Harold Feld

One of the most important developments for connectivity for Native American Tribes, Alaskan Native villages and Native Hawaiian communities is the 2.5 GHz Rural Tribal Priority Window (TPW). This gives federally recognized Tribes on rural Tribal lands the opportunity to apply for free spectrum licenses in one of bands best suited for 5G. Tribes that receive these licenses will have the capability to build out their own 5G networks, bringing real, reliable and affordable broadband to communities that have the worst broadband access in the US.

Vendors must expose proprietary information, such as sales data or logistic information, to digital platforms like Amazon or Facebook in order to reach customers on those platforms. This gives digital platforms the ability to use vendor proprietary information to create, price, and market rival products, enabling platforms to unfairly benefit from the work, business acumen, and risks taken by third-party vendors. Although accusations against Amazon have received the most press coverage, the problem goes well beyond Amazon and undermines competition broadly. 

Things have now come to an all-out war between the Department of Defense and the Federal Communications Commission, with the Defense Department claiming that a recent decision by the FCC (on a 5-0 bipartisan vote) resolving a decades-long dispute with a company now called Ligado will interfere with vital GPS operations.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about 5G – the next generation of wireless technology — is that it manages to bridge the hyper-partisan divide in Washington (DC).

Here is a very simple idea to persuade Americans to stay home, keep our virtual society running, and stimulate the economy. As part of the coronavirus stimulus package, the US government will cover everyone’s broadband bill for a basic connection capable of supporting two-way video (ideally 25/25 Mbps, but we may have to settle for the Federal Communications Commission official definition of broadband of 25/3 Mbps). 

If you follow spectrum policy at all, you will have heard about the C-Band Auction and the 5.9 GHz fight. But you would be forgiven if you hadn’t heard much about the fight over opening the

In his dissenting statement, Federal Communications Commissioner Geoffrey Starks objected to a sentence included since the initial draft of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Order. The Starks dissent states: “The version of the Order now before us excludes from RDOF any area that the Commission ‘know[s] to be awarded funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect Program or other similar federal or state broadband subsidy programs, or those subject to enforceable broadband deployment obligations.’” (emphasis in original)

The C-Band is a slice of spectrum that in the US that lies between 3.7 GHz and 4.2 GHz. When first authorized for commercial satellite use back in the day, these frequencies were considered far too high to have much value for terrestrial use.

The short version is that we lost the big prize (getting the Order overturned, or “vacated” as we lawyers say), but won enough to force this back to the Federal Communications Commission for further proceedings (which may yet result in the “Restoring Internet Freedom Order” or RIFO being reversed and/or vacated) and open up new fronts in the states.

What sort of a tax on Silicon Valley (and others) might make sense from a social policy perspective? What about a tax on the sale of personal information, including the use of personal information for ad placement? To be clear, I’m not talking about a tax on collecting information or on using the information collected. I’m talking a tax on two-types of commercial transactions; selling information about individuals to third parties, or indirectly selling information to third parties via targeted advertising. It would be sort of a carbon tax for privacy pollution.