Op-Ed

Rural electric cooperatives (RECs) have some specific characteristics that make them uniquely qualified to undertake significant and meaningful strides in conquering the digital divide. Beyond their community focus, RECs possess important skills and assets that make expansion into broadband very favorable. Those skills and assets include:

The Federal Communications Commission recently proposed a new rule that will allow unlicensed users to access the 6 GHz band — a frequency on the radio spectrum — for Wi-Fi connectivity, causing a disagreement between broadband companies that would benefit from the rule and utility companies that currently rely on the frequency to communicate. The FCC reserves portions of the 6 GHz band for communications between licensed electric, water and natural gas utilities companies.

Nearly three-quarters of the downloads hitting Microsoft servers from nonmetropolitan counties are so slow they don’t meet the Federal Communications Commission definition of broadband. Microsoft’s county-level data shows a big gap between what the federal government says is available and what people actually use. The main takeaway from this is that accurate data to measure broadband access and use remains elusive.

Some may be tempted to predict judicial outcomes by looking at the party of the judges and the President who nominated them. The panel scheduled to hear Mozilla v. Federal Communications Commission in the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit features judges who have both ruled for and against administrative agencies. The panel includes Senior Circuit Judge Stephen Williams (appointed by President Reagan) who issued a blistering 68-page dissent against the FCC’s Open Internet Order in 2015.

In 2008, Northern Michigan University (NMU) elected to tackle the lack of adequate broadband access in its community head-on. With over 8,000 notebook computers assigned to its students, NMU launched an aggressive plan to construct the nation’s first Educational Broadband Service (EBS) WiMAX network.

When it comes to your digital profile, the data you choose to share is just the tip of an iceberg. The first layer is the one you do control. The second layer is made of behavioral observations. The third layer is composed of interpretations of the first and second.

When communities design broadband infrastructure to facilitate healthcare and telehealth delivery, they obviously plan to connect medical practitioners’ hospitals, offices, and other healthcare facilities. Network connections to homes are growing in importance as government policies and market forces favor telehealth deployments. What about schools and libraries? In many communities, school districts and libraries outperform broadband in people’s homes.

Fifteen years ago, I realized you could find almost anything on the internet—music, books, information—except the thing that matters most: people. So I built a service people could use to connect and learn about each other. I’ve heard many questions about our business model, so I want to explain the principles of how we operate. I believe everyone should have a voice and be able to connect. If we’re committed to serving everyone, then we need a service that is affordable to everyone.

You'll recall that one of the top reasons for killing popular network neutrality rules was that they had somehow supposedly crushed broadband industry network investment.  You'll be shocked to learn this purported boon in investment isn't happening. A few months ago, Verizon made it clear its capital expenditure (CAPEX) would be declining, and the company's deployment would see no impact despite billions in tax cuts and regulatory favors from the Trump Federal Communications Commission. Both AT&T and Verizon have similarly announced massive workforce reductions as well.

2019 is likely to see many debates on possible regulatory strategies for social media platforms. We offer several ideas to help shape those debates. First, it’s necessary to prohibit the data-intensive, micro-targeted advertising-dependent business model that is at the heart of the problem. Second, it’s vital that countries craft rules that are appropriate to their particular domestic social, legal, and political contexts. Third, and most provocatively, it’s time to consider non-commercial ownership of social media entities–including nonprofit or some form of public ownership.