1. Monthly archive
  2. September 2020

September 2020

FCC’s Lifeline program providing free phone and internet confronts a crisis

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai recently announced a couple of changes to the Lifeline program, which supplies phone and broadband services to people without the income to pay for them. Since his appointment in 2017, the former commissioner has worked to reduce costs while phasing out support for voice-only options in favor of high-speed Internet. The changes are simple: Starting Dec. 1, Lifeline’s mobile carriers will have to offer 4.5 GB of data each month, up from 3 GB.

We saw a glimpse of how 10G broadband could transform home life. Here's how.

In a small, one-story house in Ames, central Iowa officials got a look at a futuristic living space powered by what Mediacom calls "the next generation of broadband technology." The company debuted its "smart home," touting it as the first field trial in the country for a new 10G platform and showing more than 70 smart devices including many "bandwidth intensive" ones at work at once. The platform allows a ramp-up to 10 gigabits per second from the 1 gigabit speeds available today, Mediacom said.

Everybody vs. the App Store: Why Companies Are Taking Issue With Apple’s Growing Revenue Engine

A host of companies, are challenging the way Apple runs its App Store. The App Store generates at least $15 billion in annual sales for the tech giant. Critics say Apple takes too big a cut of app makers’ sales and wields monopoly power over the gateway that connects hundreds of millions of users to mobile apps. Apple disputes that characterization, saying that it collects only a portion of sales from a small percentage of the almost 2 million apps available on the App Store and that its practices are in line with competitors’ app marketplaces.

© 1994-2026 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.