Susan Crawford

The prospects for a more competitive broadband market have grown grimmer of late, if it's even possible. Americans already have little, if any, choice when it comes to broadband providers...AT&T is also front in center in another fight aimed at forestalling competition: denying would-be competitors access to utility poles. Many cities do not have authority over their own poles, which are often controlled by utilities or the telecom companies. If a new service provider wants to move into an area and string fiber, it faces two bureaucratic nightmares: getting an agreement in place with the pole owners, and then getting the physical access to the poles to string a new wire. Susan Crawford calls these two sources of delays and spiraling costs Swamp One and Swamp Two. "A handful of companies  --  the usual villains in the internet access story  --  is very interested in keeping the status quo in place by quietly making sure that access to these vertical conflict zones is fraught with difficulties," Crawford says.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Lincoln made sure we had railroads; FDR made sure we had electricity; Eisenhower made sure we had highways. What U.S. president will make sure we make a national upgrade to competitive, last-mile-fiber-plus-advanced-wireless connections? The question has become even more vital after a disappointing recent court decision that gave the thumbs up to a tactic of big communications companies who, for business reasons, refuse to extend service to rural communities: they can continue to lobby for laws that prevent those communities from setting up their own networks.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. America, we have a problem, and it is tall, ubiquitous, and on the side of the road. It is poles. Not the polls that do or do not track the progress of Donald Trump. Not people of Polish extraction. Utility poles. Poles are the key to our future, because poles are critical components of high-speed fiber optic internet access. The lucky towns that have dominion over them have been transformed—take, for example, Chattanooga.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. I remember a May 1989 outdoor wedding in Los Angeles during which the perspiring officiant held up a copy of Newsweek. “The Race for Fusion,” the cover read. “Why The Stakes are So High.” It was the height of the frenzy about nuclear reactions at room temperatures, and the media was obsessing about how this “cold fusion” might solve all our energy problems. The minister said something about the marriage being a similar kind of miracle, and the crowd chuckled. I think of that wedding every time I hear the two syllables written as “5G.” Because when it comes to hype, “5G” is this year’s “cold fusion.”

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Last year, the European Parliament adopted a regulation aimed at protecting open Internet access. That seemed like good news, almost as uplifting as the recent D.C. Circuit decision that seemed to guarantee open access here in the states. Both actions seem to protect the consumer-friendly principle of net neutrality from its self-interested foes. But neither are enough in themselves.

America still lags behind other developed countries in internet service and availability. As of this year, according to the Federal Communications Commission, roughly 34 million Americans lack access to high speed internet, which the agency describes as having download speeds of at least 25 Mbps and upload speeds of at least 3 Mbps. But that number only tells part of the story. The vast number of those Americans lacking access live in small towns or rural communities, about 23 million people. That’s 39 percent of all rural residents in the country...Susan Crawford of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society says that large corporations don’t see it in their financial interests to connect smaller areas. “They are responding rationally to Wall Street, and Wall Street wants them to keep their profits up very high,” she said. “And for them, it’s not as profitable to run a wire to a remote, isolated area with a few houses in it.”

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. I live in an apartment. Chances are good that you do, too: Tens of millions of Americans live in apartment buildings, and in medium-to-large cities these structures account for between a quarter and a half of all housing units. More people are renting these days than ever before. And when you move into an apartment, you need the essentials: Water. Heat. And Internet access. Water and heat are regulated utilities. But when it comes to Internet access, people in apartments (called Multiple Dwelling Units, or MDUs) often have the worst of both worlds: all the limitations of a utility framework — no competition, no choices — with zero protections for consumers. That means unconstrained pricing. Network operators like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T, in cahoots with developers and landlords, routinely use a breathtaking array of kickbacks, lawyerly games of Twister, blunt threats, and downright illegal activities to lock up buildings in exclusive arrangements.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Welcome to Western Massachusetts: gently rolling hills, spreading trees, small and mid-size towns (many of them struggling), and adorable clusters of wood-frame houses pressing right up against the roads. It’s a place with a determined, gritty American sensibility. All very attractive. But the region is at risk of losing its younger generations and having its small towns fade even more fully into the past. Why? Because you can’t be part of the information economy in Western Mass: Tens of thousands of residents are forced to rely on satellite or awful DSL connections. Based on a thorough report out today from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the dismal Internet access story for Western Mass isn’t going to change any time soon.

Political disagreements have snarled plans to connect Western Massachusetts with high-speed Internet, but state officials could break the logjam by working with two dozen towns that want to build their own local broadband utility, Harvard researchers said Wednesday. The report from Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society highlights nagging gaps in Massachusetts’ modern Internet infrastructure, which researchers said “is fast becoming a basic need like electricity or water.”...Berkman researcher Susan Crawford, however, called the lack of progress in Western Massachusetts “embarrassing.” “This whole situation is a tragic political mess,” Crawford wrote in a blog post accompanying the study. “The real victims, as always, are the people whose day-to-day lives (and property values) are blighted by the absence of world-class connectivity in their homes and businesses.”

President Obama on Friday announced his support for opening the market for cable set-top boxes, singling out the devices in millions of homes as a clunky and outdated symbol of corporate power over consumers, as he introduced a broad federal effort to increase competition...“An industry that had previously been considered untouchable — the cable guys — is now subject to criticism from the president,” said Susan Crawford, a Harvard Law School professor who is a former aide to Mr. Obama. “This is like weighing in against Big Tobacco or Big Pharma.”

