Internet/Broadband

As is often the case in other areas of public concern, regulatory volatility coupled with the glacial pace of legal development has created obstacles for libraries seeking to fulfill their missions. Two key challenges for libraries are (1) their ability to access (and provide access to) quality, affordable broadband, and (2) their ability to expand the traditional library practice of owning and lending out physical works into the digital world. Policymakers must pursue sensible broadband and copyright policies to help libraries further their service to the public interest.

State attorneys general are formally launching separate antitrust probes into Facebook and Alphabet’s Google unit starting the week of Sept 9, putting added pressure on tech giants already under federal scrutiny. New York Attorney General Letitia James said that her office was organizing a bipartisan, multi-state probe into social media company Facebook. “We will use every investigative tool at our disposal to determine whether Facebook’s actions may have endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising,” she said.

Does municipal broadband stimulate broadband adoption or employment growth? I conduct an empirical study of American towns that have built municipal networks to answer this question. Using data from the FCC’s Form 477 and the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, I track broadband deployment, adoption, and employment statistics for these towns from 2013 to 2017. A town’s decision to install a municipal network in the first place is not random, however.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the FCC Open Meeting scheduled for Thursday, September 26, 2019:

In 2018, we created the Uniendo a Puerto Rico Fund and Connect USVI Fund. Today, I shared with my colleagues a draft Order that would finalize Stage 2 of the Funds, allocating about $950 million to improve, expand, and harden broadband networks in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. We will be voting on this draft Order at the FCC’s monthly meeting on Sept 26.

Microtrenching – using microtrenches just 1 to 3 inches wide and 5 to 12 inches deep – has become a mainstream method for installing fiber, and many network operators use it successfully under certain conditions. City planners and engineers use the technique to leverage overcrowded utility corridors in right of ways, providing more high-speed broadband services to meet the demands of the growing population. Suppliers speak about the products they offer for microtrenching and where they think those products might best be used.

As the Governor of Montana, a state with one of the highest percentages of rural residents in the West, Steve Bullock knows rural America is full of opportunity because he’s lived it. His first priority will be to establish an Office of Rural Affairs to coordinate his initiatives within the White House, reporting directly to the President, to provide leadership for and coordinate the development of policies for rural America across executive departments and agencies. Gov Bullock's plans for rural America include:

Candidates are promising billions of dollars to rural and minority communities to deploy broadband. These communities still wait. While these communities do not have the money to build their own telecommunications infrastructure, they simply can’t risk waiting for a federal government that makes promises it knows can never be fulfilled. How can communities address this challenge? They must first recognize that the federal government is not coming with the money.

It’s September and the new school year is underway. Across the country, students are filing into their new classrooms and meeting their new teachers. They are also getting ready for something familiar in education — and that’s homework. What is new about homework, however, is that it now requires internet service. Today, seven in 10 teachers assign homework that requires online access. But data from the Federal Communications Commission, where I work, consistently shows that one in three households does not subscribe to broadband. Where those numbers overlap is the homework gap.