Analysis

We’ve been working to fill [the tricky gap between urban and rural broadband access] for more than two decades. Around 95 percent of the US population today has access to broadband of at least 25 megabits per second. 99 percent of non-rural households do, and 98 percent of non-rural households enjoy access to 100 megabits-per-second service.

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. 

According the latest Census data on computer and Internet use, 85.7% of Americans have fixed-line broadband service in the home. But during the COVID pandemic, it is the 14.3% of broadband “have nots” getting all the attention.

America has spent billions trying to close the Digital Divide, but adoption disparities along many dimensions persist. The COVID pandemic has rekindled the strong interest in broadband adoption, with many in Congress now proposing to spend billions more to shrink the adoption gap. As might be expected, the Phoenix Center’s economic analysis prescribes that money should be spent where it is most effective (per dollar) at increasing adoption.

They say it is best not to talk politics among friends. But in trying to avoid the conversation, Facebook has stepped right into the thick of it. Now, some of its most valuable relationships are at risk. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, Facebook has been no stranger to controversies ranging from election misinformation, security breaches, violent content and more.

A full 15 to 16 million public school students across the US live in households without adequate internet access or computing devices to facilitate distance learning. Almost 10% of public school teachers (300,000 to 400,000) are also caught in the gap, affecting their ability to run remote classes. The 32-page report, Closing the K–12 Digital Divide in the Age of Distance Learning, fixes a one-year price tag of at least $6 billion and as much as $11 billion to connect all kids at home, and an additional $1 billion to close the divide for teachers.

Just over 100 days ago, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that a number of broadband and telephone service providers had volunteered to take what he calls the Keep Americans Connected Pledge. Over 780 companies took the pledge "in order to ensure that Americans do not lose their broadband or telephone connectivity as a result of these exceptional circumstances." When first announced, the pledge was to last until May 12, 2020.

The Federal Communications Commission issued its 2020 staff report on the availability and effectiveness of call blocking tools offered to consumers. Surveying data submitted by a variety of commenters, the FCC found that call blocking tools are now substantially available to consumers at no or low cost. In addition to this report, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the FCC will

“I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about,” President Donald Trump said in a 2020 Oval Office exchange. One of those powers is his authority to shut down radio, television, both wireless and wired phone networks, and the internet. It is not a big step from using the power of the government to threaten free expression to actually doing something to curtail that expression. All it takes is a unilateral “proclamation by the President” of the existence of a “national emergency.”

Building a consensus to change Section 230 will be harder than it looks. The law’s critics have vastly different and sometimes incompatible ideas about how the law should work. Republican and Democratic policymakers alike have called for sites to bear more legal liability if users post illegal content.