1. Monthly archive
  2. June 2018

June 2018

Rep Pallone to Introduce Bill to Ensure Immigrant Parents Can Contact Their Separated Children Free of Charge

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) announced the Compassionate Calling and Immigrant Family Reunification Act of 2018 to put an end to the abusive practice of charging detained immigrant parents extortionary rates to use the phone to either contact their children that have been separated from them and placed in detention facilities or to contact federal agencies to learn where their children are being held.

Highlights from Benton’s Four Decades: The Campaigns for Kids

It started with a cold call from the Ad Council to the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF). In 1996, the Ad Council, with more than $2 billion a year in donated media for public service advertising (PSA), decided to make a ten-year commitment to campaigns on behalf of children as the centerpiece of its work. To launch the initiative, the Ad Council was looking for a partner who could deliver a grassroots network and reinvent fulfillment for PSA campaigns in the digital age (replacing 800 phone numbers and brochures with multimedia websites to provide information and resources for action).

Can weakened California net neutrality bill be saved?

The author of California’s network neutrality bill, which was watered down by an Assembly committee recently, is holding his nose as it’s scheduled to be heard by another committee June 26.  As amended, SB 822 does not have the impact that CA State Sen Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) intended. “The bill, in its current form, no longer protects net neutrality and is not worth passing,” State Sen Wiener said. “However, I am working with the Chair of the Communications Committee, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, to restore the protections that the committee removed.” Wiener said.

Gov Walker (I-AK) rejects lawmakers’ request for executive order on net neutrality

Gov Bill Walker (I-AK) said in a letter to Alaska lawmakers that he would not issue an executive order to implement network neutrality rules for internet service providers that contract with state agencies. Lawmakers tried in the last legislative session to preserve such rules at the state level, as the repeal of such rules goes into effect federally, but the effort failed.

Lifeline offline: Unreliable internet, cell service are hurting rural Pennsylvania’s health

Even as businesses in Pittsburgh (PA) compete to commercialize artificial intelligence and give machines the human quality of “learning,” just a three-hour drive away people struggle with dial-up connections — if there are internet connections at all. More than 24 million Americans — 800,000 in Pennsylvania and mostly in rural areas — lack an internet connection that meets a federal minimum standard for speed. The result is a yawning divide in commerce, education and medicine that’s splitting America into the digital haves and have-nots.

© 1994-2024 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.