March 2020

The Broadband Lifeline in a Pandemic: How Your Community Can Quickly Deploy Free Wi-Fi to Meet Urgent Needs at Public Housing and Other Locations

Over the past several days we have heard from numerous communities seeking guidance for delivering broadband to unconnected households as fast as possible to meet urgent, critical needs for remote work and education. Free community-provided Wi-Fi can be a lifeline during the pandemic. Given that the current crisis doesn’t seem like it will be short-term, a more robust alternative is to set up a Wi-Fi network for multi-dwelling buildings such as public housing developments. This approach needs to be customized for each building but would include the same key elements:

House Commerce Ranking Member Walden Calls on Wireless ISPs to Boost Hot Spot Data

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Greg Walden (R-OR) says wireless broadband providers need to do more to help families connect to broadband during the coronavirus pandemic. While he praised the efforts to date, including waiving overage fees and encouraged "all providers [to] temporarily make as much data available as possible, as quick as possible," he also called on them to provide more data for mobile hot spots during the Covid-19 crisis. "This is an unprecedented time, and wireless providers have already stepped up to the plate in a big way," he said. “But more can be done.

Facebook Is ‘Just Trying to Keep the Lights On’ as Traffic Soars in Pandemic (New York Times)

Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Tue, 03/24/2020 - 17:09

FCC to Hold March 31 Meeting By Teleconference (Federal Communications Commission)

Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Tue, 03/24/2020 - 17:09

Supreme Court rules states are immune from copyright law (Ars Technica)

Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Tue, 03/24/2020 - 16:21

YouTube to Limit Video Quality Around the World for a Month (Bloomberg)

Submitted by benton on Tue, 03/24/2020 - 16:20

The Justice Department and FTC Announce Expedited Antitrust Procedure and Guidance for Coronavirus Public Health Efforts (Department of Justice)

Submitted by benton on Tue, 03/24/2020 - 16:19

Chairman Pai Statement on the Broadband Data Act

I applaud the President for signing the Broadband DATA Act and thank the leadership of the Senate and House Commerce Committees for their bipartisan work in moving this legislation through Congress. The Act affirms the Federal Communications Commission’s approach to collecting more precise and granular broadband data through our new Digital Opportunity Data Collection program. At this point, it is vital for Congress to provide the FCC as soon as possible with the appropriations necessary to implement the Act.

Apple updates Safari’s anti-tracking tech with full third-party cookie blocking (Vox)

Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Tue, 03/24/2020 - 15:32

Twitter donating $1 million to journalism nonprofits amid coronavirus crisis (Twitter)