August 2020

Comcast Launches New Internet Essentials Programs as Nation Gears Up for the Academic Year

With distance learning plans rolling out across the country due to the coronavirus, Comcast announced a new program for cities, schools, and nonprofits to connect large numbers of low-income K-12 students to the Internet at home. Internet Essentials will add the free xFi platform for parents to connect, protect, and monitor children’s devices and online activities.
Comcast will continue to offer 60 days of free Internet service for new Internet Essentials customers.

FCC Announces Membership, Chair, and Vice-Chair for Intergovernmental Advisory Committee

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced the new members of the FCC’s Intergovernmental Advisory Committee and named Paul J. TenHaken, Mayor of Sioux Falls (SD) Chair of the IAC and Peter J. Larkin, Chairman of the Board of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, as Vice-Chair.

Is the Pandemic Deepening the Digital Divide?

Considering the lack of digital infrastructure and digital literacy for large parts of the world’s population, it seems inevitable that the pandemic will reinforce the digital divide.

Pragmatic, Progressive Capitalism

Reforming the nation’s century-old antitrust regulation is critical to ensuring a fair marketplace, and limiting the harm monopolistic practices can have on American consumers. However, the dire need for updated legislation does not mean Congress should pass legislation that is not carefully thought out for the long-term. This report examines the decades around the turn of the 20th century, when the US adopted the two pillars on which a uniquely American and remarkably successful political economy was built – the Interstate Commerce Act of (ICA) 1887 and the Sherman Act of 1890.

In 2020, many Marylanders still lack high-speed internet. And that’s a problem for work and school.

An estimated 324,000 rural Marylanders don’t have access to high-speed internet, according to a 2019 report from a state task force.