting the suspension.

But according to an ex parte filing at the FCC, executives from the National Association of Broadcasters, accompanied by 40 broadcasters — general managers, owners and others — from large and small companies and markets met with staffers for all the commissioners to push back on reinstating the form.

The broadcasters said they are all for improving diversity, but said restoring the form “would do nothing to help achieve this aim, and in fact, could distract the FCC and industry from more effective actions.”

They suggested one of those actions would be for the FCC to “boost interest” in TV and radio jobs given that broadcasters already were doing “everything in their power to attract and retain diverse talent” against a Big Tech industry draining the workforce.

“Several broadcasters described the hurdles they face in trying to attract a diverse pool of qualified job candidates, or for that matter, any pool of qualified applicants,” the broadcasters told the FCC. “In their recent experience, many job applicants — regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender — are more interested in working for one of the Big Tech companies or some other outlet they perceive as more relevant or cutting-edge, and that typically can afford to pay higher salaries.“

The NAB has also argued to the FCC that the form would pressure broadcasters to give preferential treatment to candidates of a particular gender or race.

Taking quite a different view of the issue was the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), which had its own meeting last week with FCC officials.

MMTC took issue with some of the broadcaster pushback, saying that while “career-building opportunities that extol the benefits of broadcast employment are useful, they are not a substitute for enforcement of the EEO Rule.”

While the broadcasters told the FCC that they “already do everything in their power to attract and retain diverse talent,” the MMTC didn't see it that way. “[N]o amount of career enthusiasm can overcome the ill-will of an employer who chooses not to recruit or equally employ people of color or women,” the group said.

As to the suggestion the form would force broadcasters into unfair hiring practices, the MMTC said: “The reporting of EEO data — whether anonymously or publicly — does not ’pressure‘ licensees to hire preferentially on the basis of race or gender.” ■

Diversity groups want the FCC to start now to bake equity into 6G wireless and they have their own five point plan for how to get that done, including extending the cable procurement rule to "all FCC-regulated technologies' and setting benchmark percentages of contracts that must go to minority and women-owned firms.

That comes after acting FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said at the 20th Americas Spectrum Management Conference earlier this month that given the issues with 5G, from the need for midband spectrum to global standards to supply chain security, it was already time to start "serious thinking about "how we can better
position ourselves for success with 6G."

In a letter to Rosenworcel Monday (Nov. 8) a copy of which was obtained by Multichannel News, the groups, led by Multicultural Media, Telecom & Internet Council and including Rainbow PUSH, the NAACP and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, cited her speech and said given that equity planning for 5G--rural access, homework gap, affordability--"started late," the FCC should get out in front of the issue for the next generation.

"Considering the fact that minority procurement is now federal policy, and as it contemplates the delivery of 6G, MMTC is joining with [other] organizations to urge the FCC to take these five steps to ensure the delivery of affordable and accessible services to communities of color..."

The steps are:

1. "Include a diverse contingent of engineers and demographers on the Technological Advisory Committee.

2. "Direct the Communications Equity and Diversity Council (CEDC) to develop a plan for the training and inclusion of small, minority, and women-owned contractors in the 6G rollout.

3. "Provide the Office of Communications Business Opportunities (OCBO) with the personnel and resources it will need in order to conduct technical and entrepreneurial training for the 6G opportunity.

4. "Set a specific benchmark for 6G’s deployment contracting for MBEs [minority business enterprises] and WBEs [women business enterprises] such as was done in Atlanta, which set a goal of 25% for airport contracts."

5. Grant MMTC’s proposal to extend the highly successful Cable Procurement Rule to all FCC-regulated technologies. Adopted in 1993 in the wake of the 1992 Cable Act, the Rule requires cable operators to “encourage minority and female entrepreneurs to conduct business with all parts of its operation; and...analyze the results of its efforts to recruit, hire, promote, and use the services of minorities and women and explain any difficulties encountered in implementing its equal employment opportunity program.”

