In the past several years, our society has learned more, faster than ever before. However, the flow of information in our digital world is interrupted by serious accessibility barriers for the deaf community. Navigating the hearing world with few accommodations and limited resources—including broadband and online access to training and professional development—is holding some people back. While there are clear laws—e.g., the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) of 2010—to protect people with disabilities, including deaf people, and to ensure effective access to information, there is a need to modernize these laws in regards to telecommunications. This has become more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for those who are of lower socioeconomic status. We need to better understand how accessibility barriers have contributed to a lack of planning and career development for the deaf community.

The House Appropriations Committee met to consider the Fiscal Year 2024 subcommittee allocations. The measure was approved by the Committee with a vote of 33 to 27. The measure provides $260 million in ReConnect funding.

More than 30 years since the first honk and screech of commercial dial-up, there is a conspicuously empty seat at the collective table of global high-speed connectivity. Six companies account for half of all internet traffic worldwide. These six companies have a combined market cap of $9 trillion. It’s a far cry from their garage start-up days, and without question, they are tremendous American success stories. However, does it still make sense that the government and broadband providers alone fund broadband infrastructure? Is there no shared obligation from the primary financial beneficiaries of these networks—the world’s most powerful internet companies? The European Union has a consultation underway to consider a model proposed by European telecom operators that would require large traffic generators to pay network support contributions directly to broadband providers rather than to a government fund that supports national connectivity objectives. As the US government correctly notes in its recent comments on the consultation, the proposed model varies significantly from the approach taken in this country to advance universal, high-speed connectivity. We concur with the US government’s position that rather than the payments to broadband providers proposed in the EU, such “publicly accountable funding mechanisms can better ensure that resources are devoted to key policy objectives, such as improving access and strengthening network security, while avoiding discriminatory measures that distort competition.

How the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will allocate the 10% of the BEAD funding ($4.25 billion) set aside for high-cost locations has to be an estimate because the NTIA hasn’t shared guidance on how it plans to do that calculation. On a closer reading of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), I want to offer a possible — even likely — scenario where certain states get almost no funding in the high-cost allocation because their Unserved locations are dispersed and not concentrated. Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, and others — states with a high percentage of high-cost locations — may actually have a high-cost allocation of nearly $0. What’s happening is that states have different concentrations of Unserved locations. In some states, like Louisiana, 55% of the Unserved locations are in 80%+ Unserved block groups. But in other states, like Iowa, they have almost zero locations in 80%+ locations. Unfortunately, some high-cost states, already at a disadvantage because of much higher than average costs to build broadband, are likely not getting access to this slice of the funding.

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the bipartisan Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Kennedy (R-LA), to the full Senate on a bipartisan vote of 14-7. The bill would allow news organizations to jointly negotiate fair compensation by Big Tech companies that profit from their news content. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would:

• Empower eligible digital journalism providers—that is, news publishers with fewer than 1,500 exclusive full-time employees and news broadcasters that engage in standard news gathering practices—to form joint negotiation entities to collectively negotiate with a covered platform over the pricing, terms, and conditions under which the covered platforms access digital news content;
• Require covered platforms—which are online platforms that have at least 50 million US-based users or subscribers and are owned or controlled by a person that has either net annual sales or market capitalization greater than $550 billion or at least 1 billion worldwide monthly active users—to negotiate in good faith with the eligible news organizations;
• Enable non-broadcast news publishers to demand final-offer arbitration if their joint negotiation with a covered platform fails to result in an agreement after six months;
• Create a limited safe harbor from federal and state antitrust laws for eligible digital journalism providers that allows them to participate in joint negotiations and arbitration and, as part of those negotiations, to jointly withhold their content from a covered platform;
• Prohibit discrimination by a joint negotiation entity or a covered platform against an eligible digital journalism provider based on its size or the views expressed in its content and provide a private right of action for violations of this prohibition;
• Prohibit retaliation by a covered platform against eligible digital journalism providers for participating in joint negotiations or arbitration and provide a private right of action for violations of this prohibition.

In a surprising move AT&T has mandated that 60,000 managers return to work in person to one of nine of the company’s offices, despite many employees living far away from any of those locations. While the company said restructuring will help cost savings and “increase collaboration,” it has ignited outrage among employees who see it as a disguised staff reduction effort. AT&T CEO John Stankey estimated that around 15% (9,000) of the affected managers will have to choose between relocating or leaving the company. But sources within AT&T claim that due to proposed office reductions and task-specific realignments, the actual number of affected managers could be closer to 25,000. And in most cases AT&T won't pay relocation expenses. An internal document sent to employees indicated that their work designation and location will be determined by their leadership team based on business needs and collaboration requirements. AT&T supervisors are expected to complete the new assignments by the end of June 2023. The lack of clarity and transparency regarding how employees will be assigned to the nine designated hubs has caused confusion and chaos within the company. There are no detailed explanations of the selection process, and even employees currently based in one of the hubs could be reassigned to another.