Press Release

The 2019 Broadband Deployment Report reaches the wrong conclusion. According to the report, the digital divide has narrowed substantially over the past two years and broadband is being deployed on a reasonable and timely basis. The rosy picture the report paints about the status of broadband deployment is fundamentally at odds with reality. While I would like to be able to celebrate along with the FCC’s majority, our broadband deployment mission is not yet accomplished.

The Federal Communications Commission announced the conclusion of bidding in Auction 102, the FCC’s second auction of millimeter wave spectrum suitable for 5G, which is providing licenses in the 24 GHz band.

Rep Scott Tipton (R-CO) introduced a bill May 10, the Reprioritizing Unserved Rural Areas and Locations for Broadband Act (RURAL Broadband Act) which if passed would improve the process for expanding broadband to rural communities. “It’s an outrage that rural communities still don’t have the same access to high-speed internet as urban areas,” said Reo Tipton.

Following Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s statement indicating he will recommend approval of the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, Sens Tom Udall (D-NM), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) called on the FCC and the Department of Justice to reject the merger and to open a 30-day public comment period on the proposal.

On April 2, 2019, a dozen Members of Congress wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai expressing concern that the FCC's draft 2019 Broadband Deployment Report "may contain serious data inaccuracies that would undermine the validity of its findings." "We note that the FCC has already issued an apparently erroneous press release, dated February 19, that seems to reflect these inaccuracies.

On April 2, 2019, Reps Peter Welch (D-VT) and David Loebsack (D-IA) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai asking the FCC to take a more practical approach to implementing new performance testing mechanisms in connection with Connect America Fund (CAF) support. "We have heard..that the process of implementing network performance testing has grown complicated," they wrote, and that there were concerns, particularly among smaller CAF recipients, about the ability to implement such testing.

On March 28, 2019, Reps Yvette Clark (D-NY), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Mike Doyle (D-PA), Tony Cárdenas (D-CA), GK Butterfield (D-NC), Marc Veasey (D-TX), and Jerry McNerney (D-CA) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai raising concerns as to the rollout of the Lifeline National Eligibility Verifier.

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Greg Walden (R-OR), Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Bob Latta (R-OH), and Consumer Protection Ranking Member Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) released the following statement after 47 Democratic representatives – led by Reps Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Scott Peters (D-CA) – signed a letter to Democratic leadership looking to form a bipartisan working group to solve network neutrality.

Sen Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the Government Spectrum Valuation Act, a bill designed to estimate the value of electromagnetic spectrum assigned to each federal agency as a first step towards meeting the nations spectrum needs.

The future of competition in high-speed broadband access looks bleak. A vast majority of homes only have their cable monopoly as their choice for speeds in excess of 100 mbps and small ISPs and local governments are carrying the heavy load of deploying fiber networks that surpass gigabit cable networks. Research now shows that these new monopolies have striking similarities to the telephone monopolies of old. But we don’t have to repeat the past; we’ve already seen how laws promoted competition and broke monopolies. In the United States, high-speed fiber deployment is low and slow.