MMTC has long pushed the FCC to extend the cable contracting rule to broadcasters.

Various groups have teamed up to ask the FCC to clarify how it plans to insure that 1) its upcoming 5G mobile broadband subsidy program will accommodate needy areas other than rural, and better insure 2) that diverse contractors have a chance at the money.

Related: FCC Proposes $9 Billion 5G Fund

That came in a petition for partial reconsideration filed by the 5G Fund Supporters, which includes the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, Rainbow-PUSH and the NAACP. They want the FCC to reconsider parts of its "Establishing a 5G Fund for Rural America, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Order."

The FCC on Oct. 27 approved the final framework for giving out $9 billion in rural broadband deployment funds and it will not be handed out before the FCC collects better broadband deployment data. But at the request of commenters including MMTC, it agreed to expand the program beyond rural to other needy areas not necessarily fitting that geographic definition.

Related: FCC to Vote on Rural Broadband Funding Framework

"We laud the Commission for abandoning its reliance on 'rurality' in favor of an 'adjustment factor' that will prioritize historically underserved or unserved areas," the petition read. "However, on reconsideration, we believe the Commission should explain, prior to the pre-auction phase, 1) how the 'adjustment factor' will provide adequate prioritization to ensure that historically underserved or unserved areas will receive support in the Phase I auction based on need, low wealth, persistent poverty, and the digital divide; and 2) require that applicants for 5G Fund subsidies broadly disseminate contracting opportunities to ensure that diverse contractors have an opportunity to compete for contracts awarded under the Fund."

On the issue of insuring diverse contractors get a shot at the money, the petition points out that the FCC's Cable Procurement Rule "requires MVPDs to broadly disseminate notices of contracting opportunities when issuing major contracts." They want the FCC to extend that to the 5G fund participants, or what it calls "regulates that use other technologies besides cable and satellites."

The FCC declined to do that in the Report and Order, but the groups want it to rethink that decision. 

The FCC will use a two-phase, multi-round reverse auction to give out the money in two phases. It will also use what it expects to be improved maps of where broadband is and isn't, based on its new Digital Opportunity Data Collection initiative.

Phase I will target up to $8 billion of support to areas "lacking unsubsidized 4G LTE or 5G mobile broadband, with $680 million specifically set aside for bidders offering to serve Tribal lands."

The broadband must be at least 35 Mbps downstream/3 Mbps upstream, and there will be build-out benchmarks.

The FCC also said the money would not be used to overbuild the 90% of the country where T-Mobile has pledged to build out broadband to rural areas, a commitment that was part of the FCC's agreement to allow the merger with Sprint. Phase II will hand out at least $1 billion--"at least" because it would include any unawarded phase I funds--targeting 5G for precision agriculture.

The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council is hoping to drive some donations to the cause of media diversity on Giving Tuesday (Dec. 1).

In an e-mail to potential supporters, the group featured videos of past fellowship winners. For example, MMTC 20018 Fellow attorney Danielle Davis (pictured above) says that thanks to MMTC she was able to "find her passion" at the intersection of civil rights, technology and the law."

MMTC tied its request to the launch of MMTC's 35th anniversary, saying that now, more than ever, there is "an urgent need for a pipeline of workers, students, and professionals who can address the lack of diverse representation and thought leadership in the tech, media, and telecom (TMT) industries."

MMTC is looking to expand its fellowship and social justice and digital equity programs. Its sponsors include a diverse group, from NCTA-the Internet & Television Association, Disney and Nexstar to USTelecom, Dish and Apple.  

The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, joined by more than two dozen national organizations, said the FCC should make sure that the initial tranche of its $9 billion in rural 5G subsidy funding, if it breaks out that way, goes to help those furthest from digital equality, which includes impoverished African American and Hispanic communities. 

That was in comments filed with the FCC, which asked for input on how it should structure the program. 

