Thursday, October 10, 2019
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Innovation: Putting Broadband to Work
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Funding to Close the Digital Divide
Comcast incorrectly charged customers for exceeding data cap
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Telecommunications and utility groups are urging congressional appropriators to continue investing in rural broadband in fiscal year 2020. “The health and productivity of the people we represent throughout rural America are dependent on access to high-quality broadband,” The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association, the Utilities Technology Council and nearly two dozen other groups wrote in a letter to Senate and House appropriators. The groups are pressing lawmakers to include $605 million to fund the Department of Agriculture's ReConnect Program, which provides loans and grants to pay for broadband in remote areas without access. “Continued direct federal investment is critical to closing the digital divide and enabling rural consumers to fully participate in our 21st Century economy and society,” they tell Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Vice Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Ranking Member Kay Granger (R-TX).
Comcast's data-usage meter gave thousands of customers inaccurate readings for two months because of a software bug, causing the broadband provider to incorrectly charge about 2,000 users for exceeding their monthly data caps. Comcast has admitted the error and said it is giving refunds and additional credits of $50 each to customers who paid data overage fees that shouldn't have been assessed. Comcast said it's still trying to figure out if the bug is in the meter software, the billing software, or in the interaction between the two. What Comcast knows for certain, the spokesperson said, is that the problem was fixed when it rolled back to the previous version of its billing software.
Cox announced it has increased speeds for the company's low-cost internet product, Connect2Compete, which is available to families with school-aged children who are enrolled in low-income assistance programs. Download speeds are now up to 25 megabytes per second for all Connect2Compete customers. Upload speeds have also increased from 1 to 3 megabytes per second. The speed increase is automatic, no action is required by the customer to benefit from faster internet speeds. Cox has connected 500,00 people to the internet through Connect2Compete, and over 60 percent were connected to the internet for the first time.
The Federal Communications Commission has officially rescinded the portion of its rules that exempted certain wireless facilities deployments from local environmental and historic preservation reviews. The FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau indicated there is no need to put the order out for public notice and comment since it is simply implementing a court mandate from which the FCC had no discretion to deviate.
Over the objections of local government officials and the reservations of FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC voted in Sept 2018 to streamline the path to small cell deployment, including the rules on site reviews, billing it as crucial to the rollout of 5G wireless service. But the US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit in Aug 2019 ruled that the FCC did not justify its deregulation of those reviews and vacated that part of the larger wireless deployment deregulation order. The court mandate to roll back the rules became effective Oct 7, when that ruling was published in the Federal Register, and the FCC put out the order Oct 8 repealing "the subsection of the Commission’s rules implementing the small wireless facilities exemption, and delet[ing] a cross-reference to that subsection contained elsewhere in the Commission’s rules." The result of the order is that "deployments of small wireless facilities are subject to review to the same extent as larger wireless facilities pursuant to the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA)."
The tech industry spent the last two decades connecting the world and getting computers into every home and hand — but that's turning out to have been the easy part. Now, every problem tech companies face is fiendishly hard. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple have entered a world where their product innovations and profit margins are beginning to matter less than their ability to navigate treacherous political, social, and ethical rapids. Policymakers and engineers are both accustomed to making and living with tradeoffs, but someone has to make a final call over where these choices land. The fight now is over who that will be: companies, governments, or the public.
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that Americans’ understanding of technology-related issues varies greatly depending on the topic, term or concept. Some findings:
- While a majority of US adults can correctly answer questions about phishing scams or website cookies, other items are more challenging. About one-quarter of Americans (24%) know that private browsing only hides browser history from other users of that computer, while roughly half (49%) say they are unsure what private browsing does.
- 48% of adults correctly answered that a privacy policy is a contract between websites and users regarding how their data will be used, while 45% know that net neutrality refers to the principle that internet service providers should treat all traffic on their networks equally.
- Americans’ knowledge of the business side of social media companies is also relatively low. Just 29% of Americans correctly named WhatsApp and Instagram as two companies owned by Facebook. And when presented with a photo of Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, only 15% of adults correctly identified him.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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