House lawmakers proposed a raft of bipartisan legislation aimed at reining in the country’s biggest tech companies, including a bill that seeks to make Amazon and other large corporations effectively split in two or shed their private-label products.
AT&T CEO John Stankey called President Biden's plan to fund municipal broadband networks "misguided" and said the US shouldn't pay for any broadband deployment in areas that already have networks. But as AT&T and others lobby against public networks and government-funded competition, Stankey said he is confident that Congress will steer legislation in the more "pragmatic" direction that AT&T favors. "It would be a shame that we take taxpayer money or ask local governments to go into a business that they don't run today," Stankey said.
The Federal Communications Commission will re-charter the Task Force for Reviewing Connectivity and Technology Needs of Precision Agriculture in the United States, a federal advisory committee, which provides advice and recommendations to the FCC on accelerating the deployment of broadband Internet access service on unserved agriculture land to promote precision agriculture.
Sens John Thune (R-SD), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Brian Schatz (D-HI), and Mark Warner (D-VA) reintroduced the Filter Bubble Transparency Act (S.2024). The bill would require large-scale internet platforms that collect data from more than 1 million users and gross more than $50 million per year to provide greater transparency to consumers, and allow users to view content that has not been curated as a result of a secret algorithm.
For decades, policymakers in Washington and state capitals have fretted about the patchwork of broadband access in the United States, which has held back economic development in underserved areas and became a major problem during the pandemic. Now, after years of federal subsidies that have improved but not solved the problem, the Biden administration is proposing to spend $100 billion over the next eight years to finally connect every American household to high-speed internet. But solving the problem isn’t just a matter of cutting a big check to fund the installation of fiber pipelines.
There is a lot of momentum in Washington (DC) and in state governments right now to improve the adoption of broadband by addressing the issue of affordability for low-income communities. To decide what policies will do the most good for low-income households seeking broadband connectivity, it’s important to first understand the existing marketplace.
It’s time for states to step up and realize that proper technology and WiFi connectivity are a must-have in public school districts, and that state policy is dangerously lagging behind. While systems might not continue to operate as 100 percent virtual schools in a post-COVID world, better access to learning technology is no longer negotiable in this increasingly-digital world. Hybrid schooling models can offer significant opportunities for personalized learning, from special education students to students in rural areas who don’t have adequate wireless connectivity at home.
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