Policymakers

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocates $65 billion to expand internet access to all. Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, is the man President Joe Biden tapped to make sure the massive job gets done. In this podcast, Landrieu speaks about the Affordable Connectivity Program – which provides monthly $30 subsidies for lower-income individuals to buy internet access. And Kathryn de Wit, project director for the Pew Charitable Trust's Broadband Access Initiative, talks about why accessing the internet is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.

Federal Communications Commission nominee Anna Gomez left little doubt that if confirmed, she would vote in favor of classifying broadband as a Title II telecommunications service—a move that would enable the agency to prohibit carriers from blocking or throttling web traffic. Gomez told lawmakers that internet access was too essential to remain unregulated. “Title II gives the strongest oversight to the FCC over the service,” she added. Broadband is currently considered a Title I information service—and is largely unregulated. Title II classification, by contrast, would allow the FCC to im

Anna Gomez, President Joe Biden's nominee for the open Democratic seat on the Federal Communications Commission, told the Senate Commerce Committee that she supports reclassifying internet access as a Title II telecommunications service. Since Gomez’s bureaucratic background left little room for Republicans to attack her in the same way as Gigi Sohn, she’s got a seemingly better chance of getting confirmed. Currently, the FCC classifies internet access as an information service under Title I of the Communications Act, and not subject to common-carrier/open access regulations.

The House Commerce Committee convened an oversight hearing focused on the Federal Communications Commission. “There’s a lot on the agenda today,” said Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) since the last time the FCC's commissioners testified before the committee. A chief issue was the FCC's authority to conduct spectrum license auctions. “The agency’s lapsed spectrum authority not only deprives the Commission of a core agency function, but it impacts a massive sector of our economy and jeopardizes our global wireless leadership,” said Ranking Member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ).

Federal Communications Commissioner Nathan Simington told Congress that he and his fellow commissioners need to serve as a check on the power of the chair. According to testimony for the House Commerce Committee FCC oversight hearing, Commissioner Simington, a Republican, said that if the agency does not adopt rules allowing for full commission oversight of decisions made by staffers under authority delegated by the chair, Congress should step in to mandate it. “The FCC chair has broad discretion in delegating matters to career officials and political appointees, which restricts those matte

Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] has weighed in on the political forces that prevented her from taking a seat on the Federal Communications Commission after her nomination by President Joe Biden and her decades of experience in communications, primarily as a public advocate and briefly as a top FCC adviser.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted the following resolutions:

Former FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly called the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) "the best mechanism we've had to date" for subsidizing low-income broadband. But he added that the current Congress is unlikely to pass funding for the ACP without changes to the program.  According to O'Rielly, Congress will want to address waste, fraud, and abuse with the program, and likely limit its eligibility. By some estimates, up to 40% of Americans currently qualify for the program. "That's probably not suitable for policymakers that I talked to on Capitol Hill.

Berrien County’s 580 square miles encompasses 39 villages, townships, and cities. The county, situated on Lake Michigan’s eastern shore, is dominated by agriculture and tourism; many Chicago residents’ vacation homes are located here. A lack of broadband infrastructure in the county is actively threatening industrial innovation and hampering quality of life for residents as needs and demand for connectivity increase. As of today, the county has made substantial progress toward universal access within the community.

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) is opening an investigation into Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan. FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson recently resigned from her role after concerns about the integrity of the FTC under Chair Khan’s leadership, citing abuses of power and disregard for the rule of law and federal ethics standards.