When communications attorney Robert McDowell started feeling a little under the weather in March, he chalked it up to seasonal allergies and related bronchitis and got the usual antibiotic from his primary care physician. Then his symptoms worsened. It wasn’t seasonal allergies. After a trip to the hospital and back home again, the former Federal Communications Commissioner was re-admitted with what turned out to be COVID-19-related double pneumonia.

The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau issued a temporary, limited waiver to TV broadcasters to enable them to more easily air live and taped same-day local content, like religious services, during time slots regularly dedicated to children's programming

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced more than $6 billion will be distributed immediately to colleges and universities to provide direct emergency cash grants to college students whose lives and educations have been disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak. The funding is available through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump March 27.

When I moved to Drain (OR) population 1,169, I did so because it was my dream to buy a small farm and land is cheaper here than in larger towns. What I didn’t realize was that in rural America, internet options are often limited. Now that the libraries and businesses I used to rely on for internet have closed, the threads of connection I clung to before have been taken away. I cannot rent DVDs. I cannot go to the library to work. Even cruising grocery store aisles is a bad idea.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who has previously waded into debates on net neutrality, slammed the Federal Communications Commission and broadband companies for not doing enough to address the digital divide. In a video with Rep.

The Senate Commerce Committee will hold one of the first known congressional “paper hearings” to discuss the use of personal data during the coronavirus outbreak, which has forced Capitol Hill to move much of its business online. The session, as the name indicates, will be carried out entirely through written statements, questions and responses set to be posted online, with witnesses having four days to respond to queries from lawmakers after the end of business April 9. 

This digital divide has always left children and adults alike with fewer educational and economic opportunities. But with schools, libraries, and workplaces closed during the coronavirus pandemic, those without broadband are struggling to access schoolwork, job listings, unemployment benefit applications, and video chat services that others use to keep in touch with friends and family. For those on the wrong side of the digital divide, working from home isn’t an option.

Regarding Steven Davidoff Solomon’s “Berkeley Schools Leave Every Child Behind” (op-ed, April 3), Solomon should know that under federal law public schools (unlike his first daughter’s private school) cannot just plow ahead with a structure that excludes free access to any student, whatever the special need and without threat of serious legal challenges with financial consequences to the district and the district taxpayers.

Phone calls have made a comeback in the pandemic.

North Dakota telephone cooperative BEK Communications is offering new subscribers four months of free Internet access on its Lightband Fiber-to-the-Home network. The co-op is also increasing speeds and implementing other efforts through its “BEK Cares” initiative, which aims to make better broadband accessible to rural North Dakotans in response to the growing Covid-19 emergency. Valley City Commission President Dave Carlsrud said, "We have been utilizing BEK’s business services for years, however with the current COVID-19 pandemic, we quickly found out how important they truly were.