Most Recent Posts

This week figures to be a big one in the debate about how to regulate the Internet.

Yesterday the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission announced he'll try to overrule laws in two states that restrict community-owned broadband networks. Later this week, he's expected to propose exactly what President Obama asked for last year: reclassifying the Internet under regulations known in the parlance of telecom wonks as Title II.

"In plain English, I'm asking them to recognize that for most Americans, the Internet has become an essential part of everyday communication and everyday life," Obama said in November.

i

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, left, speaks Oct. 8 during new conference in Washington. Wheeler has spoken in favor of regulating Internet providers as public utilities, an issue the commission is expected to decide on this month. Jose Luis Magana/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Jose Luis Magana/AP

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, left, speaks Oct. 8 during new conference in Washington. Wheeler has spoken in favor of regulating Internet providers as public utilities, an issue the commission is expected to decide on this month.

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Big cable and phone companies warn that would stifle investment and cost consumers more, but the truth may be more complicated.

This policy shift, which the FCC is expected to vote before the end of the month, is what many Internet companies and public interest groups say is what the commission needs to do to stop broadband companies from charging extra to get information to consumers faster. But phone and cable companies warn that Title II would be a disaster.

"These regulations that we're talking about are public-utility-style regulations, and this industry's moving fast," AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told an industry conference in November. "And if you can't bring new products to service at your speed, not the government's speed, why would you ever make these investments?"

Broadband industry executives have told the same story on Capitol Hill. But Fran Shammo, the chief financial officer of Verizon, seemed to go off script when he was asked about Title II at an investor conference in December.

"To be real clear, I mean, this does not influence the way we invest," Shammo said. "We're gonna continue to invest in our networks and our platforms. Nothing will influence that."

The differing messages don't necessarily result from a difference of opinion, but a difference of audience, says Susan Crawford, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

"When they're talking to Wall Street, they say different things than when they're talking to the press about what the FCC might like to do," she says. "They trot out these really simple and nonsensical platitudes, like 'regulation inevitably leads to lower investment.' That's just not true."

All Tech Considered

3.7 Million Comments Later, Here's Where Net Neutrality Stands

Net Neutrality Debate Forces FCC Chairman Into The Spotlight

3 min 56 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

Half The Battle Over Net Neutrality Is Defining What It Means

4 min 36 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

The phone and cable industries also have warned that Title II could lead to billions of dollars in new taxes on consumer's broadband bills, but Open Internet advocates say those claims are wrong.

They also argue that Title II and robust investment can coexist, pointing to the success of the wireless phone industry, which is regulated in part under Title II. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said that cell companies have been "monumentally successful" under Title II regulations, noting they made billions in investment under that system.

In theory, reclassification would give the FCC broad powers — including the ability to cap the price your Internet provider can charge. Wheeler has hinted that the commission won't actually try to use that power, but the mere threat of price regulation is enough to scare Wall Street, says Paul Gallant, an industry analyst at Guggenheim Partners.

"The uncertainty that Wall Street has, though, right now about Title II is a little bit overdone," he says. "I don't think there's any real prospect that the FCC will end up regulating prices. I just don't think is a realistic fear."

Still, Gallant says phone and cable companies might find it harder to borrow money under Title II, which could in turn could be a drag on investment in their networks.

But Michael Powell, a former chairman of the FCC who now heads the cable industry's trade group, said the the question is one of degree.

"All hyperbole aside, the issue isn't whether people will invest — of course they will, they have businesses to run," Powell said. "The real question is, will it be at a diminished and dampened level compared to the velocity and ambitions that the country has?"

Amid the disputes about customer bills and pace of investing, however, one thing is viewed as an absolute certainty: Big phone and cable companies almost certainly will take the FCC to court if the commission moves toward Title II, as anticipated.

innovation

Open Internet

telecom

Federal Communications Commission

Net neutrality

AT&T

Verizon

Internet

The Academy Awards are coming this month and if you're still trying to see all the Oscar-nominated films, it may be easier to find them in China than the U.S.

