While the pandemic presented obstacles for many students during the 2020-21 school year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)’s nationwide survey of public K-12 teachers showed that teachers with certain vulnerable student populations were more likely to have students who faced significant obstacles to learning and an increased risk of falling behind academically. Teachers reported that students encountered obstacles to learning including difficulty in getting support, a lack of appropriate workspaces, and a lack of tools for learning. While teachers across all grades reported that their students had difficulties using technology to participate in learning, this was more pronounced for teachers of K-2 students compared to, in some cases, teachers of students in higher grades. 14 percent of teachers in grades K-2 said that half or more of their students struggled with a lack of reliable internet service. For grades 3-8, that was 13 percent of teachers, and for grades 9-12, that was 7 percent of teachers.

Dish Network sent a letter May 27 to SpaceX demanding that the company retract statements that it says could trigger interference with Dish satellite TV services. The letter came after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that Starlink is available for RVs, campers and other large vehicle users but didn’t state that the service can’t be used on moving vehicles. Musk also tweeted that Starlink “does work on vehicles in motion, including planes, but not yet reliably.” The letter basically revolves around the need for Federal Communications Commission authority before SpaceX’s Starlink system may communicate with Earth stations in motion (ESIMs), “and the prohibition on any company engaging in such communications” in the 12.2-12.7 GHz band. According to Dish, the statements “actively encourage and solicit Starlink customers to break these rules.” “As Dish has explained, Starlink ESIMs may activate Starlink beams in areas where satellites would not otherwise have been active, threatening satellite television customers in the area,” Dish wrote. “We therefore ask that you immediately retract these statements and clarify that Starlink ESIM operations are not legal and no customer should try them, by using media of equal reach to the ones where these statements were made.”

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel responded to Sens Peters (D-MI), Wicker (R-MS), Hickenlooper (D-CO) and Thune (R-SD) regarding their concerns about the reimbursement requests that the FCC has received through the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program. Multichannel News reports that communications providers who must rip and replace untrusted technology from their networks, per Congress' directive, have applied for about $5.6 billion from the FCC to compensate them. That’s a lot more than the regulator had estimated and multiples of what Congress allocated for the purpose. Rosenworcel said the FCC should have a better sense of why the demand exceeded expectations after that, but in the meantime said there were three primary reasons. First, the FCC's cost estimate was based on swapping out ZTE and Huawei tech and a data collection from 50 companies that said it would cost about $1.83 billion to do that. That was part of an FCC program that predated Congress' mandate in the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act. The FCC wound up getting applications from 96 applicants. Second, the FCC's estimate did not include all the companies that became eligible under Congress' mandate when it expanded that eligibility from companies with 2 million or fewer subs to ones with 10 million or fewer. That added $1.5 billion to the application pot. Third, inflation, supply chain issues, and Congress' tight one-year turnaround have added about $2 billion in increased costs.