The groups, collectively 5G Fund Supporters," said that means that the FCC should prioritize funding according to poverty, not population density. 

It recommended that the FCC "adopt a rollout schedule under which economically depressed rural communities of color--the communities most in need of fast broadband--will be among prioritized first for high-cost support and buildout." 

The FCC 5G proposal pulls the plug on the $4.5 billion Mobility Fund Phase II program and instead creates a 5G Fund that would put up to $9 billion toward Universal Service Fund support for 5G mobile wireless in rural areas to help close the digital divide. 

The commission is seeking comment on whether it should start giving out the money before it collects new data on mobile broadband access (option A), which a majority has issues with, or B, which is to wait until more granular data mandated by Congress is collected. 

In any event, MMTC wants the FCC to insure robust and meaningful participation by women and minorities. 

The FCC has been migrating its phone subsidy program to broadband, and is now going to migrate its Mobility Fund Phase II (MF-II) subsidy program to focus on the next generation of wireless technology, 5G. That's because the FCC said the carrier data that was supposed to help the FCC target that Mobility Fund money could not be relied on. 

That new 5G rural subsidy will be in the form of a two-phase reverse auction, which means bidders vie for money according to how inexpensively they could get the job done while meeting various service benchmarks. 

Phase I will give out up to $8 billion for areas unlikely to see deployment without that money, including tribal lands. Phase II would give out $1 billion focused on ranches and farms for precision agriculture, which has been an avowed priority of President Trump. 

MMTC said the FCC needs to make sure its designated entity program--which provides bidding credits for WMBEs--fosters participation. "It is important for consumers and competition that the Commission maintain a robust and meaningful commitment to WMBE participation in the future 5G Fund reverse auctions." 

That includes conferring with DE's to address any de facto control concerns at the outset. 

Among the groups commenting were the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB), the National Urban League and the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition.

MMTC, the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, is giving new voice to issues surrounding social justice. 

MMTC president Maurita Coley said that the idea behind the new online publication, which was prompted by the recent protests, is to use the group's platform to bring awareness of the impact of racial justice issues on tech, media and telecom. 

It will include resources on inclusion efforts as well as reflections from a diverse group of professionals. 

Volume 1, issue 1, leads off with a piece by former FCC commissioner Tyrone Brown, who was the first law clerk to a Supreme Court Justice (Earl Warren), about police brutality. 

"For 400 years, the principal assignment of law enforcement in places inhabited by large numbers of Blacks has been to keep the Blacks underfoot," he writes. "In the slave-holding South, it was a job performed by men who did not themselves own slaves. That assignment, keeping Blacks down, came North in earnest with the mass migration of African Americans to northern cities in the first half of the 20th Century. This particular element of slavery infected police forces all over. And criminal justice professionals - district attorneys, even judges - manipulated 'justice' to support oppressive police action. 

"Policemen, in the institutional - not the individual - sense, are not alone at fault. They have been doing what America for four hundred years has told them to do. That ill-guided woman in Central Park, calling the police to put down a Black man who merely disagreed with her, revealed the face of what America has told the police it expects from them in dealing with Black men and youths." 

The Multicultural Media, Telecom & Internet Council has asked the FCC to finally grant the bidding credits denied SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless in the AWS-3 auction more than five years ago. 

MMTC has been pushing for resolution for several years now. It says the holdup has prevented new affordable broadband competition. 

"The Applicants have shown how effectively and quickly their AWS-3 spectrum can be used to provide broadband services to U.S. consumers," MMTC said in a letter to the FCC dated Friday, June 12. "Yet they have also explained how the lack of action on their applications has prevented them from engaging in definitive business planning. With their status as potential competitive entrants in regulatory limbo for over two years, it is objectively clear that this process has stalled the Applicants’ ability to introduce the type of additional competition into the market that would make broadband access more ubiquitous and more affordable." 

Getting broadband to as many people as possible is a prime directive for the FCC in the new, stay-at-home normal of COVID-19. 

