Ars Technica

President Joe Biden prepared to sign an executive order which among other things aims to boost broadband competition, but progress could be limited by a deadlocked Federal Communications Commission. The order largely aims to bring back policies championed by the Obama Administration which were either reversed or abandoned under President Donald Trump, but this may be unlikely without a Democratic majority in the FCC. The five-member FCC is currently one head short, with the current four Commissioners evenly divided along political lines. Biden has yet to nominate a fifth Commissioner.

After coming close to imposing a near-total ban on municipal broadband networks, Ohio's Republican-controlled legislature has dropped the proposed law in final negotiations over the state budget. Lawmakers apparently relented to public pressure from supporters of municipal broadband and cities and towns that operate the networks. People and businesses from Fairlawn, OH where the city-run FairlawnGig network offers fiber Internet, played a significant role in the protests. FairlawnGig itself asked users to put pressure on lawmakers, and the subscribers did so in great numbers.

AT&T says fiber internet is a "superior" technology that is built for today and the future because of its ability to deliver symmetrical upload and download speeds of 1Gbps and higher. AT&T also says that "there is no compelling evidence" to support the deployment of fiber across the US, and that rural people should be satisfied with non-fiber internet access that provides only 10Mbps upload speeds. The difference between those two wildly different statements was the audience.

President Joe Biden announced a $65 billion broadband-deployment deal with Senate Republicans and Democrats, but he provided no details on whether the plan will prioritize municipal broadband networks as he originally proposed. Congressional Republicans have tried to ban municipal broadband nationwide, so it's highly unlikely that they would have agreed to Biden's stated goal of giving public networks priority over private broadband providers in the next big ro

Altice is slashing its cable Internet upload speeds by up to 86 percent starting on July 12. Altice's Optimum Online plans that currently have advertised upload speeds of 35Mbps will be reduced to uploads of either 5Mbps, 10Mbps, or 20Mbps, depending on the plan. The company did not announce any immediate price changes on the plans that are getting upload-speed cuts.