July 2021

T-Mobile wants to lure back Boost customers it sold to Dish

T-Mobile is introducing a new prepaid promotion with incentives for customers on other prepaid MVNOs to switch to Metro by T-Mobile, including waiving switching fees, a discount on an unlimited plan with 5G, and a trade-in offer for a new 5G phone. In other words, it’s doing exactly what it told regulators it wouldn’t do when it acquired Sprint a year ago.

House Commerce Republicans Announce Big Tech Accountability Agenda

Republican Representatives on the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced a comprehensive package of discussion draft bills to hold Big Tech accountable by improving transparency and content moderation accountability, reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, promoting competition, and preventing illegal and harmful activity on their platforms. The members also released a Big Tech Accountability Platform, guided by four principles:

Internet Access and its Implications for Productivity, Inequality, and Resilience

About one-fifth of paid workdays will be supplied from home in the post-pandemic economy, and more than one-fourth on an earnings-weighted basis. In view of this projection, we consider some implications of home internet access quality, exploiting data from the new Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes. Moving to high-quality, fully reliable home internet service for all Americans (“universal access”) would raise earnings-weighted labor productivity by an estimated 1.1 percent in the coming years.