MMTC did not invoke the current national reckoning over racial inequality, but that was a definite subtext. It said another reason to act was that the companies are "two of the most successful minority-controlled bidders in the history of the FCC’s spectrum auction program. Minority participation in the communications industry is essential to ensuring that historically marginalized and disadvantaged communities are represented in and benefit from telecommunications." 

The letter came only a day after the FCC's diversity committee stated flatly that systemic racism does, indeed, persist, making the FCC's goal of diversity in communications that much more important. 

Related T-Mobile Says FCC Must Penalize Dish, DE's

The FCC had denied the companies designated entity (DE) bidding credits, a way to encourage minority participation in spectrum auctions. 

The two companies teamed with Dish Network to acquire $10 billion worth of spectrum licenses in the AWS-3 auction. But the FCC subsequently concluded that Dish's majority financial interests in the companies were controlling interests that should be attributable to Dish, which meant the companies were ineligible for the $1.9 billion (Northstar) and $1.4 billion (SNR Wireless) bidding credits they had applied for. 

Related: Court Upholds FCC Nixing of Dish-Related AWS-3 Credits

The credits would have lowered their bid to $10 billion, but the companies said they could not pay for all of the licenses, so instead the paidg full price for some and turned back others, which the FCC allowed them to do.  

A federal court in August 2017 upheld the finding that Dish exercised de facto control, but also held that the FCC, under then chair Tom Wheeler, failed to notify the companies that if the FCC found they did not qualify for the credits, worth billions of dollars, the FCC would not give them a chance to cure that problem and instructed the FCC to correct. 

The FCC under new management and in response to the court remand, told the companies to renegotiate with Dish and other parties and file the necessary documents to show they now qualify for the credit, which they ultimately did. 

"It has been more than five years since the conclusion of Auction 97 and more than two years since the Applicants, two minority-controlled businesses, submitted revised applications, removing all concerns about their independence from their strategic investor, DISH Network Corporation," MMTC said. "Accordingly, the applications are ripe for grant." 

The Multicultural Media, Telecom & Internet Council is taking strong issue with broadcaster arguments that the FCC's EEO enforcement regime is burdensome as it is, does not need beefing up, and may even need loosening up. MMTC didn't even even respond to cable operator's arguments, though it gave that industry some credit for progress on diversity. 

That came in reply comments to the FCC on its inquiry into its EEO enforcement framework and MMTC suggestions for beefing it up. 

State broadcaster associations (STBAs) in their comments pointed to the lack of EEO actions against broadcasters, but MMTC turned that against the arguments for less regulation.  

Related: FCC Sends MVPDs Latest Round of EEO Audit Requests 

MMTC said STBA's assertion that the FCC “has not found a single broadcaster to have engaged in discrimination since the advent of the first EEO rule in 1969" is far from a clean bill of health. 

Instead, MMTC said, it is "a damning indictment of the agency’s enforcement program." 

That is because it said it is not conceivable that the broadcasting industry with its thousands of employees is the only industry in the nation whose work force contained " no racial or gender discriminators for the past 50 years." 

Related: FCC Extends EEO Comment Deadline 

It said the fact that no one ever got prosecuted, much less found to be liable for violations, is hardly an argument for weakening "the obviously insufficient EEO compliance program in place now." 

As to cable, MMTC did respond to the comments in a footnote: "We do not agree that additional requirements are unnecessary, especially as applied toward eliminating intentional discrimination. But the NCTA’s position [about cable's demonstrated commitment to diversity] is not unreasonable, and its support for the rule is appreciated. For over 30 years, the NCTA has exercised considerable moral leadership in leading its industry into nearly full compliance." 

Under a remand by a federal court, the FCC is required to consider the impact of its policies on broadcast diversity when undertaking its upcoming quadrennial review of media ownership rules, now an even stronger mandate with the court's decision two weeks ago to vacate earlier media deregulation by the FCC under chairman Ajit Pai because the FCC failed to adequately gauge that impact, though that was primarily about diverse ownership rather than employment. 

