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August in Washington (DC) is hot and muggy. Especially in an election year, denizens abandon the city and policy news generally grinds to a halt. But when the future of the Internet is at stake, there’s no break in the news.

President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid Back Net Neutrality

Time for our own disclosure: Michael Copps and Andrew Schwartzman, mentioned below, are both compensated writers for Benton’s Digital Beat blog. Schwartzman is the Benton Senior Counselor at the Public Interest Communications Law Project at Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation (IPR). A past Benton Foundation grant supported the Campaign Legal Center’s efforts to require broadcasters to make their public inspection files available online.

What's in the E-rate Order?
Affordable High-Speed Broadband To and Within Schools and Libraries

On July 23, the Federal Communications Commission released its report and order on “Modernizing the E-rate Program for Schools and Libraries,” an effort to reorient the E-rate program to focus on high-speed broadband for U.S. schools and libraries.

The FCC adopted three goals for the E-rate program:

This week’s round-up covers the latest news on municipal broadband. In the spirit of disclosure, in 2012, the Benton Foundation and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) released “Broadband at the Speed of Light: How Three Communities Built Next-Generation Networks”, a report that highlights municipal network success stories.

(Thank you to our friends at Public Knowledge for letting us report this)