A few weeks ago, the films flooded into the pirated DVD store down the street from my apartment in Shanghai. It happens like clockwork every year.

I asked T.J. Greene, an American executive who runs a small movie theater company here in China, to visit the store and explain what was happening.

There is nothing subtle about the store, which has a huge "DVD" sign on top and pipes music out onto the sidewalk. We strolled inside to find a dozen shelves worth of pirated DVDs. The front rack, visible from the street, was filled with all the Oscar hopefuls, including American Sniper, Selma and Birdman.

"Every single one of them is in perfect and nicely wrapped plastic and in great, great condition," Greene said, admiring the packaging. "You can even read the synopsis on the back."

"Before, if it was just a Hollywood cinema or a Warner Brothers cinema, there wasn't as much pressure to crack down, because it's foreign. But now it's having an effect on their own pocketbooks.

- T.J. Greene, executive of a movie theater company in China

A female clerk, who wore the store uniform, a bright yellow wind-breaker, assured Greene all the DVDs had high-quality pictures and audio.

"What happens if [there's] bad quality, can we bring it back?" Greene said to the clerk.

"OK, no problem," the clerk answered cheerily.

Greene is the CEO of Apex Entertainment, which has a cinema in the eastern city of Suzhou and is building nine more around China. He often checks out pirated DVD stores to gauge the competition.

After scanning the Oscar nominees, Greene asked about the latest Hunger Games film, which opened around the world in late November, but will only come to China this month.

"The copy not very well ... so you can wait," said the clerk. "Maybe after Chinese New Year, I have very good one."

As Greene chatted with the clerk, the store's enforcer, a Chinese man about six feet tall, continued to eye us from just a few feet away and frown. We decided to leave and head to my apartment to talk about what we'd seen.

All the Oscar-nominated movies in the store were copies of screeners, the DVDs sent to the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the nomination process. Greene says the copies could have come from factories that made the screeners or from the homes of members themselves.

Members are not supposed to show a screener to other people. "But, hey, this is the real world," Greene says. "It can easily get into the hands of others."

Related NPR Stories

Movie Reviews

To See Visual Dazzle In Oscar-Nominated Films, Go Short

Monkey See

At The Oscar Nominations, It's A Good Year To Be An Idiosyncratic Man

Online piracy in China remains a big problem, but DVDs on the streets have actually improved. When Greene arrived here in 2004, vendors across the city were still operating carts containing hundreds of DVDs each. Since then, authorities have run most street vendors out of business.

Greene says a big reason is the explosion of movie theaters in China.

When he came here, there were about 2,000 screens. Most of the theaters were rundown and had lousy sound systems. Today, there are about 25,000 screens, most state-of-the-art. Nearly all are locally or state-owned, which means China's government has a big incentive to protect them.

"Before, if it was just a Hollywood cinema or a Warner Brothers cinema, there wasn't as much pressure to crack down, because it's foreign," Greene says. "But now it's having an effect on their own pocketbooks."

That's probably one reason why the DVD store in my neighborhood didn't have a clean copy of the new Hunger Games movie. A pirated DVD of the movie would have eaten into potential ticket sales here over the last two months.

To protect domestic filmmakers, China only allows 34 foreign movies into the country each year. Greene says that's an even bigger problem than piracy, because it severely limits what Hollywood can show here and what audiences can legally see.

"This weekend, I went to Hong Kong and I was able to watch American Sniper," Greene says. "That film will never see the light of day here because of the quota system."

China says it will increase the foreign quota in two to three years. Until then, Greene says film fans here will have to keep going to pirated websites, or stores like the one in my neighborhood, to see some of Hollywood's best movies.

China

This story is part of the New Boom series on millennials in America.

