Mark Sullivan

In 2021, the big show for broadband stimulus will come in the bill that emerges from President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan–the American Jobs Plan. Democratic and Republican lawmakers should be able to find plenty of common ground in the core parts of the bill. Members of both parties are hearing from their constituents about the shortcomings of broadband service now that remote working and schooling have become central parts of life. Other issues will have to be hashed out:

The newly signed Broadband DATA Act calls for the Federal Communications Commission to develop a more detailed and accurate map that reflects more granular and accurate data about broadband markets. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has complained that his agency would need more time and money to abandon its current mapping method and adopt a new one that fits the requirements of the bill. “At this point, it is vital for Congress to provide the FCC as soon as possible with the appropriations necessary to implement the Act,” Chairman Pai said recently.

A Q&A with Sen Mark Warner (D-VA). 

Government oversight of tech companies is one thing, but in the 2020 election year, Sen Warner is also thinking about the various ways technology is being used to threaten democracy itself. The interview covers election interference, misinformation, cybersecurity threats, and the government’s ability and willingness to deal with such problems.

In the face of that toxic content’s intractability and the futility of the tech giants’ attempts to deal with it, it’s become a mainstream belief in Washington, DC–and a growing realization in Silicon Valley–that it’s no longer a question of whether to, but how to, regulate companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook to hold them accountable for the content on their platforms. One of the most likely ways for Congress to do that would be to revise Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

As Google marks its 20th anniversary, our relationship with it isn’t quite as uncomplicated as it used to be. In the wake of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, and fears that the Russians exploited Facebook and YouTube to influence the 2016 presidential election, people are more wary of tech companies these days–especially ones that harvest personal data. This trend won’t reverse itself anytime soon.

The conspiracy theory about Google’s search algorithms falls in line with others propagated by President Donald Trump (Obama’s birth certificate, the deep state, etc.) in that they are paranoid and largely fact-free, yet very hard to completely refute. Even when they are squarely refuted–as when Obama produced his birth certificate–they often live on. But since Google will never, ever, make public its search algorithm–nothing is more proprietary than that–speculation that it’s biased against conservatives will live on and on.

T-Mobile and Sprint are small players in a wireless market where being small makes it hard to survive. One expert told me that if the deal is framed as a pairing of two of the four national wireless carriers, it has little chance of making it past the regulators. That’s why T-Mobile CEO John Legere and Sprint executive chairman Marcelo Claure have been trying to describe the combined company as a new kind of entity that sells not only wireless service, but potentially home broadband service and a host of media in the future.

A strong network neutrality bill is advancing through the CA legislature, and the Big Intenet service providers (ISPS)–mainly AT&T and Comcast–are working overtime to stop it in its tracks. The bill passed the state Senate on May 30 by a healthy 23 to 12 margin. In the weeks leading up to that vote, lobbyists for the big ISPs tried to spread enough doubt about the bill’s possible implications that lawmakers would simply not vote on it. CA Senate Democrats needed an extra date to find the votes, but they found them, and the bill moved on to the Assembly.

[Commentary] Requiring the targeting data label on ads is just a simple way of bringing the shadowy business of data collection and ad targeting into the light of day. If Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are sure that there is nothing wrong with harvesting users’ personal data to place ads, they should have no problem with being completely open with consumers about the real costs of the “free” service their company provides. Internet advertisers may complain that ad targeting is a complicated business and that the targeting of one ad may rely on many pieces of user data. Well, so be it.

If you know anything about AT&T’s history, its relationship with Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen shouldn’t be too surprising. The company has an army of lawyers at its disposal, is hair-trigger litigious, and is no stranger to backroom dealing in the Capitol. During 2017, the company paid $16,780,000 to 31 lobby firms, according to government filings.