Susan Crawford

...Google Fiber, which is now officially called Alphabet Access, has since expanded across the state line to Kansas City, Mo. It has also added another eight cities and plans to build networks in two more. But last year, the company put all other expansion plans on hold. It hired a new CEO and laid off hundreds of workers, leading some watchers to speculate that Google might be getting out of the fiber business altogether...“People got all excited about Google Fiber, which was very useful, because it opened people’s eyes to the country’s need for world-class, cheap data. But Google Fiber was never going to reach every city in America, because it’s not in their company’s interest to build basic infrastructure,” says Susan Crawford, a Harvard University law professor who specializes in Internet and communications law.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. I’ve spent the last few months visiting scrappy cities all over America that are charting their own destinies. They’re planning for economic growth and social justice; they’re looking hard at the challenges they face, including workforce development and affordable housing; and no one I talk to mentions Donald Trump. What these cities have in common is that they treat fiber optic internet access as a utility, like water, electricity, sewer service, and their street grid: available to all, without discrimination, at a reasonable cost. That’s completely at odds with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plans for the country. And the tension between these two views is shaping up to be an explosive issue for the next presidential election.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. If there’s one thing that brings Americans together, it’s our hatred of the giant companies that sell us high-speed data services. Consumers routinely give Comcast, Charter (now Spectrum), Verizon, CenturyLink and AT&T basement-level scores for customer satisfaction. This collective resentment is fueled by the sense that we don’t have a choice when we sign up for their services. By and large, we don’t: These five companies account for over 80 percent of wired subscriptions and have almost total power in their territories. According to the Federal Communications Commission, nearly 75 percent of Americans have at most one choice for high-speed data.

Telecommunications policy has been in flux since President Trump designated Ajit Pai the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in January. How will issues such as expanding high-speed Internet availability and preserving net neutrality fare under the Trump administration? Harvard Law professor Susan Crawford has advised President Obama and two New York City mayors (Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio) on science, technology, and innovation policy. She also co-led the FCC transition team between the George W. Bush and Obama administrations and writes books and articles about telecom policy. She spoke to MIT Technology Review about the value of local community fiber networks, what she thinks the new FCC should do, and her predictions for the future of net neutrality.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. It’s good to be one of the handful of companies controlling data transmission in America. It’s even better — from their perspective — to avoid oversight. And it’s best of all to be a carrier that gets government to actually stop existing oversight. The stagnant telecommunications industry in America has long pursued the second of those goals — avoiding oversight, or even long-range thinking that would favor the interests of all other businesses and all other Americans over those of AT&T, Verizon, Charter, and Comcast — by proclaiming that there is something really magnificent coming any day now from the industry that will make anything regulators are worrying about irrelevant.

San Francisco Supervisor Mark Farrell has assembled a group of business, privacy and academic experts to discuss crucial, early-stage questions surrounding Farrell’s plan to wire the city with high-speed Internet service...Farrell will serve as the panel’s co-chair alongside Harvard Law School Professor Susan Crawford. Crawford, who teaches courses on municipal uses of technology, Internet law and communications law, worked as an assistant to the president for science, technology and innovation policy in Barack Obama’s administration and co-led the FCC’s transition team between the Bush and Obama administrations...Crawford called Internet access the “the key economic and social justice issue of the 21st century. Whether it’s educating kids, providing advanced health care, moderating our use of energy and making it possible for people to work where they live — all of that is going to be helped by a better, faster and far cheaper data network,” she said.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Just a handful of newsflashes have come home to me in such a way that I never forgot where I was when I heard them. Most were disasters, like the Challenger explosion or the attacks of September 11. In February 2010, I was sitting in my office in Ann Arbor when another event made the list — but this one surprised and delighted me. I cheered. Google had announced its fiber experiment, a plan to wire at least 50,000 homes with fast, bountiful connections. Finally, someone was going to try to unstick the monopolistic, stagnant, second-rate market for high-capacity internet access in the US.

Less than a month after being sworn in, Donald Trump has begun to destroy the Internet. Well, at least that seems to be the opinion of multiple Internet activists and politicians...Harvard law professor and Net neutrality advocate Susan Crawford likes the idea of Internet rate regulation.“The federal government should be requiring wholesale fiber networks to be available at reasonable prices throughout the country,” she told me. Crawford added that even if the agency didn’t actually set rates, the mere threat would keep Internet providers in line.

A broadband vision for the Berkshires crashed and burned one afternoon in December 2015. A year later, people still poke through the wreckage. They want to understand why the Massachusetts Broadband Institute halted its long-running alliance with WiredWest, a nonprofit, grassroots cooperative that had signed up dozens of towns to build and operate a shared internet network...Susan Crawford, a law professor at Harvard University who co-directs the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, says a change from backing municipally owned broadband networks to preferring private-sector solutions is “killing” the communities of Western Massachusetts. In a recent online commentary, Crawford came out swinging: “This is the story of a dramatic failure of imagination and vision at the state level: Governor Charlie Baker’s apparent insistence that Massachusetts relegate small towns to second-rate, high-priced, monopoly-controlled (and unregulated) communications capacity. It’s a slow-rolling tragedy that will blight Western Massachusetts for generations.”

