Agenda

Sen Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has been leading private meetings in Washington with tech industry leaders and civil society groups as part of the Senate Judiciary tech task force inquiry into social media and internet companies.

In 2018, I talked about our 5G FAST plan. The plan has three central planks: freeing up spectrum, promoting wireless infrastructure, and modernizing our regulations to promote more fiber deployment. We’ve been active on all three fronts, and there’s mounting evidence that our efforts are working.  We’re working on the complicated task of freeing up spectrum for 5G in the 3.7-4.2 GHz band, commonly called the C-Band. This is a critical band for 5G, and I’m optimistic that we will have results to show on this front this fall.

In 2015, aware that business tenants increasingly depended on high-quality broadband and that residents considered fast broadband a quality-of-life issue, Fairlawn (OH) resolved to make gigabit broadband available to all homes and businesses. The city built a municipal fiber network essentially as an amenity, with no requirement that service revenue cover the cost of the build. It was willing to subsidize the network out of the general fund if necessary.

Senate Commerce Committee leaders aren’t happy that the Senate Appropriations Committee stuck some controversial 5G directives in their Federal Communication Commission funding bill report. Sens. Roger Wicker (R-MS) and John Thune (R-SD) said they’re concerned the report, particularly its wireless airwaves recommendations, treads on their turf. The plea evidently had no effect, however; the measure advanced with the 5G language in question.

Thought things are tough for the tech industry in Washington now? Building Democratic frustration with the industry could bring a bigger crackdown if the 2020 election puts the party back in control of the White House. Look no further than the Federal Trade Commission — and its two Democrats — to see those dynamics at play. In a series of unusually blunt dissents in recent cases involving Facebook and Google, FTC Commissioners Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter argued for much tougher financial penalties for companies that break their promises and abuse their users’ privacy.

The Charles Benton Early Career Scholar Committee has awarded Burcu Baykurt the 2019 TPRC Charles Benton Early Career Scholar Award Winner and Jacob Manlove the runner up. Burcu Baykurt wrote (Dis)connecting the Digital City which examines how the connectivity infrastructures of the digital city are laid over uneven terrains and the ways residents react to those changes. Assessing the Need for a Measure of Broadband Adoption Inequality, written by Jacob Manlove, proposes the use of the absolute value index which distinguishes between no mobile use, mobile only, fixed only,

With Congress inching toward reopening its long-shuttered Office of Technology Assessment, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation to fix what critics say were the office’s flaws back before it was defunded by Newt Gingrich-led Republicans in the 1990s.