July 2024

Commissioner Carr Announces Departure of Lauren Garry from His Staff

I want to extend my deep thanks and appreciation to Lauren Garry for serving as a Legal Advisor in my office. I am grateful that she agreed to work for me for a year, and I am very pleased that the FCC and the public will continue to benefit from her service at the agency. Over the course of her detail, Lauren has been a tremendous asset to me and my office, and she has tackled some of the agency’s most challenging matters. I will miss having her wise counsel on so many issues that are meaningful to the American public.

Biden-Harris Administration Awards $20.5 Million to Michigan to Implement Digital Inclusion Efforts

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) awarded more than $20.5 million to Michigan to implement their Digital Equity Plan.

Working from home, job tasks, and productivity

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred global change from traditional office-based work to remote work, driven by policy interventions, and resulting in a significant number of employees worldwide transitioning to working from home. Existing research presents conflicting evidence regarding the relationship between remote work and productivity. However, few have examined the specific mechanisms through which remote work affects productivity.

HUD Accepts New Communities to Participate in the ConnectHomeUSA Initiative and Bridge the Digital Divide for HUD-Assisted Families

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announces 97 communities that have been selected to participate in the ConnectHomeUSA (CHUSA) initiative, bringing training and technical assistance to help communities access affordable internet access, affordable devices, and digital skills training.

More RDOF Defaults on the Horizon?

There’s been much handwringing this year over the prospect of defaults in the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program, but very little empirical analysis of the actual extent of default that has occurred to date or data-driven projections of what’s likely to occur in the future. It’s time to dig deeper to figure out what’s going on at the local level. The FCC authorized 379 companies to receive $6 billion in RDOF support over a ten-year term, covering just under 3.5 million locations in 48 states and one territory.

Information Access Practices

Access to information is riding a turbulent sea of costs, technology shifts, and ever-rising requirements for digital connectivity. Although the notion of information as a foundation of democracy seems commonplace in the United States, it took the COVID-19 pandemic to drive home the disarray of access around the country and across the globe. The broader subject of the “digital divide” has received a lot of attention as a proxy for ideas around digital access. Understanding of the divide has evolved alongside the internet itself.

Framing Access: Digital Navigators and Libraries

To explore the expanding role of libraries in providing internet access and promoting digital literacy, this article examines ten libraries in one state that developed Digital Navigator programs. Representing a mix of small and rural as well as metropolitan and large libraries, the libraries’ efforts offer a different philosophy in dealing with digital divide factors. This research investigates how libraries launched Digital Navigator programs, the processes behind developing them, and how they reflect notions of information access.

Evaluating the FCC’s $10 Billion Gamble: Successfully Accelerating Access to Spectrum in Auction 107

This research analyzed how much bidders in the record-breaking C-Band spectrum (3.7–4.2 GHz) auction were willing to pay for earlier access to frequency rights and the policy implications of the incentive system employed by the Federal Communications Commission to clear the band on an accelerated timeline. The analysis found that bidders paid 20.7 percent more on average for licenses available two years earlier with no subsequent legal challenges.

Becoming an Internet Policy Conference: A Retrospective on TPRC

The period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s saw the transformation of information and communication infrastructure. In the same period, TPRC evolved from a narrower focus on conventional telecommunications and information policy to “The Research Conference on Communications, Information, and Internet Policy.” Through the lens of interdisciplinary work on Internet policy and intersecting TPRC activity, this retrospective describes an arc of change that began at the 1994 TPRC and continued for about a decade.

Universal Access and Its Asymmetries: The Untold Story of the Last 200 Years

In March 2021, President Biden announced the American Jobs Plan, a precursor to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act designed to kick-start the U.S. economy amid the global coronavirus pandemic. As part of the announcement, the President made a prophetic statement: “broadband is the new electricity.” Comparing the Internet and electricity connected the dots between a centuries-long experiment in universal access.

Benton

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