August 2016

On August 2, the Federal Communications launched a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) aimed at determining whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.

The FCC is seeking on the current state of advanced telecommunications capability deployment and availability. In particular, the FCC seeks comment on the appropriate criteria and benchmarks by which to measure whether fixed and mobile broadband services provide access to advanced telecommunications capability.

• As part of this inquiry, the FCC seeks comment on whether to update our existing 25 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload speed benchmark for fixed advanced telecommunications capability, as well as on whether the Commission should establish a speed benchmark for mobile broadband services and, if so, what that speed benchmark should be.
• The FCC also seeks comment on the relationship of non-speed performance metrics, including service consistency and latency, to advanced telecommunications capability, and on whether and how to adopt benchmarks for these metrics.
• Next, the FCC seeks comment on criteria and benchmarks by which to measure advanced telecommunications capability deployment to schools and classrooms, as well as on additional factors that may affect the deployment and/or availability of advanced telecommunications capability.
• Finally, the FCC seeks comment on the various data sources used by the Commission for the purposes of our annual Broadband Progress Report, and whether additional or alternative sources of data are available to inform the analysis under.

Interested parties have until September 6 to file comments in the proceeding – and until September 21 to reply to those comments.

There has never been a worse time to declare your politics publicly, according to a new and nationally representative online poll conducted by the Rad Campaign, Craigconnects and Lincoln Strategies. This year’s survey, the second in a biannual series, found that nearly a third of all Internet-using adults self-report that they’ve been “harassed online for expressing political opinions.” That abuse is highest among Democrats, the highly political and those ages 55 to 64. It’s also nearly double the rate of political harassment that users reported in 2014.