Reporting

The Network Advertising Initiative, a national trade group representing the digital advertising industry, has advised member companies to put stricter controls on consumer mobile-phone location data they provide to government units such as public health authorities and law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

One of the US government’s strongest forces for internet freedom is in danger, and supporters are calling on the public for help. The Open Technology Fund (OTF), a small US organization devoted to protecting digital speech across the world, has helped support nearly all of the most prominent encryption projects at various points — including Signal, Tails, Qubes, and the Tor Project. But after the abrupt firing of the fund’s entire leadership team, current recipients say their contractually promised funding is now at risk.

Internet service providers' pledges to waive fees and forgive missed payments end on June 30, likely cutting off service for some families who can't pay their bills due to the economic impact of the pandemic. Congress hasn't included funding to pay for broadband bills in its previous COVID-19 packages.

So what if we treated the Internet like a public utility, as essential and ubiquitous as electricity or water, and piloted this in Detroit?  A team of Forbes Under 30 alumni hacked at this problem; their idea: Connectivity For All, a three-step pilot program that would be a public-private partnership to create a quick-to-implement, self-sustaining system to bridge the digital divide. The team quickly realized that parts of their solution had already been figured out by local organizations — the biggest issue was funding. With that in mind, the team dreamed up of tech hubs — physical communi

Charter Communications is asking the Federal Communications Commission to terminate the interconnection condition of its deal to acquire Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks on May 18, 2021 —  two years early — in light of the ”dramatic“ changes in the online video marketplace. The 2016 conditions were to last seven years, but the FCC allowed for the possibility of an early termination. Currently, Charter must ”offer to interconnect its IP network to any qualifying entity free of charge and on st

Three out of every four Americans who lack broadband access have the infrastructure in their neighborhood but haven’t connected to it. Most just don’t have the money. Unlike in other wealthy nations, the federal government has imposed no cost controls to make broadband more affordable.

In less than a month Maine will hold a Special Referendum election which includes a measure with significant ramifications for Internet access in the state. On July 14, Mainers will be asked to vote Yes or No on Question 1, a $15 million Internet Infrastructure Bond Issue designed to bring high-speed service to the approximately 85,000 households in unserved or underserved areas.

Several of the internet discount programs from the Keep Americans Connected pledge are set to end in the coming weeks — a looming expiration that, if left unaddressed, threatens to unravel a precarious thread of the social safety net at a particularly difficult time for many American families. Angela Siefer, the executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, said that although the school year is winding down, the need for access to the web — and the challenge of affording it — have not gone away.

School districts are beginning to craft their strategies for what teaching and learning will look like for the 2020-21 academic year and beyond. Despite widespread frustrations with the downsides of remote teaching and learning, many teachers are seeing how online learning can make it easier to move students in the same class at different paces and provide one-on-one feedback for struggling students, when they’re not all in the same physical space.

The House of Representatives is preparing to merge several typically unrelated bills into one massive "infrastructure" package, doling out more than $1.5 trillion for everything from roads to education, housing, clean water, broadband and more. Speaker Nancy Pelosi gathered the heads of some of the largest House committees to discuss their pieces of the legislation, which she called "Moving America Forward." She said she intends for the legislation, which contains a significant focus on green initiatives and climate resiliency, to pass the House before the July 4th recess. House Commerce Ch