Reporting

The House passed a new version of a bill meant to improve the accuracy of maps detailing where broadband is and isn't available in the US. The legislation is now on a fast track to the Senate, where it's expected to pass before going to President Donald Trump for signing. The bipartisan Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability (DATA) Act was passed by the House late in 2019 as part of a broader package of legislation intended to improve the Federal Communications Commission's broadband maps. The Senate also passed a version of the bill.

On Feb 28 the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve a new order paving the way for the expanded use of “white space broadband,” a promising technology that uses the spectrum freed from the shift to digital television to beam broadband into traditionally harder to reach rural areas. In 2017, Microsoft announced an ambitious plan to bring the technology to more than 2 million rural Americans across a dozen states by July 2022.

iPhone users are slated to get $25 each from an up-to-$500 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit over Apple's decision to throttle the performance of iPhones with degraded batteries. People eligible for the payments are US residents who used affected versions of iOS before December 21, 2017, on the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, 7, 7 Plus, or SE.

Traditionally, the story of rural broadband in America has ended with a two-letter word: no. No, the local cable or phone monopoly isn’t going to extend service to this county or that town.

Amid the mad dash to develop fifth-generation (5G) wireless technologies, Shirley Bloomfield likes to remind people that vast swaths of America have other hurdles to clear first. “As everybody gets super excited about 5G ... we just tell them in rural America we’re still waiting for 1G in some areas,” said the CEO of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association.

Earl Comstock, a senior Commerce Department official who helped lead the Trump administration's efforts to impose export restrictions on China's Huawei is resigning effective March 6, apparently. Comstock, who has served for three years as director of Policy and Strategic Planning at the department, often clashed with other administration officials on a range of issues. 

Tech companies like Google and Facebook grew giant in part by rolling up startups that are now fully integrated into their businesses. Despite heated antitrust rhetoric, it would be a tall order for regulators to reverse hundreds of deals or force divestitures of the essential business lines those transactions helped build. As regulators review a decade of tech industry acquisitions for signs of monopolistic behavior, proposing remedies is going to be a tough challenge. Washington still has some tools to help counter competitive harms stemming from past mergers.

Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, addressing allegations of conservative bias on online platforms, said he did not think the answer was "to do nothing." He cited what he said was a leaked document from Twitter "that it would soon be able to allow political ideologues to stamp tweets as misinformation based on their perspective," saying: "I don't think that's the right thing." "If you don't want MSNBC fact-checking the information you see on Twitter," he said, "I think you should be empowered to make that decision and turn those types of bias filters off." Asked to weigh in o

If you use Firefox, your web browsing habits will become a bit more mysterious to your internet provider. Mozilla, the non-profit developer of the Firefox web browser, will make this happen by switching US desktop Firefox users to an encrypted form of the directory assistance behind all internet navigation. This change involves the Domain Name Service, which lets you get anywhere online by translating your request for a site into the numeric Internet Protocol, or IP, address matching the computer that will deliver the web page in question.

Minnesota state regulators worry changes to Lifeline could disrupt discounts on phone and broadband service for some low-income Minnesotans. In an effort to crack down on fraud and abuse, the Federal Communications Commission has for several years been working to streamline Lifeline's application process. As the changes to Lifeline take effect in Minnesota, they have stoked fears that some of the program's subscribers will lose their discounts in the transition.