Jon Brodkin

Cable and satellite TV companies are defending their early termination fees (ETFs) in hopes of avoiding a ban proposed by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC voted to propose the ban in December, kicking off a public comment period that has drawn responses from those for and against the rules.

The Federal Communications Commission has taken a step toward prohibiting early termination fees charged by cable and satellite TV providers. If given final approval, the FCC action would also require cable and satellite providers to provide a prorated credit or rebate to customers who cancel before a billing period ends. The new rules are being floated in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that the FCC voted to approve in a 3–2 vote, with both Republicans dissenting.

The US broadband industry is protesting a Federal Communications Commission plan to measure the affordability of Internet service. The FCC has been evaluating US-wide broadband deployment progress on a near-annual basis for almost three decades but hasn't factored affordability into these regular reviews.

A federal program that provides $30 monthly broadband discounts to people with low incomes is expected to run out of money in April 2024, potentially taking affordable Internet service plans away from well over 20 million households. For months, supporters of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) have been pushing Congress to give the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) more funding for the program.

In an attempt to boost broadband competition, Canada's telecommunication regulator, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), is forcing large phone companies to open their fiber networks to competitors.

Internet service providers and their lobby groups are fighting the Federal Communications Commission's plan to prohibit discrimination in access to broadband services.

The Federal Communications Commission currently regulates broadband internet access service (BIAS, if you will) as an "information service" under Title I of the Communications Act. As the FCC contemplates reclassifying BIAS as a telecommunications service under Title II's common-carrier framework, the question is whether the FCC has authority to do so. Federal appeals courts have upheld previous FCC decisions on whether to apply common carrier rules to broadband.

Sports leagues are urging the US to require "instantaneous" takedowns of pirated livestreams and new requirements for Internet service providers to block pirated websites. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 requires websites to "expeditiously" remove infringing material upon being notified of its existence.

A group of Internet service providers that won government grants are asking the Federal Communication Commission for more money or an "amnesty window" in which they could give up grants without penalty. The ISPs were awarded grants to build broadband networks from the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which selected funding recipients in December 2020.

Starlink has abandoned plans to charge data overage fees to standard residential users who exceed 1TB of monthly usage. When SpaceX's Starlink division first announced the data cap in November 2022, it said that residential customers would get 1TB of "priority access data" each month.