Reporting

An interview with Francella Ochillo, executive director of Next Century Cities. Although discussion about broadband deployment has long focused on federal efforts, local governments and communities have been working to close the digital divide. The pandemic has exposed the many reasons why we simply can’t wait to achieve widespread broadband access and why local leaders are so important to helping us get there.

Ajit Pai’s four years atop the Federal Communications Commission outlasted many senior officials in the Trump administration where tenure was often measured in months. Some of that longevity owed to the independence of the commission, where Senate-confirmed officials are hard to remove during their terms. It also reflected Mr.

The Supreme Court waded into a two-decade long debate over the extent to which the Federal Communications Commission can relax media ownership rules. At stake are recent FCC moves toward deregulation, allowing the common ownership of a newspaper and broadcast stations in the same market, as well as giving more leeway for media companies to own more than one TV and radio outlet in the same city.

There are quite a lot of places in the United States where there is no wired or wireless internet connection. The Federal Communications Commission is currently in the first phase of creating more accurate maps to identify these unserved areas. Even if there are macro wireless towers in a rural area, those towers provide service to smartphones.

President-elect Joe Biden is set to have a very different relationship with the tech industry from when he served as vice president. Tech companies have grown more powerful over the past four years — and more perilous. They have continued to amass data and wealth. But they have been used as tools for election interference and disinformation, contributing to the divide in the nation.

The law firm Hagens Berman filed a lawsuit in a federal district court in New York alleges that a deal between Amazon and five major book publishers has led to higher e-book prices for all consumers, because it prevents rival retailers from selling any of these publishers’ e-books at a lower price than on Amazon.

In 2017, Facebook said it was testing a new way of selling online advertising that would threaten Google’s control of the digital ad market. But less than two years later, Facebook did an about-face and said it was joining an alliance of companies backing a similar effort by Google.

San Francisco-based analytics firm Zignal Labs has found that online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73 percent after several social media sites suspended President Trump and key allies.

Color of Change, a civil rights group, urged President-elect Joe Biden to choose Commissioner Geoffrey Starks to be the Federal Communications Commission's next chairman. Commissioner Starks is junior to fellow Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who took office in 2012 and is widely considered to be a leading candidate for the chair. She would be the first woman named FCC chair, other than a Mignon Clyburn who served as acting chairwoman in 2013. Commissioner Starks “has demonstrated and recently reaffirmed his commitment to digital equity,” Color Of Change President Rashad Robinson said.

Philadelphia is partnering with Verizon to overhaul its public computer centers and fund an initiative aimed at boosting digital opportunities for residents impacted by the digital divide. The partnership will rebrand the city's Keyspot computer centers as Keystone Innovation and Technology Centers.