Jon Brodkin

More than 106,000 rural homes and small businesses in 43 states will get access to 25 megabit per second (Mbps) broadband at some point in the next decade thanks to a Federal Communications Commission policy change. The FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF), which distributes money to internet service providers (ISPs) in exchange for new broadband deployments in underserved areas, had been requiring speeds of just 10Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream over the past few years.

Comcast said its customers' monthly Internet data usage increased 34 percent between Q1 2018 and Q1 2019, rising to a median of 200GB. The rise is being driven by streaming video, and, in particular, 4K video. The median customer is using only about 20 percent of Comcast's 1TB data cap, which is enforced in 27 of Comcast's 39 states.

CTIA, the US mobile industry's top lobbying group, is opposing a proposed California state law that would prohibit throttling of fire departments and other public safety agencies during emergencies. CTIA recently wrote to lawmakers to oppose the bill as currently written, saying the bill's prohibition on throttling is too vague and that it should apply only when the US president or CA governor declares emergencies and not when local governments declare emergencies.

While all four major nationwide carriers in the US have overhyped 5G to varying degrees, T-Mobile made a notable admission about 5G's key limitation.

A committee that advises the Federal Communications Commission on consumer-related matters now includes a representative of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which lobbies against municipal broadband, net neutrality, and other consumer protection measures. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced his Consumer Advisory Committee's new makeup on April 10. One new member is Jonathon Hauenschild, director of ALEC's Task Force on Communications and Technology.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is proposing a $20.4 billion rural broadband fund that could connect up to four million homes and small businesses over the next ten years. The new program will be part of the Universal Service Fund (USF), and it will be similar to an existing USF program that began during the Obama administration. In 2015, the USF's Connect America Fund (CAF) awarded $9 billion for rural broadband deployment—$1.5 billion annually for six years—in order to connect 3.6 million homes and businesses.

AT&T's "5G E" service is slightly slower than Verizon's and T-Mobile's advanced 4G LTE networks, a study by OpenSignal has found. AT&T renamed a large portion of its 4G network, calling it "5G E," for "5G Evolution." After comparing user-initiated speed tests from more than 1 million devices, OpenSignal found that AT&T's "5G E" phones get average speeds of 28.8Mbps, which is less than T-Mobile's 29.4Mbps and Verizon's 29.9Mbps but higher than Sprint's 20.4Mbps.

The Federal Communications Commission has settled a case over its refusal to comply with a public records request, agreeing to pay $43,000 to a journalist who sued the commission. Freelance writer Jason Prechtel filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request with the FCC in mid-2017, asking for data that would identify who made bulk comment uploads in the proceeding that led to the repeal of network neutrality rules. Prechtel was trying to research comments that were falsely attributed to people without their knowledge.

The state of Vermont has agreed to suspend enforcement of its network neutrality law pending the outcome of a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission. In Oct, the nation's largest broadband industry lobby groups sued VT in a US District Court to stop a state law that requires Internet service providers to follow net neutrality principles in order to qualify for government contracts.

Smartphone 911 location data is getting more precise, but the Federal Communications Commission isn't updating its privacy rules despite carriers' history of selling their customers' location data. The FCC is scheduled to vote on a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) requiring collection of more precise location data. The data would identify a person's floor in a multi-story building when someone calls 911 and is being referred to as "Z-axis" data.