Internet/Broadband

A fact sheet on how net neutrality protects consumers and online freedom of speech. Open internet protections have long had widespread – upwards of 80 percent – support from the American people who have come to expect that they will be able to access all lawful content on the internet uninhibited by their broadband service provider’s business decisions. Across administrations from 2005 to 2018, it was the clear policy of the FCC to enforce open internet standards.

Seemingly from the first moments that members of Hamas began their attacks over the weekend, murdering and kidnapping hundreds of Israeli civilians, the internet erupted into a state of informational chaos. Different posts and platforms offered competing versions of what was happening on the ground. Horrific images and videos proliferated.

The 2023 Broadband Pricing Index (BPI), the fourth installment of USTelecom’s annual report, shows continued good news for broadband consumers, including an 18 percent drop year-over-year in the price of providers’ most popular broadband speed tier (Real BPI-Consumer Choice) and a 6.5 percent drop year-over-year in the price of providers’ fastest speed tier (Real BPI-Speed). Even without accounting for inflation, this pricing trend is in direct contrast to the rising cost of overall goods and services, up nearly 5 percent in a similar one-year period.

President Biden was joined by Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra as they announced new efforts to crack down on junk fees and bring down costs for American consumers. Junk fees are hidden, surprise fees that companies sneak onto customer bills, increasing costs and stifling competition in industries across the economy.

AT&T CEO John Stankey spoke at a Semafor event on October 10 to discuss barriers to greater adoption of broadband in the US, and the conversation ended up focusing heavily on spectrum. “You want more competition and resiliency in broadband in the United States, you need deep spectrum,” he said. “The United States is not in an enviable position right now for the next 10 years relative to some other developed nations.” He then proceeded to touch on a lot of hot buttons in the wireless industry.

The Federal Trade Commission announced a new proposed rule to prohibit junk fees, which are hidden and bogus fees that can harm consumers and undercut honest businesses. The FTC has estimated that these fees can cost consumers tens of billions of dollars per year in unexpected costs.

Roughly 3 billion citizens remain offline, equating to approximately 40 percent of the global population. Therefore, providing Internet connectivity is an essential part of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 9). In this paper, a high-resolution global model is developed to evaluate the necessary investment requirements to achieve affordable universal broadband. The results indicate that approximately $418 billion needs to be mobilized to connect all unconnected citizens globally (targeting 40–50 GB/Month per user with 95 percent reliability).

Just days before Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced plans to reinstate some net neutrality guidelines, the FCC also opened a proceeding into the spectrum screen. The move could reflect the fact that Rosenworcel now believes she has enough political clout to impose limits on 5G spectrum ownership via the agency's spectrum screen. After all, Democratic commissioners now outnumber Republicans after the Senate finally approved Democrat Anna Gomez as the fifth commissioner on the FCC.

As Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding starts to stimulate increased broadband planning and construction, some industry experts predict an increased need for workers skilled in several tasks, such as the ability to read and understand complicated maps showing all the existing underground facilities near a broadband installation site, and the ability to operate equipment for trenching, earth-drilling and wire-cable placement on poles.

One of the provisions of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is that it requires the Federal Communications Commission to “take steps to ensure that all people of the United States benefit from equal access to broadband internet access within the service area of a provider of such service.” In legalese, the term equal access, in this case, means that consumers should be able to expect to get the same speed, capacity, and latency as other customers buying the same product from the same internet service provider (ISP) sold elsewhere.