Reporting

Public schools across the state will receive an additional $50 million from the governor’s emergency education relief fund, Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) announced. The money will go toward closing the digital divide and training educators and families to assist students in using technology. It also will help launch a student care department within the State Board of Education, equipping school districts to support students who’ve experienced trauma. The $3 billion governor’s emergency education relief fund was established as part of the coronavirus stimulus bill.

Health tech offers major benefits, but policymakers must make it accessible. Whether it’s the cost of devices, sluggish internet speeds, insurance program restrictions or a lack of coverage in rural areas and schools, there can be many hindrances to using telehealth services. “It's really hard if you don't have broadband, or a way to do video to have the kind of virtual care that you might have in a different part of the country,” said former chair of the American Medical Association (AMA) Board of Trustees Dr.

The Federal Communications Commission either did or didn't vote to allow cable operators to charge leased access providers a tier-specific rate, but it was unclear what the vote meant (Leased access is the requirement that cable operators over a certain size lease a certain number of channels to unaffiliated programmers at regulated rates.) The issue arose around a Report and Order at the FCC's July 16 meeting.

A conversation with former Clinton Administration aide and Federal Communications Commission official David Goodfriend about the possibility of another stimulus bill and what one might include as COVID-19 cases continue to rise. The discussion touches on the importance of including broadband provisions in any new bill, which could mirror the House passed HEROES Act. The political path to a new bill and what might be off the table in the coming legislative battle. 

The European Union's top court threw a large portion of transatlantic digital commerce into disarray, ruling that data of EU residents is not sufficiently protected from government surveillance when it is transferred to the United States. The European Court of Justice ruled that a commonly-used data protection agreement known as Privacy Shield did not adequately uphold EU privacy law. US security authorities have far-reaching access to personal data stored on US territory that “are not circumscribed” in a way that is equivalent to EU rules, the court ruled. The court said that it was

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced a partnership with Land O’Lakes, a company known for its butter that’s the country’s third-largest agricultural cooperative. As part of the deal, Microsoft and Land O’Lakes will build an AgTech platform that, ideally, will use artificial intelligence to help farmers plan their crop cycles, protect their soils, and harvest more grain. The companies will also try to increase broadband access in rural areas and make it easier for farmers to get credit for carbon removal.

Wireless equipment provider Nokia expects the International Telecommunications Union to begin work on defining the next generation of wireless technology to be known as 6G in 2021. But the company already has some ideas of its own about what 6G should look like. Nokia visionaries see the technology supporting peak speeds of 1,000 Gbps, and they see service being deployed in the terahertz (THz) band, which is even higher frequency than the multi-gigahertz (GHz) millimeter wave bands that are being pioneered for 5G.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US will impose visa restrictions on Chinese technology firms, the latest move expected to strain relations between Washington and Beijing. “State Department will impose visa restrictions on certain employees of Chinese tech companies like Huawei, that provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally,” Sec Pompeo said.

An appropriations bill that would fund the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission includes language that would limit President Donald Trump's effort to regulate social media, as well as provide billions to help better identify and close the digital divide, and use secure technology to do so. The bill, which includes funding for a number of agencies and programs, has $67,040,000,000 in "emergency infrastructure investments to respond to the economic collapse related to the coronavirus," most of which ($61,040,000,000) would go to pay for expanding broadband in unserve

When choosing the best video clips to promote from around the web, Alphabet’s Google gives a secret advantage to one source in particular: itself. Or, more specifically, YouTube. Google executives in recent years made decisions to prioritize YouTube on the first page of search results, in part to drive traffic to YouTube rather than to competitors, and also to give YouTube more leverage in business deals with content providers seeking traffic for their videos. A Google spokeswoman, Lara Levin, said there is no preference given to YouTube or any other video provider in Google search.