January 2020

Transforming Digital Dirt Roads

For an estimated 1.6 million rural residents in Georgia, high-speed internet access is nonexistent at home. “This is a community problem because it impacts our economic development, it impacts our skills, it impacts our education and healthcare,” says Steve Fortmann, founder, president and CEO of Paladin Wireless in Royston. “But the biggest thing [internet access impacts] is opportunity. Back in the 1800s, it was the railroad that connected you to the world and opportunities. Today it’s the internet.”

Sponsor 

Section 301 Committee

U.S. Trade Representative

Date 
Tue, 01/07/2020 - 15:30

The U.S. Trade Representative has completed the first segment of its investigation under section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and concluded that France’s Digital Services Tax (DST) discriminates against U.S. companies, is inconsistent with prevailing principles of international tax policy, and is unusually burdensome for affected U.S. companies. 



States will be the battlegrounds for 2020 tech policy fights

The tech industry's most consequential policy fights in 2020 will play out in the states, not Washington (DC). Momentum on a range of tech issues, from governing online privacy to regulating the gig economy, has stalled in DC as impeachment and election campaigns consume attention. State leaders and legislators are stepping in to fill the void. For example, California and Vermont are facing litigation over their attempts to impose their own net neutrality regulations after the Federal Communications Commission repealed the Obama-era open-internet rules. New York Gov.

Why internet stops once school ends for many rural California students

Only about a third of California households in rural areas are subscribed to internet service, compared with 78 percent in urban areas, according to an EdSource analysis of data from the California Public Utilities Commission. The divide between students who have access to internet and computers required to do assignments at home and those who don’t is known as the “homework gap.” And it threatens to slow down efforts to close the gap in educational opportunities between students in rural regions of California and their wealthier counterparts around the state.