Before that recent court smackdown, Pai had signaled he had no plans to re-institute the form 395-B data collection of the racial makeup and gender of broadcast staffs, as Democrats have pushed for, but suggested he is not alone in his issues with that form. 

It has been well over a decade since the FCC collected information from broadcasters on the gender and diversity of their staffs--stretching over Republican and Democratic administrations--a point the FCC's Democratic commissioners made back in February when the FCC voted to eliminate an EEO reporting form. 

The holdup has been whether or not to keep that info confidential, with the data collection suspended since 2004. The Dems on the commission said that should have been resolved by now and the form reinstated, before the FCC weighs in again on diversity, as Pai had signaled it will do in the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on EEO. 

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said it is time for minorities to be able to frame their own stories rather than have their experiences filtered through a media that does not reflect them in front of or behind the camera.

"We don't have the voice of our own media at the national level to provide perspective," Clarke said at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council 14th annual Access to Capital and Telecom Policy Conference in Washington Thursday (July 14), where she talked about the news reporting on the police shootings of unarmed black men.

She said that social media has provided one means of not having to view the stories "through the lens of others."  But she also said it should not be the case that people have to "tweet it out" in order to "plead our case."

That is why there needs to be diverse media owned and operated by people "who look just like us," Clarke said. "We can't go to those who have marginalized it for so long to present our story. It just won't work."

Clarke in May formed the Multicultural Media Caucus to promote greater representation of minorities in the media.

Also weighing in at the conference was Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Calif.). He said communications was the people’s space, not corporate America’s, adding that those corporations should reflect the diversity of their audiences, but don’t. He said Congress’s job was to hold up a mirror to that fact.

Leadership of the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), which advocates for minority media ownership, praised Dan Brenner Wednesday (Feb. 17) as a champion of media diversity.

Brenner, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge and former head of legal for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, was struck and killed by a car in Los Angeles this week.

“Dan was a highly respected colleague and mentor to many of us at MMTC, and a powerful voice and advocate for minorities in the communications industries over many years,” said MMTC president Kim Keenan. “His spirit will live on through the momentous work he achieved in his lifetime.”

MMTC president emeritus and special advisor David Honig called him "one of the strongest voices in the industry for civil rights and minority participation in cable."

Brenner had served on MMTC's Policy Committee and its New Internet and Telecom Policy Task Force. "We have truly lost a great one," said Honig.

More than 40 organizations have written to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Harry Reid asking the Senate to pass the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA), which would make permanent a long-standing ban in all but a few states on taxing Internet access service.

The bill has already passed the House--and the Senate Judiciary Committee--and a temporary renewal of the ban has been extended through the end of September, but a Senate version, which was added as a rider on a trade bill, that bill did not pass.

In part that was because some Democrats, particularly in those handful of states whose grandfathered ISP taxes would be phased out, complained of the last-minute maneuver and said the bill should be paired with the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA), which allows for local taxation of online purchases and they suggest could help compensate for the loss of the ISP tax in their states.

Republicans strongly back IFTA, but not so much the MFA.

"Numerous studies continue to show that cost remains an obstacle to Internet access and, if taxes on the Internet go up, even fewer people will be able to afford to go online," the letter said. "This would impede our nation’s long held goal of universal Internet access."

The groups included the Multicultural Media, Telecom & Internet Council, the National Association of Black County Officials, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the National Black Chamber of Commerce and others and made the point that ITFA "plays a critical role in helping to keep the cost of

Internet access affordable."

"If we are to make Internet use ubiquitous, then we must have the certainty of a permanent ITFA," MMTC President Kim Keenan said in a statement. "We should accept nothing less than policies that make the Internet affordable for all Americans. This is the only path to digital equality."

A spokesperson for another signatory to the letter said they are afraid that the permanent ITFA will be held hostage to MFA.