Mayor Marty Walsh announced Tuesday that Verizon will spend more than $300 million to bring its advanced fiber optic network to all corners of the city. The high speed Internet and cable television service has long-been available in many other Massachusetts communities. By connecting Boston, Verizon will now close a major gap in its service in the region...But some observers are skeptical. Susan Crawford, a Harvard Law School professor and director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said it’s unclear whether Fios will actually result in lower prices and better service because of the increased competition with Comcast. “It will take a lot of acts and enforcement activity by the Walsh administration to ensure that landlords allow Verizon to show up to ensure that two companies actually compete with each other, but kudos to them for taking this first step,” Crawford said. “The [Michael] Bloomberg administration took a very similar step a few years ago and it hasn’t led to complete coverage in New York City of competing high speed Internet access services. It may be that Boston will be able to do a better job.”

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. I’m looking forward to Tesla’s release of its mass-market Model 3 electric car next week. Owners love their beautiful Teslas, and this one will reportedly cost $35,000 before federal and state tax credits, meaning the net price could be less than the cost of an average American car. But my pulse rate is higher not because of the car itself, or even its pricetag. I’m excited because of what’s inside: a battery that can cost-effectively store enough energy to allow for hundreds of miles of travel. And an operating system that needs constant upgrades.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Every once in a while, President Obama removes his Law Professor in Chief hat and puts on his I Get Terrifying Briefings Every Day hat. Last week at SXSW, as he delivered general remarks about the encryption debate, he tried to sound reasonable and professorial: “We recognize that just like our other rights — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, et cetera — that there are going to be some constraints that we impose in order to make sure that we are safe, secure, and, uh, living in a civilized society,” he said, repeatedly making an embracing gesture with his palms. Symbolically keeping us safe, encircling us with his hands, the father of Malia and Sasha blinked a bit rapidly as he said this. The president must have known that the FBI was on shaky legal ground when he spoke in Austin this past week. But he had clearly decided well before getting on stage that he would side with the people telling him that the world is an increasingly terrifying place. Law would have to give way.

‘Everyone in Minnesota will be able to use convenient, affordable world-class broadband networks that enable us to survive and thrive in our communities and across the globe.” This vision for universal broadband access for Minnesota was forged by nearly 200 community leaders from across the state last November. It struck a chord. ...“Minnesota should be looking at the rest of the country in its rearview mirror,” said Harvard Law School Prof. Susan Crawford during our Border to Border Broadband conference in November. Crawford could see that Minnesota has many broadband heroes and that funding programs and public will are building, but we can and must do better, faster.

Susan Crawford in Backchannel: This week, Google launched what amounts to a religious war in American telecom land. In a surprising announcement, the Alphabet company known as Google Fiber said it would expand its high speed Internet access services to Huntsville, Alabama — but in a different way that it currently has started up operations in cities like Austin and Kansas City.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Late last month, CTC Technology & Energy, an independent consulting firm that had been retained by the state of Connecticut, released a report that included some shocking stories about business connectivity in Hartford, the capital of the state. Connecticut has the highest per capita income of all fifty states. Hartford is largely black (38%) and Hispanic (43%). Connecticut as a whole is mostly white (69%). CTC found that high-quality fiber and cable high-speed Internet access services did exist close to the business locations in Hartford that the firm visited. But close doesn’t mean connected. And the businesses CTC talked to said that they’d have to pay sky-high amounts to Comcast to get hooked up — and after that it would cost them enormous monthly fees to have a persistent connection.

If you thought the fight over net neutrality ended when the Federal Communications Commission issued its strong new “Open Internet” rules last year, think again. ...“The really big move is turning the Internet into the equivalent of a cable system, where it’s a managed network,” said Susan Crawford, a professor at Harvard Law School and an outspoken critic of the big broadband providers. “If Comcast and these guys get away with this, other carriers around the world will try to do the same thing.”  

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. In her recently released book, Dark Money, Jane Mayer painstakingly traces the startlingly successful efforts by Charles and David Koch and their conservative allies to use their billions to shape American policies. Mayer’s work pays special attention to state-level politics, and for good reason: For years, groups like ALEC, the State Policy Network, and (more recently) the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity have been focused on nullifying any progressive national policymaking through state legislation...Whether or not you agree with the overall policy goals of the Koch brothers, we have a democracy problem: At the same time that state legislative activity has gained in importance, the number of traditional news reporters covering statehouses has plummeted...The first step towards righting this asymmetry is access, and there’s a good idea out there you need to know about: State Civic Networks are state-based, non-profit, independent, nonpartisan, “citizen engagement” online centers, and they should exist in every state.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford: Surveying the landscape of internet access, one could be forgiven for a single dank conclusion: Winter is coming. We know that Big Cable’s plan for high-speed internet access is to squeeze us with “usage-based billing” and data caps, so as to milk ever-growing profits from their existing networks rather than invest in future-proof fiber optics. We are also seeing that Big Cable has won the war for high-capacity, 25Mbps-download-or-better wired internet access, leaving AT&T and Verizon to concentrate primarily on mobile wireless. Indeed, Big Cable’s share of new and existing wired-access subscribers has never been greater — cable got both all new net subscribers in the third quarter of 2015 and captured millions of subscribers fleeing DSL — and its control over this market is growing faster than ever.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. In Boston, September 1 is known as “Moving Day,” and it can be hell on wheels. On that day each year, more than half of the city’s leases turn over and students return to campus, disgorging thousands of moving vans into the streets at once. It’s an annual nightmare for residents and local officials charged with keeping the city running smoothly. But this year, something remarkable happened that not only took out much of the pain — it also showcased how technology can be successfully harnessed to address deceptively complex government customer service problems. The hero was Boston’s IT department, rising from its traditional roots to do what smart, connected corporations do all the time — employing cutting-edge tech to solve problems.