Reporting

Roughly 3 million students across the United States don't have access to a home internet connection. A third of households with school-age children that do not have home internet cite the expense as the main reason, according to federal Education Department statistics. But in some rural places, a reliable connection can't be had at any price. The void is especially acute in eastern Kentucky. Many districts have been scrambling  to set up paper-based alternatives to online instruction or create WiFi hot spots in school parking lots and other public areas.

The key missing component of nearly every proposal to solve the connectivity problem is evidence — evidence suggesting the ideas are likely to work and ways to use evidence in the future to evaluate whether they did work. Otherwise, we are likely throwing money away. Understanding what works and what doesn’t requires data collection and research now and in the future. It doesn’t have to be this way. The pandemic did not only lay bare the implications of the digital divide, it also created a laboratory for studying how best to bridge the divide.

A Houston startup called Skylark Wireless is developing a new kind of internet service that relies on the unused frequencies normally associated with television stations. Known as TV white space technology, or TVWS, it’s seen as a real possibility to get high-speed data service to people in rural areas. While other companies are using TVWS to do rural broadband internet access, Skylark’s approach is unique.

Amazon's plan to spend more than $10 billion on a constellation of more than 3,200 low-Earth-orbit, internet-beaming satellites won Federal Communications Commission approval. But industry insiders are guessing about which customers the company plans to serve. Amazon told regulators its satellites could help bridge the digital divide by bringing high-speed broadband to areas that lack competitive internet service.

The Federal Communications Commission has denied petitions by public safety and utility organizations to stay its decision to open up the entire 6 GHz band for unlicensed Wi-Fi use pending judicial review.

Apple kicked the popular Fortnite video game off its App Store after the gaming company released a payment system that sidestepped Apple’s. Fortnite maker Epic Games released a feature that lets users choose how they want to pay for in-app purchases — either through the App Store or Play Store, or from Epic directly, which saves up to 20 percent.  Apple takes a cut of in-app sales — usually 30 percent — in a practice that has faced significant backlash from

An estimated 324,000 rural Marylanders don’t have access to high-speed internet, according to a 2019 report from a state task force.

The Trump administration has filed a motion asking a court to dismiss a lawsuit against the president’s executive order targeting social media companies, calling it a “profound misunderstanding.” The lawsuit was brought in June by the Center for Democracy and Technology. CDT argued Trump’s social media executive order violates the First Amendment rights of social media companies, will chill future online speech and reduce the ability of Americans to speak freely online.

Adam Candeub, current acting deputy of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, is being elevated to the role of Acting Assistant Secretary. His elevation to a top position at NTIA is sure to be controversial because of ties to white nationalists.

Sumner M. Redstone, the billionaire entrepreneur who saw business as combat and his advancing years as no obstacle in building a media empire that encompassed CBS and Viacom, died at his home in Los Angeles. He was 97. Beginning with a modest chain of drive-in movie theaters, Redstone negotiated, sued and otherwise fought to amass holdings that over time included CBS, the Paramount film and television studios, the publisher Simon & Schuster, the video retail giant Blockbuster and a host of cable channels, including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.