Reporting

Senate Republicans rolled out a roughly $1 trillion coronavirus relief bill proposal. The Republican plan cuts the current federal $600 weekly unemployment supplement to $200 a week through September, when the payment will then combine with state benefits to replace 70% of previous wages.

A few thousand feet can feel much farther when that distance separates a house from the closest wired broadband – and the cost to extend connectivity reaches tens of thousands of dollars.

AT&T lost broadband customers in the second quarter of 2020, dropping from 14.05 million to 13.94 million. Fiber customers rose from 4.1 million to 4.32 million during the three-month period, but losses in the DSL category brought the total number of customers down.

Verizon saw a net gain of 10,000 consumer Fios broadband subscribers in the second quarter, even though it had to suspend many in-home installations because of pandemic restrictions. The Keep Americans Connected Pledge — waiving late fees and promising not to cut off service for customers who couldn’t pay during the pandemic —

During Apple’s annual developer’s conference in June, it announced that smaller developers would finally have access to its “Find My” app, a move that on the surface could appease developers who have asserted that Apple has too much power. It turns out the announcement was not what it seemed. Apple has placed strict restrictions on how consumers will be able to use the app. Apple customers who use Find My to locate a device will be barred from using other competing services simultaneously. The move is unusual, developers say.

US officials with the Department of Energy and scientists unveiled a plan to pursue what they called one of the most important technological frontiers of the 21st century: building a quantum Internet. They set goals for forging what they called a second Internet — one that would function alongside the globe’s existing networks, using the laws of quantum mechanics to share information more securely and to connect a new generation of computers and sensors.

The Senate Commerce Committee vetted the current state of spectrum policy and broadband availability at a July 23 hearing. There was general agreement that rural deployment was a problem and a priority, particularly during a pandemic; that the data on where broadband is and isn't — thus where the money needs to be put, or not — is flawed and needs fixing; and that sharing as well as clearing spectrum was important. 

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is reportedly fighting cellphone carriers over the right to send Americans unsolicited texts. The campaign’s lawyers are in active talks with phone companies after a third-party screening tool blocked President Trump texts in early July. The campaign alleges that screening the texts amounts to suppressing political speech, while carriers fear allowing them will result in fines for violating anti-spam rules.

Slack filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission, accusing the tech giant of using its market power to try to crush the upstart rival. Slack claims that Microsoft has illegally tied its collaboration software, Microsoft Teams, to its dominant suite of productivity programs, Microsoft Office, which includes Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. That bundling tactic, Slack contends, is part of a pattern of anticompetitive behavior by Microsoft. Slack’s complaint is just a first step. The European Commission must decide if a formal investigation is warranted.

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign filed defamation lawsuits against three of the country’s most prominent news outlets: The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Then it filed another suit against a somewhat lower-profile news organization: northern Wisconsin’s WJFW-TV, which serves the 134th-largest market in the country.