Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), co-chairs of the Senate Broadband Caucus, reintroduced the Measuring the Economic Impact of Broadband Act. While the federal government measures the economic impact of many industries, it does not produce current, reliable statistics on the economic impact of broadband on the US economy.
The tussle over "network neutrality" started 20 years ago in Portland (OR). Today, Portland and its region are poised to be Ground Zero for resolving the real issues behind public concern over “net neutrality”—the stagnant, uncompetitive, hopelessly outclassed state of internet access in America. Portland is taking seriously the idea of a publicly overseen dark-fiber network over which private providers could compete to offer cheap, ubiquitous internet access.
If your cable operator invites you to dump its TV service and switch to online streaming, its internet rates may hide a surprise that will be painful to you and profitable to your internet provider. Data caps limiting how much you can download per month are an unpleasant reality at too many providers, but small cable services can be significantly less generous with them. Those same companies also have the hardest time keeping programming costs in check and increasingly lose money on video.
Apparently, Facebook has told the Federal Trade Commission it is willing to submit to greater oversight of its data-collection practices — from the launching of new services to the decisions of its top executives — in order to end a wide-ranging federal probe into a series of privacy abuses that came to light in 2018. The changes would accompany a record-breaking, multi-billion-dollar fine that the FTC has considered levying against Facebook. Under such a settlement, Facebook would have to complete a more rigorous privacy review of new products and services before launching them.
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