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  2. May 2022

May 2022

Los Angeles Unified and AT&T Deliver High-Speed Internet to Students’ Homes to Bridge the Digital Divide

Los Angeles (CA) Unified School District and AT&T are providing high-speed broadband to students’ homes at no cost to their families. Through this joint effort, more students and households in Los Angeles will have the reliable internet needed to fully participate in education and digital life. This is an investment in high-speed internet to build a better future for Los Angeles Unified students and their families.

New Maps Help Set Priorities for Broadband Deployment

In 2018, Congress provided funding to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to create a National Broadband Availability Map (NBAM) and to work with Federal Communications Commissionas well as state and local governments, nonprofits, network owners and operators and other stakeholders to achieve this goal.

The landscape of lawsuits between big and small internet service providers

One thing that is extremely rare in the broadband industry is lawsuits between internet service providers (ISPs) concerning unfair trade practices. Big ISPs bully and compete unfairly against small ISPs all of the time, and yet you don’t hear of many cases where a small ISP sues the big ISP. There are several reasons for this. One is simple to understand – the big ISPs have a flock of in-house lawyers who can overwhelm anybody who sues them. Little ISPs don’t generally have the deep pockets needed to last through a long, protracted lawsuit.

Tribal leaders are building a better internet from the ground up

Despite creating the predecessor of the modern internet, US broadband access has remained mired in mediocrity for decades, with Americans paying some of the highest prices in the developed world for spotty, slow connections and abysmal customer support.

Broadband and Building Community

In a conversation on April 6 at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society’s 40th anniversary celebration, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) and Glen Echo Group CEO Maura Corbett discussed building community—and the role broadband will play in building and strengthening communities moving forward. Congressman Clyburn founded the Rural Broadband Task Force to help find solutions to the digital divide. Much of the discussion on April 6 focused on bringing broadband to rural areas that, of yet, do not have broadband service. But Corbett asked about urban areas, too.

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