The Federal Trade Commission announced a new proposed rule to prohibit junk fees, which are hidden and bogus fees that can harm consumers and undercut honest businesses. The FTC has estimated that these fees can cost consumers tens of billions of dollars per year in unexpected costs.
Roughly 3 billion citizens remain offline, equating to approximately 40 percent of the global population. Therefore, providing Internet connectivity is an essential part of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 9). In this paper, a high-resolution global model is developed to evaluate the necessary investment requirements to achieve affordable universal broadband. The results indicate that approximately $418 billion needs to be mobilized to connect all unconnected citizens globally (targeting 40–50 GB/Month per user with 95 percent reliability).
Just days before Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced plans to reinstate some net neutrality guidelines, the FCC also opened a proceeding into the spectrum screen. The move could reflect the fact that Rosenworcel now believes she has enough political clout to impose limits on 5G spectrum ownership via the agency's spectrum screen. After all, Democratic commissioners now outnumber Republicans after the Senate finally approved Democrat Anna Gomez as the fifth commissioner on the FCC.
As Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding starts to stimulate increased broadband planning and construction, some industry experts predict an increased need for workers skilled in several tasks, such as the ability to read and understand complicated maps showing all the existing underground facilities near a broadband installation site, and the ability to operate equipment for trenching, earth-drilling and wire-cable placement on poles.
One of the provisions of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is that it requires the Federal Communications Commission to “take steps to ensure that all people of the United States benefit from equal access to broadband internet access within the service area of a provider of such service.” In legalese, the term equal access, in this case, means that consumers should be able to expect to get the same speed, capacity, and latency as other customers buying the same product from the same internet service provider (ISP) sold elsewhere.
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
ConnectLA launched the statewide challenge process on October 6, 2023. Per the requirements of the recently approved Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Initial Proposal Volume 1, the challenge process will determine locations that need broadband service through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
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