In a speech Oct 24, Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O’Rielly insinuated, without evidence, that community owned and operated broadband networks would naturally result in local governments aggressively limiting American free speech rights.
The United Kingdom is targeting the likes of Alphabet and Facebook by introducing a digital services tax that aims to raise about $500 million a year for the government. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond unveiled the measure in his Autumn Budget. He said it was designed to hit the largest internet businesses, not start-ups. It would affect profitable companies with annual revenues that exceed about $640 million, he said.
There are well-paying job opportunities for those on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum for so-called middle-skill jobs. These are jobs that generally do not require a college degree and pay a living wage.
Brian Hart, director of the Federal Communications Commission’s office of media relations, said that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai “plans to lead the FCC for the foreseeable future.” Pai — a Republican appointed to the commission by President Barack Obama in 2012, then named chair by President Donald Trump in Jan 2017 — was asked after the FCC’s Oct 23 public meeting whether he planned to remain in that post if the Democrats took over the House in the 2018 midterm elections.
A Q&A with Vermont gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist.
In 2019, over 2,600 rural households in primarily northern Orange County (NC) will have a new option because of a public-private project worked out with Open Broadband LLC. If successful, the fixed wireless service project could expand to areas south and west. Chatham County is talking about a similar solution now that could start in the northeast, just south of Chapel Hill. Open Broadband LLC leases in-ground, high-speed fiber from other companies, connecting its customers via small antennas attached to tall buildings and towers that transmit to a wireless system in their homes.
T-Mobile is known for breaking the rules in wireless, but now it wants Federal Communications Commission permission to bend the rules, so to speak, as part of a 600 MHz experiment in North Carolina. More specifically, T-Mobile wants to conduct tests in parts of NC to investigate the possibility of transmitting on portions of the 600 MHz B Block that’s spectrally closer to TV stations than permitted by the FCC’s rules. The operator says it will do so “in a manner that will not cause harmful interference to television viewers.”
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