Reporting

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve a bill that would weaken Section 230 protections to ensure social media companies remove child abuse imagery from their platforms. The EARN IT Act is intended to curb the spread of child abuse images on social media, but has undergone a number of significant changes on its way to a full Senate vote.

Sprint’s legacy 5G service using 2.5 GHz has been deactivated as T-Mobile continues work to reconfigure, test, and re-deploy the coveted mid-band spectrum into its new integrated 5G network. Sprint’s 5G service is no longer available, except to customers who have a Galaxy S20 5G that works on T-Mobile’s 5G network. The 2.5 GHz Sprint network deactivations, while necessary, do present a change for some legacy Sprint 5G users. Namely, it's those who were early adopters and purchased first-generation 5G smartphones from the carrier, including a Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, LG V50 ThinQ, or OnePlus 7

The COVID-19 outbreak has magnified troubles many rural areas face without high-speed broadband. With more than $6.6 million in federal CARES Act relief funds allocated to Somerset County, officials said they plan to use half of the total toward their broadband initiative, which has been a top goal for years. President Commissioner Gerald Walker said extending high-speed coverage to 85% of the county is expected to cost more than $8 million. Board members said their $3.5 million would go a long way toward that.

The House on Wednesday passed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill, the Moving Forward Act, that would sharply increase spending on roads and transit, push for deep reductions in pollution, direct billions to water projects, affordable housing, broadband and schools, and upgrade hospitals and US Postal Service trucks. The bill pours more than $300 billion into repairing bridges and roads, $130 billion into schools that educate low-income children, more than $100 billion into building or preserving affordable housing and $100 billion into expanding broadband internet access.

Senate Democrats are attempting to add their distance learning E-Rate funding bill to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) have proposed their Emergency Educational Connections Act as an amendment on the bill. The bill would ensure that all K-12 students have access to "adequate" home broadband connectivity and devices during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill would clarify that E-rate could be used for equipment and service at "locations other than the school."

Cyberspace is ruled today by the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu—a small handful of the biggest companies on earth. But  it is clear that a desire for revolution is brewing. “We’re taking the internet back to a time when it provided this open environment for creativity and economic growth, a free market where services could connect on equal terms,” says Dominic Williams, Dfinity’s founder and chief scientist.

The mass migration to remote work helped companies solve a major coronavirus challenge, but the recent civil unrest has exposed diversity and opportunity gaps across the U.S., which telecommuting is beginning to exacerbate. Low-income students and students of color entering the workforce are struggling to overcome a telecommuting digital divide. The data is starting to back up the personal experience.

A year after protesters in Hong Kong jubilantly defied Chinese rule, the national leader, Xi Jinping, has opened a long-term counteroffensive in the territory, signing a sweeping new security law that sets obedience to Beijing above the former British colony’s civil freedoms.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) took to the House floor to talk up the massive Moving Forward Act infrastructure bill, including its $100 billion in funding for broadband buildouts he says will close the digital divide. The $1.5 trillion-plus bill would allocate billions to subsidize broadband competition--including from municipal providers--in "underserved" areas which could mean where service is already provided by private capitol at just short of gig speeds.  "T

Hours after President Trump’s incendiary post about sending the military to the Minnesota protests, he called Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The post put the company in a difficult position, Zuckerberg told President Donald Trump. The same message was hidden by Twitter, the strongest action ever taken against a presidential post.