Reporting

Your internet service provider could have a good idea of who you’re planning to vote for in the 2024 election as well as the gender of the last person you slept with—and it’s saving that information for later. Major internet providers, like Comcast’s Xfinity, stockpile more revealing data than users might initially realize. For example, Xfinity customers are automatically opted in to allow the company to store sensitive personal information.

Netflix argued that the future of streaming video will turn on whether the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) bans broadband providers from tampering with online traffic. “Today’s online entertainment marketplace is intensely competitive, which benefits consumers,” the streaming video company wrote in comments filed with the FCC.

Some of the top proponents of open RAN in the US warned lawmakers that the technology remains in danger of sliding into irrelevance if trends toward fragmentation and proprietary solutions continue. John Baker, senior vice president of Ecosystem Business Development at Mavenir warned that there can be different flavors of open RAN.

Likely seeing the re-regulatory handwriting on the wall, cable internet service providers have told the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just how it should reclassify broadband as a Title II service and what it should and shouldn’t do when it reimposes new net neutrality rules, as it is expected to do after a suitable timespan following the public comment period on its reclassification proposal. NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, joined by over a half-dozen state associations, said if the FCC goes ahead with the plan, it should do the following:

AccessParks—which provides broadband connectivity to RV parks, national and state parks, and manufactured housing communities—received additional funding from M/C Partners, a private equity firm focused on the digital infrastructure and technology services sectors. The amount of the investment was not disclosed, but was described as “significant.” AccessParks’ campground division provides outdoor connectivity using fiber-optic, microwave, 5G, and Wi-Fi services.

A new report saying billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong has sunk hundreds of millions of his own money into an unprofitable Los Angeles Times underscores how desperate the news industry is to chart a plan for survival in the digital era. If billionaire owners can't make the L.A. Times or the Washington Post profitable, then the news industry has to ask itself: What can?

In a letter to a group of Republican lawmakers, Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel confirmed that the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is subsidizing fixed broadband services for nearly 10 million of the 22 million households enrolled in the program thus far. The letter was a response to an 

Apple's new App Store payment policies are stirring outrage among software developers who say the iPhone maker is skirting the intention of a court ruling. Apple will require developers to pay it a 27% commission if they use an alternative payment method, much like the company did in the Netherlands and South Korea in response to legal rulings over related issues in those countries. With this change, Apple is effectively saying “we refuse to back down,” said Fiona Scott Morton, a former antitrust official in the Obama administration.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has begun winding down a program that helps low-income people pay for internet service, which would affect 67,548 subscribers in Allegheny County alone. FCC officials said most of the funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program will run out by the end of April without additional appropriations from Congress.

After years of operational cuts and consumer price increases, Altice USA, under the direction of recently appointed CEO Dennis Mathew, has instituted fairly massive price decreases across its fiber-to-the-home and cable broadband product lines. According to Analyst Craig Moffett, the cable operator, which touts around 4.6 million broadband customers, is trying to undo the aftereffects of the “Altice Way,” the strategy of increasing EBITDA through cost cuts and price increases, which proliferated amid the aggressive expansion set forth by French-Israeli cable titan Patrick Drahi a decade ago