Ars Technica

President Joe Biden's failure to break the Federal Communications Commission's 2-2 partisan deadlock is reaching a "critical point," 57 advocacy groups wrote in a letter to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Nearly five months after his inauguration, Biden has not yet nominated a Democratic FCC commissioner to fill the empty fifth slot.

Public officials in Ohio fear that language in the state's proposed $75 billion budget could put municipal broadband internet services out of business. The language, which appears aimed at protecting private broadband providers, was inserted without prior public discussion during recent Ohio Senate deliberations on the state's two-year budget. Local officials say this would endanger planned upgrades to public safety services, improved school and library services, plus business and economic development tools.

A decision by Judge Denis Hurley of the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York prohibits New York from enforcing a state law that would require broadband providers to sell $15-per-month plans to low-income households. The law was set to go into effect on June 15.

AT&T CEO John Stankey called President Biden's plan to fund municipal broadband networks "misguided" and said the US shouldn't pay for any broadband deployment in areas that already have networks. But as AT&T and others lobby against public networks and government-funded competition, Stankey said he is confident that Congress will steer legislation in the more "pragmatic" direction that AT&T favors. "It would be a shame that we take taxpayer money or ask local governments to go into a business that they don't run today," Stankey said.

Ohio’s attorney general filed a lawsuit asking a judge to rule that Google is a public utility. Ohio said that it is the first state in the country to bring a lawsuit seeking a court declaration that Google is a common carrier subject under state law to government regulation.

US government data shows that home-Internet customers pay more each year and that average broadband expenditures are rising faster than inflation, but cable and telecom lobbies keep claiming that broadband prices are getting lower. The latest example came  from USTelecom—which represents AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink/Lumen, Frontier, and other DSL and fiber Internet providers. The group unveiled the latest version of its Broadband Pricing Index [BPI] that measures prices for residential Internet service.