Expanding access to broadband has emerged as one of the few issues that enjoys bicameral and bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, and 2018 is shaping up to be the year in which the White House, Congress, and the private sector unite to bridge the digital divide.
Here’s a rundown of promises kept, partially fulfilled and in need of action come 2018:
A promise fulfilled: President Donald Trump followed through on his stated information technology modernization goals by issuing an executive order on May 1 that created the American Technology Council.
Internet activists and some politicians are ramping up efforts to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality decision, or to reimpose net neutrality rules through legislation. Here are the main battle strategies they will employ in 2018:
With network neutrality in the rearview mirror, is E-Rate next on the Federal Communications Commission’s chopping block? Experts admit it’s possible, if unlikely, but suggest a more probable series of modest changes in the short term. “I understand there are concerns about [FCC Chairman Ajit] Pai,” says John Harrington, CEO of the E-Rate consultancy Funds For Learning.
[Commentary] My research suggests that managers of local television, the most popular news source in the US, recognize the competitive value of investigative reports (I measured competition as the degree of similarity between stations in Nielsen market “shares”).
I was sitting in the nearly empty restaurant of the Westin Hotel in Alexandria (VA) getting ready for a showdown with the federal government that I had been trying to avoid for more than seven years. The Obama administration was demanding that I reveal the confidential sources I had relied on for a chapter about a botched CIA operation in my 2006 book, “State of War.” I had also written about the CIA operation for the New York Times, but the paper’s editors had suppressed the story at the government’s request. It wasn’t the only time they had done so.
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