Press Release

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has circulated a draft 2018 Broadband Deployment Report to his colleagues and below are the key findings and additional information:

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced the appointment of Nirali Patel as Special Counsel. Patel joins the Office of the Chairman from the Office of Commissioner Brendan Carr, where she has been serving as a Legal Advisor since August 2017.

Commissioner Brendan Carr of the Federal Communications Commission announced that Will Adams has joined his office as Legal Advisor for wireless issues and that Andi Roane has joined his office as Staff Assistant. He also congratulated Nirali Patel on her move to the Chairman’s Office. 

A second round of broadband infrastructure bills have been introduced by members of the House Communications Subcommittee. The bills focus on supporting innovation and advancing broadband infrastructure in rural communities. 

In a letter to President Donald Trump, Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Angus King (I-ME), John Boozman (R-AR), and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)—the co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate Broadband Caucus—call for the prioritization of direct funding support for broadband deployment in an infrastructure package that will help close the digital divide and ensure our country maintains its global competitiveness. Stand-alone funding for broadband will ensure that telecommunications infrastructure is advanced alongside needed upgrades to our roads, rail, bridges, ports and waterways

Reps Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and David B. McKinley (R-WV) introduced the Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2018. This commonsense legislation, commonly referred to as ‘Dig Once’, would mandate the inclusion of broadband conduit—plastic pipes which house fiber-optic communications cable—during the construction of any road receiving federal funding. This practice will eliminate the need to dig up recently-paved roads to expand broadband infrastructure, significantly reducing the cost of increasing Internet access to underserved communities across the country.

Mozilla filed a petition in federal court in Washington, DC, against the Federal Communications Commission for its recent decision to overturn the 2015 Open Internet Order. It relies on the core principle of net neutrality (that all internet traffic be treated equally) to exist. If that principle is removed — with only some content and services available or with roadblocks inserted by ISPs to throttle or control certain services — the value and impact of that resource can be impaired or destroyed. Ending net neutrality could end the internet as we know it.

New America's Open Technology Institute became one of the first parties to challenge the Federal Communications Commission’s harmful order repealing the net neutrality rules by filing a protective petition for review in the DC Circuit. OTI filed the protective petition in an abundance of caution to ensure that, if a lottery is held determining the proper venue for the case at this stage, the DC Circuit is included in the selection process. 

The following statement can be attributed to Sarah Morris, Director of Open Internet Policy at the Open Technology Institute:

Public Knowledge filed a protective petition in the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to urge the court to review the Federal Communications Commission’s rollback of net neutrality rules. 

The following statement can be attributed to John Bergmayer, Senior Counsel at Public Knowledge:

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) announced a series of bills introduced by subcommittee members aimed at reducing the regulatory barriers to broadband infrastructure expansion: