Devices

On Thursday, December 29, 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (H.R. 2617). Most importantly, the government funding package, which includes all 12 fiscal year 2023 appropriations bills, keeps the federal government running through September 30, 2023.

Iran’s government has throttled down bandwidths, stepped up filtering of social-media sites and taken down virtual private networks, according to analysts and reports by nongovernment organizations. It has also sought to intercept Starlink and other satellite internet devices, which are illegal in Iran. The number of Iranians with access to Starlink is a tiny fraction of the millions who use virtual private networks and other platforms to evade government restrictions, users say.

A new study, Broadband Internet in the U.S.

Ukraine reached a deal with Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies to receive thousands more Starlink antennas to help counter Russian air attacks. More than 10,000 of the devices, which provide internet service beamed down from satellites, will be sent to Ukraine in the coming months, said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's deputy prime minister and minister for digital transformation. SpaceX’s satellites are part of the Starlink network, which transmits high-speed internet service to antennas on Earth. Starlink played an important early role in the war in Ukraine, as Russia’s military focuse

The omnibus spending bill unveiled by lawmakers expands a ban on Chinese-owned TikTok on federal smartphones, but tough new measures targeting the tech industry didn’t make the cut. The inclusion of the proposal to ban TikTok comes after the Senate, led by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), passed the governmentwide ban measure separately.

The Federal Communications Commission is committing over $65 million in new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Program (ECP), which provides digital services for students in communities across the country.

Sen Markey and Rep Meng urged Congressional leadership to include $1 billion in the disaster supplemental division of the year-end omnibus for the Federal Communications Commission's Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF), which supports devices and broadband services for students and educators to connect to the internet at home. This funding would be sufficient for the FCC to fund every valid application it received in the most recent application window.

The Federal Communications Commission has received several petitions and requests from E-Rate stakeholders through the annual E-Rate eligible services list (ESL) proceedings, asking that the FCC permit the use of E-Rate program funds to support advanced or next-generation firewalls and services, as well as other network security services. The FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau seeks comment on these petitions as well as the related funding year 2023 ESL proceeding filings.

I am often asked about the role that broadband providers should take in making sure that we solve the digital divide. I think that people are somewhat shocked every time when I tell them this is not a role for broadband providers. In explaining my answer, let me start by parsing what is meant by the question. We are about to see a lot of grant funding for getting computers into homes and training folks on how to use them. The folks asking this question are hopeful that providers are going to take up that role in any meaningful way.

For the last decade in Western Massachusetts, closing the digital divide meant getting fiber, cable, or wireless service to every address.