February 2018

FCC Proposes to Open Spectrum Horizons for New Services & Technologies

The Federal Communications Commission initiated a proceeding to expand access to spectrum above 95 GHz. This spectrum has long been considered the outermost horizon of the usable spectrum range. Currently, the Commission has no rules to permit licensed or unlicensed communications use above 95 GHz, other than by amateur operators or on an experimental basis.

FCC Proposes Rules To Speed Availability Of Innovative Technologies And Services

The Federal Communications Commission adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to ensure that innovative new technologies and services that would serve the public interest are encouraged and made available to the public on a timely basis. Specifically, the NPRM proposes rules and procedures to implement Section 7 of the Communications Act, which was passed by Congress in 1983 to require timely action by the Commission to encourage provision of new technologies and services to the public. Clear rules and guidelines on implementing section 7 are long overdue. While the

FCC Updates And Modernizes National Broadband Map

As it works to close the digital divide, the Federal Communications Commission has updated and modernized its National Broadband Map so the map can once again be a key source of broadband deployment information for consumers, policymakers, researchers, and others. The new, cloud-based map will support more frequent data updates and display improvements at a far lower cost than the original mapping platform, which had not been updated in years. Improvements and features in the successor National Broadband Map include:

What’s worse than fake news? The distortion of reality itself.

[Commentary] Which hurts civilization more: no one believing anything, or everyone believing lies? If we fail to take immediate action to protect our news and information ecosystem, we may soon find out. We are careening toward an infocalypse — a catastrophic failure of the marketplace of ideas. So what can we do? In short, we need massive investment across industry, civil society and government, to understand and mitigate threats to our information ecosystems. And we need it now.  As of now, there are a few particularly promising mitigations that deserve immediate consideration: