[Commentary] The digital age and its applications has the potential to eliminate density and geographic proximity requirements, that were so critical during the industrial age. It is possible then, in the digital age, for a rural community to maintain its “rural” feel and continue to leverage its natural amenities while taking advantage of what only dense urban areas enjoyed last century.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai phoned Sinclair executive vice president and general counsel Barry Faber July 18 to let the company know that just withdrawing the three TV station "sweetheart deal" sale applications was not going to head off an administrative hearing on the proposed Tribune merger. But Faber told Chairman Pai in a letter filed with the FCC that the company was not planning to cancel the deal the week of July 16, saying that would require board approval it did not have.
The Rural Broadband Permitting Efficiency Act (HR 4824) would require the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to establish a program to enhance the permitting process for broadband Internet projects in each of the agency’s field offices. The bill also would authorize BLM and the Forest Service to enter into agreements with states and tribes to allow those entities to carry out environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for broadband projects within existing rights-of-way on federal lands.
There’s a lot of pieces that need to come together to get 5G networks to work on mobile devices — new standards need to be agreed on, new modems need to be developed, and new networking hardware for towers needs to be rolled out. But Qualcomm might have just cleared one of the major hurdles with the announcement of its new QTM052 mmWave antenna modules, the first that have been announced that will enable the high-speed swath of networking spectrum to work with mobile phones. That’s a big deal, because not all 5G is created equal.
[Speech] The primary focus of my remarks will be the primary focus of my chairmanship since day one: closing the digital divide in order to make sure everyone can benefit from the Internet revolution. To date, I’ve visited roughly 90 cities in 33 states in the US, driving more than 8,500 road miles
Watch for network neutrality arguments in future antitrust analysis of mergers, competition lawyers said. The Justice Department’s high-profile attempt to block AT&T from buying Time Warner didn’t address the possibility that the AT&T customers could see slowed internet traffic for some content. But that kind of argument could come up one day. The DOJ has looked at past merger cases on the grounds of its impact on open internet access said Ketan Jhaveri, a former trial lawyer at the DOJ’s Antitrust Division.
After being separated from their children at the border and detained in facilities scattered across the US, some migrant parents have to pay steep fees to speak with their children, a policy that a group of Democratic lawmakers have called "shameless" and "morally reprehensible." In a letter sent to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, about 150 Democratic members of Congress argued that the practice of charging "exorbitant" prices to place phone calls from immigrant detention violates ICE's national standards.
Newspaper layoffs have far from abated in the past year, and digital-native news outlets are also suffering losses. At least 36 percent of the largest newspapers across the United States – as well as at least 23 percent of the highest-traffic digital-native news outlets – experienced layoffs between January 2017 and April 2018, according to the Pew study. Among newspapers, those with the highest circulation were most likely to be affected.
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