Ryland Sherman recently wrote an article for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society that recommends that Congress acts to change the rules that allow landlords to block ISPs from their buildings. He also points out that any meaningful change also will require eliminating the ability of ISPs and landlords to negotiate exclusive contracts that block other ISPs from entering buildings.
On August 14, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) issued an executive order to establish a state goal of 100 mbps download speeds for all Californians, citing the 2 million Californians who lack access to high-speed broadband today.
Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, is currently experiencing firsthand the consequences of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC's) 2018 preemption of local governments’ authority to regulate 5G infrastructure in their cities.
A growing number of government programs support broadband deployment. Some programs allow service providers to combine, or “stack,” subsidies in a project’s funding; others have prohibitions against stacking subsidies built into the program rules. Recently this has come up in the debate on the Federal Communications Commission’s new Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). This is the question: Should stacking be allowed, or should it be discouraged? Just how does a provider stack subsidies?
Telemedicine has proved effective during the pandemic, keeping people with chronic health conditions away from crowds and allowing more one-on-one time between patients and caregivers, according to health professionals. But West Virginia has a connectivity problem. Without sufficient internet access, drastic health disparities will widen between the state’s most impoverished and vulnerable communities and wealthier places, said Dr. Rahul Gupta, West Virginia’s chief health officer from 2015 to 2018. It’s not just telehealth that requires sufficient broadband.
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