Op-Ed

One of my first efforts as a US senator was launching my Capito Connect initiative — a roadmap for bringing affordable, reliable, high-speed internet access to homes, businesses, and classrooms in WV. Each year, we’re making significant strides, and in 2019, we’ve made even more progress. While we’ve made great strides, there’s always more work to do. Federal, state and local entities must work in tandem to ensure we reach last-mile communities. On the state level, the WV Broadband Enhancement Council is an important partner in closing the digital divide in WV.

Broadband deployment stands to be an economic game-changer for rural and suburban communities, and the commonwealth must continue aggressively investing in bridging the digital divide. The economic implications of broadband expansion, while not necessarily as high profile as a new corporate headquarters, are staggering. State support to build out broadband infrastructure is repaid many times over by any measure of economic outcomes. But access to the Internet goes beyond dollars and cents. This is an equity issue.

In urban neighborhoods, where Internet service and health care can be hard to access, a novel pilot project uses local barbershops and salons as wireless hubs and hypertension screening centers.

Libraries Without Borders sought to replicate its digital inclusion strategy in underserved rural and suburban manufactured-housing communities. The project began in Minnesota, with a town hall-style meeting where residents of the Park Plaza Cooperative Community in Fridley shared their vision for a future partnership between the local library and the community. The need for such a partnership is high.

What's happening with rural broadband? Hundreds of thousands of Georgians have been asking this question for several years now. These voices are being heard, as lawmakers in Atlanta and Washington have launched several rural broadband initiatives. Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) signed Senate Bill 2 (SB 2) on April 26, 2019, authorizing electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) to provide broadband services.

In November 2019, the Internet Society (ISOC) sold the .ORG registry (Public Interest Registry) to private-equity company Ethos Capital for $1.135 billion.

The Metropolitan Information Exchange (MIX) is a close-knit association of CIOs from U.S. cities and counties with populations over 100,000. Gathering annually for over 51 years, members focus on sharing insights and cases from their own communities in order to build their collective knowledge and capabilities as leaders.

Mark Zuckerberg has rigged the rules of Facebook political advertising, making him complicit in lies and voter manipulation. The result is the most powerful propaganda amplifier in history, boosting campaigns that traffic in falsehoods. Zuckerberg’s company screens some paid political advertising for lies. But since early October, it makes an exception: When candidates pay for the ads, it will run any ad — even those with blatant lies.

Though women and minorities constitute an increasingly large portion of our country’s populace, ownership of broadcast media remains dominated by white males. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has long ignored its congressional mandate to ensure a diversity of media viewpoints and continues to disregard orders from federal courts to increase women and minority participation in media ownership. The time has long passed for Congress to act.

European Union communications ministers will gather in Brussels on Dec 3 to discuss how to safeguard emerging fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks. Their decisions could have lasting impacts on European countries’ ability to protect their people’s privacy, and ultimately, safeguard their freedoms. It’s critical that European countries not give control of their critical infrastructure to Chinese tech giants like Huawei, or ZTE. But securing 5G networks means more than preventing any one company from building them.