For analysts of digital policy issues, few datasets are more useful and trusted than the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life project, which regularly surveys Americans about internet-related topics.

Relations between the US and China, strained for years, have deteriorated at a rapid clip in recent months, leaving the two nations with fewer shared interests and a growing list of conflicts. The Trump administration has moved to involve much of the US government in a campaign that includes investigations, prosecutions and export restrictions.

Amid so much highly visible dysfunction in the American response to the coronavirus, it’s worth appreciating the internet as an unsung hero of the pandemic. It has stayed on because people out there are keeping it on. The internet’s performance is no accident, but rather the result of long-term planning and adaptability, ingenuity and hard work—and also some characteristics that have become part of the personality of the internet itself.

Arden Hills (MN) member-owned agricultural cooperative Land O'Lakes has started offering free Wi-Fi to various rural communities across the country that might not otherwise have access. It’s an initiative Land O’Lakes has been talking about for awhile, according to Chief Technology Officer Teddy Bekele. And with everyone shifting to life online during the COVID-19 crisis, the digital divide in rural communities has been further exacerbated.

The parking lot of Free Pentecostal Holiness Church in the historic town of Tatums (OK) is a little busier these days. The grassy areas on either side of the small, white building now serve as the town's main Wi-Fi hot spot. People in cars parked outside the church's doors can access broadband internet, which isn't common or cheap in the town of about 160.

Cisco is partnering with the State of Arizona to expand Wi-Fi internet access to high-need communities across the state.

International Telecommunication Union, the World Bank, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) have launched an accelerated action plan to better leverage digital technologies and infrastructure in support of citizens, governments and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

CenturyLink's slow broadband deployment, already a problem before the pandemic, has gotten even slower as the public health crisis causes cities and towns to halt construction. Since 2015, CenturyLink has received $505.7 million each year from the US government's Connect America Fund to deploy Internet service to nearly 1.2 million homes and businesses in 33 states. CenturyLink was required to complete 80 percent of that deployment by the end of 2019 but recently told the Federal Communications Commission that it did not meet the end-of-2019 deadline in 23 of the 33 states.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau approved an additional 26 funding applications for the COVID-19 Telehealth Program. Health care providers in both urban and rural areas of the country will use this $11.19 million in funding to provide telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic. To date, the FCC’s COVID-19 Telehealth Program, which was authorized by the CARES Act, has funded 56 health care providers in 23 states for a total of $24.9 million in funding.

With millions of employees now working from home due to COVID-19, asymmetric broadband offerings are a chokepoint for some business applications. Shrihari Pandit, the CEO of Stealth Communications, said that in addition to slower upstream speeds on DSL or cable broadband services, work from home (WFH) efforts have also been hampered by multiple users in a household using a single broadband connection for gaming, video streaming, video conferencing and remote learning.  "What we've seen is some difficulty in terms of making that successful.