On May 7, 2017, the Home Box Office (HBO) program “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” aired a segment in which the host John Oliver discussed the Federal Communications Commission’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” (RIF) proceeding and encouraged viewers to visit the Commission’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) and file comments.
The Rural Wireless Association (RWA), which represents rural carriers, told the Federal Communications Commission that Verizon "grossly overstated" its 4G LTE coverage in government filings, potentially preventing smaller carriers from obtaining funding needed to expand coverage in underserved rural areas. In 2017, the Federal Communications Commission required Verizon and other carriers to file maps and data indicating their current 4G LTE coverage. The information will help the FCC determine where to distribute up to $4.5 billion in Mobility Fund money over the next 10 years.
Mark Leibovich's New York Times Magazine profile of outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is essentially a series of attempts to get Speaker Ryan to account for his regular punts on President Trump's tweets. Speaker Ryan argues that the president of the United States is saying, doing and speculating about things he doesn't believe to elicit a reaction.
Not long after several of the country’s biggest tech firms — Apple, Facebook and Google — kicked the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones off their various online platforms, Jones’s allies complained that he had been deprived of his First Amendment rights to free speech. Several scholars of free speech had already concluded that many of the things he has said online were not in fact protected by the First Amendment.
The Federal Communications Commission has already repealed net neutrality, but the Trump administration can't leave it there. It also wants the Supreme Court to remove a ruling that upheld the controversial Obama-era rules. Is this a big deal? It depends on who you ask. While the request is somewhat unusual, not many cases upholding government regulation are followed by a repeal of that regulation, some legal experts say remanding the decision is just a bit of legal housecleaning. But net neutrality supporters disagree.
The ACCESS BROADBAND Act (H.R. 3994) would direct the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to establish a new Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth and direct several federal agencies that offer broadband support programs to amend, streamline, and standardize their applications for those programs. Using information from the affected agencies, CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 3994 would cost $13 million over the 2019-2023 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts.
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