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. When President Obama nominated Tom Wheeler as the 31st chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), some activists were wary because of his background as an advocate for cable and wireless interests. But as a friend of his, I was confident that he would be a strong leader, and he did not disappoint me. In fact, I consider Tom Wheeler the most consequential FCC chairman since the early 1960s, when a 35-year-old Newton Minow went to the Sheraton Park Hotel — to the lion’s den, the National Association of Broadcasters — and told those all-powerful broadcasters that they were supposed to be serving the public interest. For all the diversity of content that we have today, one can argue that in terms of concentrated power over communications, we’re not much different — four companies strive to dominate what we see and hear. As commissioner, Tom Wheeler told those four companies that they should be serving the public interest as well.

Tom Wheeler, the recently departed chairman of the FCC, took aim at an idea to streamline the agency, saying that it was a “fraud” to say that it was “modernizing” the agency and suggested that it is really a way for major internet service providers to escape substantive oversight. Speaking on Tuesday at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Wheeler was referring to reports that the Trump transition team was looking to restructure the FCC and move functions like competition and consumer protection to other federal agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. “It makes no sense,” Wheeler said at the event, moderated by Susan Crawford. “We are talking about 1/6 of the economy, but more importantly, we are talking about the networks that connect 6/6 of the economy.”

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. This is the story of a dramatic failure of imagination and vision at the state level: Governor Charlie Baker’s apparent insistence that Massachusetts relegate small towns to second-rate, high-priced, monopoly-controlled (and unregulated) communications capacity. It’s a slow-rolling tragedy that will blight Western MA for generations. The likely outcome: Only those plucky, scrappy towns that elect to build on their own will escape the grip of unconstrained pricing for awful service. The rest will fade into irrelevance. What new American generations will stay in a place that is essentially unconnected to the world? What new businesses and ways of making a living will emerge there? None and none.

During the campaign, Donald Trump railed against powerful corporations and promised to prevent blockbuster mergers like the proposed $85.4 billion deal between AT&T and Time Warner. That was then. Since the election, Mr. Trump has been decidedly less interested in constraining the power of big companies, especially those in the telecommunications industry...The Senate would have to confirm the Democratic appointee as it would Mr. Trump’s choices. Democrats ought to pick a strong consumer advocate who will use the position to speak out forcefully for more competition in the industry and common-sense approaches like net neutrality rules. Susan Crawford, of Harvard Law School, and Tim Wu, of Columbia Law School, are two experts who specialize in telecommunication issues and fit that bill. Proper oversight, equitable access to services and fair pricing in telecommunications ought to be bipartisan concerns.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. In January of 2014, three weeks after Bill de Blasio was sworn in as New York City Mayor, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton sent his first tweet. Bratton had just finished updating his staff about CompStat, a system he’d launched years before to follow crime spikes and allow police leaders to direct their resources accordingly...The action might seem slight, but inside the NYPD the tweet had significant impact. In the past, police were expected to refrain from sharing information with the public.

For communities hoping to expand broadband connectivity, President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for a major infrastructure spending bill could create huge changes, a panel of broadband pundits said...“This is a moment for the happy warriors of telecom policy to get out there and organize and be a part of the infrastructure deal for the Trump administration,” said Susan Crawford, Harvard University law professor and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. “As we build roads and bridges and tunnels, we can include fiber that’s open access. That’s what I’m dreaming of, and that’s where we need to go.”

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Those who urge progressive tech policy have no more ideas than anyone about how the surprise results of the 2016 election will affect the issues about which they care the most. But in one area, I see reason for hope. Donald Trump and his colleagues are reportedly warming to the idea of an infrastructure bank, although we don’t have much information about how that bank would operate. We do know that we don’t want the “third world” of today’s LaGuardia Airport — a talking point on which Trump and Vice President Joe Biden are in heroic agreement. I have some specific suggestions for how that bank (or a system of regional or state infrastructure banks) could genuinely drive economic growth in the US.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Why do companies merge? Presumably, in order to get ahead in a competitive marketplace. So here’s the unavoidable truth about the AT&T/Time Warner (TWX) megadeal: First, it’s not aimed at strengthening AT&T’s ability to compete in its current business — because the company faces no real competition. It’s quite happy in its current situation. Second, by entering into the business of originating as well as distributing content, AT&T’s incentive to favor that content over internet sources is hugely increased. The deal doesn’t make sense unless AT&T messes with video coming across its wires and wireless connections that might compete with the pay TV offerings (HBO and other TWX channels) and other high-capacity services that AT&T wants to sell.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. At the end of the recently-opened Expo Line in Los Angeles — and you’ll want to take that snazzy light rail, because the I-10 freeway running between downtown and the coast is one of the 10 most-congested roadways in the world — you’re in Santa Monica, California. You’re at the Colorado Esplanade stop, a stunning platform of pedestrian- and bike-friendly multi-modality that feels open and available. It’s just one of many great things about my hometown...And there is the city’s most recent source of civic pride: its street lights and traffic signal poles. Don’t laugh. I think of them as the Colorado Esplanade in the sky. No, I am not celebrating their function as providers of light. Their real power comes from a transformation — into neutral platforms that provide the tools of connectivity to everyone.

Facebook has been in talks for months with U.S. government officials and wireless carriers with an eye toward unveiling an American version of an app that has caused controversy abroad, according to multiple people familiar with the matter...U.S. Internet advocates have called on the Federal Communications Commission to regulate zero-rating under its net neutrality rules. The practice, they argue, risks tilting the online marketplace to benefit large, established firms, or the corporate partners of those firms. “Zero-rating is pernicious, unfair and unnecessary,” said Susan Crawford, a law professor at Harvard who has advocated for strong regulation of the broadband industry. Permitting the practice would simply enable “the gameplaying of companies who have a strong interest in maintaining the status quo.”