Op-Ed

The United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry teamed up with our civil rights allies in 2021 and successfully persuaded Congress to adopt a new program that helps low-income households pay for high-speed internet. Now that Congress has acted, our biggest challenge is publicizing the program. Families and individuals need to hear from trusted members of their own communities to learn more — people like you! Learn more about the new Affordable Connectivity Program and how you can help.

Dell is working with Dish to create a private 5G wireless network, and needs 12 GHz spectrum – the radio frequency used to carry wireless information for services like TV and radio broadcasting, mobile phones and Wi-Fi to communications systems – in order to launch the network. But there are a few problems Dell and Dish have to figure out first. The Federal Communications Commission will have to decide whether to hand that limited resource over to Dell and Dish to create their network.

Republicans who think there is no downside to dragging Federal Communications Commission nominee Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society]’s confirmation out interminably to block Title II — especially those who voted in favor of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA) and are looking for that broadband money to begin flowing to their states — may wish to think again. Why?

As the pandemic continues for a third year, addressing the digital divide is critical for local governments and communities to prosper. The solution is fiber and wireless broadband investment and ownership by municipalities, utilities, electrical co-ops, and Tribal governments. With access to fiber broadband, everyone from residents and tourists to government entities can benefit from telework, access online education, offer and access online services, use telehealth, take advantage of economic opportunities and stay connected.

I arrived in Washington, DC fifty-two years ago full of vim and vigor to take part in the great pageant of American reform, convinced that in the years ahead the political arc would bend ever-upward toward a fuller democracy. Yet all change is not progress.  The arc hits speed bumps along the way. The awful damage we have inflicted, or let happen, to our democracy now threatens its very existence. Democracy’s discontents are many, and I will expand on a few of them below, but note first that every passing day of not confronting them makes democracy’s fulfillment ever less likely.

When the late Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow penned his “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace” in 1996, proclaiming “our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty,” he railed against “the great invertebrate in the White House” and the “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel.” So what would Barlow have thought when, on April 28, 2022, 60 governments, mostly from the industrial world, met (in person or in their virtual selves) at the White House to sign a “ Declaration on the Future of the Internet,” initiated by the United States along with Au

Gov Greg Abbott (R-TX) and other top elected officials in Texas have plenty of evidence before them of the social, educational and economic consequences for hundreds of thousands of families around the state without broadband internet service at home. Once Congress finally passes enabling legislation, Texas is expected to receive $53 billion from the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) signed into law by President Joe Biden in November 2021.

These days, there isn’t a lot of harmony in the world of technology policy. But there is a bright spot of bipartisanship in a section of our airwaves: the 5.9 GHz band. In 2020, the Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to modernize the rules in this spectrum to allow both Wi-Fi and automotive safety tech to operate. This win-win was celebrated by proponents of car safety and broadband alike. But now the Department of Transportation (DOT) is working on a study that may purposely have been designed to undo this decision.

The pandemic brought all kinds of innovative approaches to stubborn challenges: Small towns in Grafton County (NH) saw opportunities for business development, innovative school programs, and upgrading the way the local government functioned. But political will didn’t prevent the county from making these changes; poor internet service did. A lot of hard work, political capital and local and federal funding has been committed to improving Grafton County’s connectivity, resulting in the launch of broadband service in the Town of Bristol (NH) in September 2021.

About one-third of smart city projects fail and around 80 percent of prototypes don’t scale and reach their desired scope.(1) Poorly implemented smart city investments undercut civic trust and can have far-reaching economic and social consequences. US Ignite’s Fostering Civic Trust guide purports an ecosystem of trust that places people at the core of the smart city movement by focusing on five policy domains: (i) Data Governance; (ii) Cybersecurit