Friday, July 23, 2021
Libraries may be on the brink of a great mobilization to narrow the digital divide. The needs are there, and money is certainly available. If given creative reign with telehealth, great things can come from even the smallest of libraries in these areas:
AT&T executives hailed growing momentum in its fiber business after posting strong net additions in Q2 and predicted the pace of subscriber growth will pick up in the back half of the year as large swaths of new coverage come online. The operator added 246,000 consumer fiber customers in the quarter, more than offsetting non-fiber broadband and DSL losses to achieve 28,000 total consumer broadband net additions. The latter figure compared to a net loss of 102,000 in the year-ago period.
While cable broadband operators are okay with most of the Treasury Department's framework for handing out billions of dollars in broadband deployment and adoption funds via the American Rescue Plan, prioritizing government owned or operated networks remains a point of contention. When the Treasury sought public input on the framework, NCTA-The Internet and Television Association said there could be limited circumstances to allow them--where there is insuffici
Sen Edward Markey (D-MA), Sen Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Rep Grace Meng (D-NY) introduced the Securing Universal Communications Connectivity to Ensure Students Succeed (SUCCESS) Act to build on the Emergency Connectivity Fund created under the American Rescue Plan and provide schools and libraries with $8 billion a year over five years -- for a total of $40 billion -- to continue to provide Wi-Fi hotspots, modems, routers, and internet-enabled devices to students, staff, and library patrons following the coronavirus
While making broadband available is an obvious first step to closing the digital divide, getting people to use it as a way of life takes more than bringing it to their doorsteps. Over the coming weeks and months, Congress, industry and stakeholders must work together to formulate a multi-pronged approach that not only tackles broadband availability and affordability, but also the accessibility component of the digital divide. The National Urban League’s Lewis Latimer Plan sh
The Simultaneous Multiple Round Ascending (SMRA) Auction has become a defacto standard auction mechanism for the award of radio spectrum for commercial mobile services around the world. The winning bid price in such SMRA spectrum auctions is of interest, as it determines the valuation of the scarce resource by the mobile operators, and also indicates the revenue accrued to the governments as auction proceeds. This report uses a cross-country panel dataset to examine the determinants of spectrum prices of all the SMRA auctions held in 25 countries from 1994 to 2019.
Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced a bill that would strip online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter of liability protections if their technology spreads misinformation about coronavirus vaccines or other public-health emergencies. Sen Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) joins Klobuchar as a co-sponsor.
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