As the economy continues to recover, economists are seeing stark differences between people with high school and college degrees. Four-year college graduates are nearly twice as likely to have a job compared to Americans who just graduated high school and stopped there.

But economists say that doesn't mean everybody needs a 4-year degree. In fact, millions of good-paying jobs are opening up in the trades. And some pay better than what the average college graduate makes.

Learning A Trade

When 18-year-old Haley Hughes graduated from high school this past summer, she had good grades; she was on the honor roll every year. So she applied to a bunch of 4-year colleges and got accepted to every one of them. But she says, "I wasn't excited about it really, I guess."

"The baby boom workers are retiring and leaving lots of openings for millennials."

- Anthony Carnevale, Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce

So instead of going that route, Hughes is taking a different path: an apprenticeship through the big New England power utility company NSTAR. In one of her recent classes at an NSTAR facility outside Boston, the classroom work was actually quite exciting.

Lara Allison is one of the instructors teaching Hughes and the other utility worker apprentices how to protect themselves if they're down under a manhole cover, in an underground electrical substation and something bad happens.

"An arc flash, that's the thing we worry the most about," Allison says.

An arc flash is a highly energized bolt of electricity, an explosion of electricity in a sense, that jumps from an energy source to another spot that's grounded or that the energy can flow into. Allison tells the students that if they wear the wrong clothing and they get hit by an arc flash, their clothes can catch on fire and get seared into their skin. "It's really, really hot," she says.

On her apprenticeship Hughes already has been down working in those underground substations.

"I loved it, it was great," she says.

Hughes says another thing that's great is that taking this path into the high-skilled trades is a lot cheaper than a 4-year college would have been.

$40,000 Vs. $2,400 Per Year

"The student loans would be ridiculous," Hughes says during a break from class. "The schools I was looking at ... were like $40,000 a year." In the long run she thought that was just too much.

By comparison, NSTAR is partnering with nearby Bunker Hill Community College. The students end up with a 2-year associate degree. Hughes has some scholarships and NSTAR pays some of the cost. It works out to about $1,200 a semester. Hughes says she's been paying that herself and so she expects to graduate with no debt.

Hughes is also getting a lot of on-the-job training and taking a wide range of courses at the community college: English, math, a computer science course and even a psychology group dynamics class. Then there are the classes directly related to power utility work: DC theory, AC theory, physics, engineering and business etiquette. Not bad for $1,200 a semester.

'Averages Lie'

At the NSTAR apprenticeship program, 90 percent of the students get jobs with the power utility at graduation. Starting base pay is about $58,000 a year.

On average, it is certainly true that people with a 4-year college degree make more money than those with a 2-year degree or less. But there is plenty of nuance behind that truth.

"Averages lie," says Anthony Carnevale, the director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

He says the problem with those averages is that people who work at Radio Shack or Target get lumped in with master carpenters and electricians.

"You can get a particular skill in a particular field and make more than a college graduate," he says. For example, he says the average electrician makes $5,000 a year more than the average 4-year college graduate. And the country is going to need a lot more skilled tradespeople.

Related NPR Stories

American Made: The New Manufacturing Landscape

In South Carolina, A Program That Makes Apprenticeships Work

U.S.

A Different Road To Work, Bypassing College Dreams

Economy

Manufacturing 2.0: Old Industry Creating New High-Tech Jobs

"The baby boom workers are retiring and leaving lots of openings for millennials," Carnevale says. He says there are 600,000 jobs for electricians in the country today, and about half of those will open up over the next decade. Carnevale says it is a big opportunity for that millennial generation born between 1980 and 2000.

With so many boomers retiring from the trades, the U.S. is going to need a lot more pipe-fitters, nuclear power plant operators, carpenters, welders, utility workers — the list is long. But the problem is not enough young people are getting that kind of training.

Not Enough Training

Utility apprentice Haley Hughes says she chose to work in the trades, in large part, because she went to a vocational high school. A lot of her friends are going into the trades. She got comfortable there with wiring light switches and doing basic electrical work and learning about the industry. But, there aren't nearly as many of these types of programs in high schools as there used to be.

