Reporting

Big Valley is a living postcard of Pennsylvania. But they had slow, unreliable, and expensive internet. The government couldn’t help. Private suppliers have long said improved speeds were too costly to provide for such a sparsely populated area. So a group of mostly retirees banded together and took a frontier approach to a modern problem. They built their own wireless network, using radio signals instead of expensive cable. “We just wanted better internet service up our valley.

Tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade, human rights, the handling of Covid-19, and Chinese misinformation are escalating global divisions around the deployment of 5G. A growing number of countries are aligning with either a Western or a Chinese version of the tech.

"With more than two billion users Facebook is bigger than Christianity,” says Stanford law professor Jim Steyer. “Their ability to amplify hate speech or white supremacy or racist messages is so extraordinary because of the scale of the platform.” It’s a typically bold statement from the man who set up the Stop Hate for Profit (SHFP) campaign calling on advertisers to withdraw from Facebook for the month of July. More than 500 firms have joined the temporary boycott, including Coca-Cola, Adidas and Unilever.

The Lifeline program, administered by the Federal Communications Commission, provides a $9.25 monthly subsidy (more on tribal lands) to companies that provide phone or broadband service to low-income consumers, generally at no out-of-pocket cost to the customer. But, less than a fifth of the 38 million households that qualify for the program are actually enrolled. And despite a recent uptick, enrollment remains down sharply from the Obama era. "It's very clear that the program is needed now more than ever," said FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks.

With the Keep Americans Connected pledge ending July 1 — and the pandemic continuing — the question remains: What comes next for those who can’t afford to get online? Benton senior fellow and public advocate Gigi Sohn said she felt the pledge was the “bare minimum” of what Internet service providers could have done during the pandemic, and it was time for Congress to act. A flurry of bills have been proposed that try to address the connectivity issues of the digital divide which have been highlighted by coronavirus.

On Episode 5 of G&T: Tech on the Rocks, Gigi Sohn talks to Color of Change Campaign Advisor Brandi Collins-Dexter about the history of surveillance of civil rights protestors and communities of color, how sophisticated technologies have made spying ubiquitous and what protestors can do to protect themselves. They also discuss Color of Change's efforts to get Facebook to moderate hate speech and how to ensure that tech companies incorporate civil rights principles in every aspect of their businesses.

The Open Technology Fund is a US government-funded nonprofit, which is part of the umbrella group called the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which also controls Radio Free Asia and Voice of America. OTF’s goal is to help oppressed communities across the globe by building the digital tools they need and offering training and support to use those tools. Its work has saved countless lives, and every single day millions of people use OTF-assisted tools to communicate and speak out without fear of arrest, retribution, or even death.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve a bill that would weaken Section 230 protections to ensure social media companies remove child abuse imagery from their platforms. The EARN IT Act is intended to curb the spread of child abuse images on social media, but has undergone a number of significant changes on its way to a full Senate vote.

Sprint’s legacy 5G service using 2.5 GHz has been deactivated as T-Mobile continues work to reconfigure, test, and re-deploy the coveted mid-band spectrum into its new integrated 5G network. Sprint’s 5G service is no longer available, except to customers who have a Galaxy S20 5G that works on T-Mobile’s 5G network. The 2.5 GHz Sprint network deactivations, while necessary, do present a change for some legacy Sprint 5G users. Namely, it's those who were early adopters and purchased first-generation 5G smartphones from the carrier, including a Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, LG V50 ThinQ, or OnePlus 7

The COVID-19 outbreak has magnified troubles many rural areas face without high-speed broadband. With more than $6.6 million in federal CARES Act relief funds allocated to Somerset County, officials said they plan to use half of the total toward their broadband initiative, which has been a top goal for years. President Commissioner Gerald Walker said extending high-speed coverage to 85% of the county is expected to cost more than $8 million. Board members said their $3.5 million would go a long way toward that.