press release

Reps Ro Khanna (D-CA), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and Ryan Costello (R-PA) introduced a bipartisan bill, the Measuring the Economic Impact of Broadband Act, to require the Bureau of Economic Analysis to conduct a study of the effects of broadband deployment and adoption on the US economy. The legislation empowers policymakers to make more informed decisions about broadband, connecting underserved communities and keeping America competitive in a digital world.

[Press release] The week of Feb 12, the President released the details of his infrastructure plan which will provide Federal funding to help repair and modernize rural infrastructure, including broadband. The President’s plan dedicates $50 billion to rural infrastructure, accounting for 25 percent of all Federal spending in the plan.

The Federal Communications Commission lifted outdated rules related to the payphone industry that are no longer justified as payphone revenues have plummeted due to a changing communications marketplace. The Commission eliminated costly payphone audit requirements as part of an FCC effort to cut unnecessary and wasteful rules so that industry resources can be put to more productive use. Technological and marketplace changes have made these expensive audits unnecessary to ensure that the few remaining providers are compensated fairly.

The Federal Communications Commission proposed to eliminate a broadcast filing requirement and instead rely on publicly available information in its periodic reviews of broadcaster employment practices.

The Federal Communications Commission resolved the remaining petitions for reconsideration of Commission decisions in the February 2017 Mobility Fund Phase II Report and Order. In that Order, the Commission adopted rules to move forward with the MF-II auction, which will provide up to $4.53 billion in high-cost support over 10 years to extend high-speed mobile voice and broadband coverage to unserved and underserved areas across the United States. The Commission received seven petitions for reconsideration of the MF-II Report & Order.

The Federal Communications Commission initiated a proceeding to expand access to spectrum above 95 GHz. This spectrum has long been considered the outermost horizon of the usable spectrum range. Currently, the Commission has no rules to permit licensed or unlicensed communications use above 95 GHz, other than by amateur operators or on an experimental basis.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to ensure that innovative new technologies and services that would serve the public interest are encouraged and made available to the public on a timely basis. Specifically, the NPRM proposes rules and procedures to implement Section 7 of the Communications Act, which was passed by Congress in 1983 to require timely action by the Commission to encourage provision of new technologies and services to the public. Clear rules and guidelines on implementing section 7 are long overdue. While the

As it works to close the digital divide, the Federal Communications Commission has updated and modernized its National Broadband Map so the map can once again be a key source of broadband deployment information for consumers, policymakers, researchers, and others. The new, cloud-based map will support more frequent data updates and display improvements at a far lower cost than the original mapping platform, which had not been updated in years. Improvements and features in the successor National Broadband Map include:

[Press release] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai will visit Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands from March 7–10 to meet with local leaders and communications service providers and review the status of communications restoration efforts after the 2017 hurricane season. He will be accompanied by members of the Commission’s Hurricane Recovery Task Force. This serves as a follow-up to his trip to Puerto Rico last November.

A task force created by President Donald Trump developed recommendations for promoting prosperity in rural America, and one of its key recommendations is to deploy high-speed internet access to this nation’s farms, factories, forests, and small businesses in rural America.