With the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Congress has taken a significant step forward in achieving the Biden Administration’s goal of providing broadband access to the entire country.
Legislation
H.R. 3451, the "Social Media Disclosure and Transparency of Advertisements Act of 2021"
H.R. 3611, the "Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act"
A legislative hearing focused on holding Big Tech companies accountable by reforming Section 230. The Subcommittee will discuss what it will take to recalibrate the law in a way that better incentivizes responsible actions by tech companies.
Legislation
H.R. 2154, the "Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act"
President Joe Biden's nominee for Federal Communications Commissioner, Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society], is a prominent liberal activist and a former Democratic staffer at the FCC who favors net neutrality, stronger government regulation of the broadband industry, and the breakup of Big Tech companies. Senate Republicans strongly oppose her confirmation, criticizing her not only as a left-wing ideologue who would favor heavy-handed regulation but also, unusually, as a threat to censor or block conservative speech.
Leichtman Research Group found that the largest pay-TV providers in the US – representing about 93 percent of the market – lost about 650,000 net video subscribers in 3Q 2021, compared to a pro forma net loss of about 90,000 in 3Q 2020. The top pay-TV providers now account for about 77 million subscribers, with the top seven cable companies having 41.9 million video subscribers, other traditional pay-TV services having over 27.5 million subscribers, and the top publicly reporting Internet-delivered (vMVPD) pay-TV services having 7.5 million subscribers.
Since the Emergency Broadband Benefit launched in May 2021, enrollment has grown steadily. By the end of June, 3.1 million households had enrolled, a figure that rose to 7.4 million by the beginning of November. Analysis of the geography of this growth shows that it was not evenly distributed. South Florida, Detroit, Chicago, and New York City have all seen very strong growth in enrollment since June. In the Los Angeles area, more than 100,000 additional households have signed up since then.
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