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  2. April 2021

April 2021

The Infrastructural Power Beneath the Internet as We Know It

Perhaps the last mile is actually the first step in working toward a different vision of who should own and govern the means of computation. What’s at stake for both the tech industry and government regulators isn’t what is or isn’t infrastructure, but what the ownership and profit model for that infrastructure looks like and whom it benefits. Substituting “the means of computation” for “infrastructure” isn’t going to make it any easier to alter those ownership models, but it might make it easier for us to focus on building and maintaining an internet that serves the public’s needs.

The cost to connect the unconnected

With the Biden infrastructure debate in full swing, the cost to connect the rest of the unserved with broadband has taken center stage. The last version of the Accessible Affordable Internet for All Act proposes $80 billion in subsidies through reverse auctions to close the digital divide once and for all.

President Joe Biden is betting big on small networks to close the digital divide

The Biden administration’s ambitious infrastructure proposal, the American Jobs Plan, includes $100 billion in broadband funding, with the goal of connecting every American to high-speed broadband by the end of the decade. But with Senate Republicans set to dramatically cut total investment in their counter-proposal, the future of the package is unclear.

President Biden Proposes Government Actually Try to Create Broadband Competition

Most Republicans and many Democrats have framed broadband much like Ronald Reagan would: Get government out of the way, remove regulations, and let too-big-to-fail incumbent providers bridge the digital divide. A favorite target is public rights-of-way—every street plus about ten feet of land on each side where utility poles or underground utility lines are located, and where internet service providers attach or bury lines and equipment that transmit internet data.

Supreme Court Cuts Federal Trade Commission Powers to Recover Ill-Gotten Gains

The Supreme Court curbed the Federal Trade Commission’s longtime practice of seeking to recover ill-gotten gains in court from companies and individuals who cheat or mislead consumers, upending a central enforcement tool the agency has relied on for decades. The court, in an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, ruled unanimously that a 1973 law, which gives the FTC the right to seek court injunctions to stop fraudulent or deceptive commercial activity, doesn’t grant the commission the power to seek financial judgments as well.

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