Op-Ed

The sad fact is that America’s news and information ecosystem is eating away at our democracy.  And we are not paying attention, partly because neither traditional nor new media are living up to their responsibility to cover the issue. They’re not about to discipline themselves. (And how laughable it is to see expensive ads from Facebook saying that it supports updating internet regulations when, of course, they will fight to the death anything resembling real public interest oversight.) The larger point here is that successful self-government depends upon a well-informed citizenry.

In 2017, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced his intention to dismantle the FCC’s hard-won network neutrality regulation. The 2015 net neutrality order owed its existence to the millions who submitted comments to the FCC demanding commonsense protection from predatory internet service providers (ISPs). After Pai’s announcement, those same millions flooded the FCC’s comment portal, actually overwhelming the FCC’s servers and shutting them down.

The strongly bipartisan infrastructure bill provides $65 billion to bring quality, affordable broadband networks to communities – especially those in rural America – that for too long have struggled to thrive without modern high-speed internet. When I first came to the Senate, a top priority of mine was to increase access to broadband. It’s a 21st Century necessity for communities working to attract families and businesses, and to create jobs and economic development.

The House should waste no time in passing the badly needed infrastructure bill while expanding its scope to include support for all viable broadband technologies demanded today by consumers. Fixed wireless is an efficient, competitive and popular high-speed alternative to fiber, particularly in more remote areas. With the massive investments going into the deployment of 5G wireless technologies by both national and local broadband internet service providers, fixed wireless capability is only getting better.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes $42.45 billion in funding for broadband networks, which, if passed, would reflect the government’s most significant commitment to date to addressing America’s broadband availability gap. While I applaud making states the locus of fund distribution, I question the choice of National Telecommunications and Information Administration rather than the Federal Communications Commission as the locus of oversight.

The FCC's Emergency Connectivity Fund is providing $7 billion worth of broadband and leading digital technology for two critical anchor institutions – libraries and schools. Three US Senators launched the BRIDGE Act to bring $40 billion to these and other anchor institutions. The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) opened a $122 billion grab bag of tech and non-tech funds.

The Federal Communications Commission and the US Treasury Department are giving schools a tremendous opportunity to close both the homework gap and the healthcare gap.

In the middle of the pandemic, the Federal Communications Commission used a reverse auction process to save taxpayers about $7 billion on projected expenses of $16 billion for broadband service to unserved areas — nearly a 50 percent savings!

The Senate’s proposed infrastructure bill includes billions of dollars for broadband, but financial investment alone won’t be sufficient to keep America on top.

Americans who are deaf, hard of hearing and deafblind have been left behind in an increasingly digital communications world. These Americans are now fighting for their human right to have equal access to this world. Countless individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind — and their families and friends — have flooded the Federal Communications Commission's docket with pleas for functionally equivalent communications. Consumers are complaining that relay technologies have continued to stagnate as mainstream communications technologies have flourished.