For college students, reliable broadband access isn’t just about watching a new Netflix series or playing video games. It affects our very ability to educate ourselves and, by extension, to shape our futures and contribute to our democratic society. It allows us to read our online textbooks, to access articles and books for our research assignments, and to upload resumes for jobs and internships. When we cannot find stable internet in the comfort of our homes, students must rely on searching for free Wi-Fi in coffee shops, libraries, and even the parking lots of fast-food restaurants. We must work to spread information about the ACP — located at GetInternet.gov — within our networks. We must pursue these efforts for the sake of the students who cannot reach their fullest potential because they lack access to the most basic resources in our modern society.

[Christina Hitchcock and Aditi Mittal were spring 2022 undergraduate interns at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.]

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB), in conjunction with the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force (RBATF) and the Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA), authorizes Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (Auction 904) support for 513 winning bids in Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Idaho, Louisiana, Colorado, New Hampshire, Vermont, Missouri, Minnesota, California, Oregon, Indiana, North Dakota, New Mexico, Wyoming, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Northern Mariana Islands. The FCC also released a number of Conexon Connect in Colorado that are now in default. 

The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration will submit an information collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and clearance. NTIA invites the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed, and continuing information collections, which helps NTIA assess the impact of information collection requirements and minimize the public’s reporting burden. Public comments were previously requested via the Federal Register on February 16, 2022 during a 60-day comment period. This notice allows for an additional 30 days for public comments. This information request will help NTIA monitor Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP) grant recipients’ spending and activities to ensure compliance with BIP requirements and program priorities. In the absence of collecting this information, NTIA would fail to evaluate effectively the award recipients’ progress toward completing project activities and achieving core purposes of the BIP. Moreover, without these reports, NTIA would lack the ability to monitor effectively the award recipients’ expenditure of funds to deter waste, fraud, and abuse of BIP funds. Therefore, it is necessary for NTIA to collect information using the Baseline Report, Semi-Annual Reports, and Annual Report.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) addresses the petitions of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association (NTCA) and AT&T Services Inc. (AT&T) for limited waivers of the FCC’s non-usage rules applicable to Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) subscribers who receive free-to-the-end-user service. The Bureau grants NTCA’s request for (1) an extension until September 15, 2022 for small broadband internet access service providers that serve Tribal ACP customers to track usage on a rolling thirty-day basis for ACP subscribers who receive free-to-the-end-user service, including ACP/Lifeline subscribers who receive both benefits on the same service and (2) a retroactive waiver to January 1, 2022 of the Lifeline requirement to track usage on a rolling thirty-day basis to the extent that this subset of providers apply both the Lifeline and ACP benefit to the same service resulting in free-to-the-end-user service. However, we deny NTCA’s request for an indefinite waiver of this requirement for small broadband providers that serve Tribal ACP subscribers. The Bureau also grants AT&T a temporary sixty-day waiver to August 13, 2022 of the non-usage rules for AT&T’s customers who receive free-to-the-end-user ACP service that uses Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) technology. However, the Bureau denies AT&T’s petition requesting an indefinite waiver of these rules for this subset of AT&T’s subscribers. During the waiver period AT&T may only claim ACP support for those subscribers that have used their service during a given service month.

David Finn of Google Fiber outlined the company’s embrace of the open access model for broadband. Finn, a director of corporate development at Google Fiber, highlighted the company’s recent open access partnership in West Des Moines (IA) and a previous example with the public utility in Huntsville (AL) as examples of how they are using the model to expand broadband access. Google Fiber is now finalizing a similar partnership in Vermont that could potentially reach over 100 thousand rural residents. Google is partnering with two Vermont communications union districts (CUD) for an open access network that Finn says will allow Google to reach every location with symmetrical gigabit capable broadband. The network will be built and owned by the public partner CUDs, with Google Fiber leasing network capacity to serve as the first ISP, with other ISPs also able to join the open access network and compete with Google.

The highly competitive nature of the US mobile wireless business continues as Verizon announced that it is deploying 5G in the CBRS spectrum band and T-Mobile said it achieved speeds above 3 Gbps on a production network using 5G carrier aggregation. Verizon said it worked with Ericsson to complete a 5G data session using CBRS General Authorized Access (GAA) spectrum, which is mid-band spectrum that is essentially available on an unlicensed basis. The company will be able to use the spectrum to augment the licensed spectrum that it has in the same band. Verizon was a big winner in the CBRS auction of 2020. Verizon’s plan is to use CBRS spectrum for Ultra Wideband 5G, which is the term the company uses for the higher-speed 5G service that it has deployed using millimeter wave spectrum and in the company’s C-band spectrum, which is considered mid-band. T-Mobile said its 5G carrier aggregation achievement was only possible using the company’s standalone 5G network. The company merged three channels of mid-band spectrum – two channels in the 2.5 GHz band and one channel of 1900 MHz spectrum – to create what was essentially a single 210 MHz channel. T-Mobile said it already uses carrier aggregation to combine two 2.5 GHz 5G channels for “greater speeds, performance and capacity.” The company expects to begin adding a third 1900 MHz 5G channel later in 2022.

Bipartisan legislation to bolster consumers’ online privacy rights gained momentum at a House hearing June 14, even as some tech industry representatives raised concerns that could slow its progress. The draft legislation would put new limits on how technology companies can collect and use consumers’ data. It drew strong backing from both Republicans and Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s consumer protection subcommittee, as well as from several business and consumer representatives who testified. But the hearing also highlighted a range of lingering challenges that remain as key lawmakers seek to move the rapidly developing bill through Congress this summer. Several witnesses at the hearing suggested changes to strengthen or weaken major protections in the legislation, showing that the effort could still run into trouble. Lawmakers have tried off and on for decades to pass such a bill, without success, largely because of business opposition. But their efforts have been energized this year by a series of controversies over how people’s information is used. Under the draft bill, big tech companies would be limited to collecting, processing and transferring only the data that is reasonably necessary to provide their services. And for some sensitive categories of data, such as geolocation data or biometric information, the bill would prohibit transfer or restrict it to very limited circumstances. The legislation also includes broad antidiscrimination protections, and requires large data holders to conduct assessments of their algorithms to show the steps they are using to limit harms, among other measures.

AT&T achieved symmetrical speeds of 20 Gbps in its production network in a trial of 25G technology from Nokia. Eddy Barker, AT&T AVP of Mobility and Access Architecture, said the test highlights the future-proof nature of the fiber network it is deploying and is the latest step toward the likely commercial deployment of the technology in a 2024 timeframe. The operator has been working on 25G for some time. It signed on to the 25GS-PON Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) in March 2021 and Barker said it has been tinkering with the technology in its lab for “a while”. He said in late 2021 AT&T tested the full 25 Gbps downstream speeds the technology enables but noted at that time the upstream speed was still asymmetrical at 10 Gbps. Now that the ecosystem has matured a bit more AT&T decided to take its testing out to the field, running an experiment on the fiber infrastructure it is currently using to deliver commercial 2-gig and 5-gig services.