"We made a mistake," Carnevale says. "Back in 1983, there was the 'Nation at Risk' report in which, quite rightly, we all were appalled at the quality of education in America."

After that, he says, most high schools focused on academics and getting students ready for college. For a lot of parents, they wanted their kids to have a 4-year degree. But Carnevale says, in the process "we basically obliterated the modernization of the old vocational education programs and they've been set aside."

Carnevale says we should bring those programs back and we need to be preparing a lot more young people for good, well-paying jobs in the trades. And he says that means we need better training programs at high schools and community colleges in partnership with businesses in scores of different industries around the country.

apprenticeships

Parents on the hunt for great kids' books get some help each year when the American Library Association gives out its youth media awards. On Monday, the association announced a long list of winners in a variety of categories. The two that get the most attention are the John Newbery Medal for most outstanding contribution to children's literature and the Randolph Caldecott Medal for picture book artistry. This year's Newbery went to Kwame Alexander's The Crossover, and the Caldecott went to Dan Santat's The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend.

The Crossover

by Kwame Alexander

Hardcover, 237 pages | purchase

Purchase Featured Book

TitleThe CrossoverAuthorKwame Alexander

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?

Amazon

iBooks

Independent Booksellers

Children's Books

Fiction

More on this book:

NPR reviews, interviews and more

Read an excerpt

Alexander says he couldn't sleep Sunday night knowing that he had a chance of winning the Newbery. "I know we hear that it is all about the journey, and it was," he says. "But I so wanted the journey to end in a really cool place."

His winning novel is a story about twin brothers who love each other and basketball in equal measure. Alexander knew a story about sports would attract reluctant readers, especially boys. And he wrote the novel in verse because he started out as a poet.

He says, "When I set about the task of trying to write a novel, of course I went with what I knew. And I said, 'Oh, well I know how to write poetry so I'm going to be able write a novel in poems pretty easily.'"

But it was a lot harder than he expected. He says he wanted to embrace a variety of forms so that kids would be introduced to different kinds of poetry, though he's surprised when he hears people describe some of the verse as rap.

"That's so funny," he says. "You know, I hear people say ... that there's rap in the book and of course, when I was writing it, there was no rap in my mind."

Book News & Features

8 Picture Books You Don't Have To Be A Kid To Love

The Adventures of Beekle is the story of an imaginary friend who goes in search of a child who needs him. Author and illustrator Dan Santat says, "I found it interesting that no one had ever taken the approach from the imaginary friend's point of view."

He remembers when his own son first went to school and worried about making friends. He says the book is really a gift to his son, and winning the Caldecott just makes the whole experience sweeter.

The Adventures of Beekle

The Unimaginary Friend

by Dan Santat

School And Library, 1 volume (unpaged) | purchase

Purchase Featured Book

TitleThe Adventures of BeekleSubtitleThe Unimaginary FriendAuthorDan Santat

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?

Amazon

Independent Booksellers

Children's Books

Fiction

More on this book:

NPR reviews, interviews and more

"I would have been perfectly fine knowing that my son would have been content growing up and maybe possibly having his own children and sharing the book and saying, you know, 'This book is a love letter from your grandfather to me.' But now it's going to have a sticker on [it] and now it can be shared, you know, with the world," he says. "It's beyond words. I'm thrilled."

Other winners announced on Monday include:

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (Coretta Scott King Author Book Award)

Firebird by Misty Copeland and illustrated by Christopher Myers (Coretta Scott King Illustrator Book Award)

Viva Frida by Yuyi Morales (Pura Belpr Illustrator Award)

I Lived on Butterfly Hill by Marjorie Agosn and illustrated by Lee White (Pura Belpr Author Award)

I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson (Michael L. Printz Award)

The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award)

Read an excerpt of The Crossover