The purpose of Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s is to collect, combine, and contribute to a national broadband agenda for the next decade, enlisting the voices of broadband leaders in an ongoing discussion on how public policy can close the digital divide and extend digital opportunity everywhere. Leaders at all levels of government should ensure that everyone is able to use High-Performance Broadband in the next decade by embracing the following building blocks of policy:

• Deployment. Federal money should help build future-proof networks in places where people don’t have robust broadband choices, focusing on the deployment of networks with 100/100 Mbps symmetrical speeds that can meet future demand in the 2020s, while employing interim measures to ensure that broadband reaches all in the short-term. Government should ensure that middle-mile facilities they fund are open to any broadband provider and that affordable services are among the broadband offerings.
• Competition. Policymakers should encourage broadband competition to help lower prices, improve services, and spur innovation. Right now, restrictive laws in 19 states are hindering communities from helping their people. The laws should be revisited, reversed, and repealed. 
• Affordability & Adoption. Everyone in America should be able to afford a robust broadband connection and have the skills necessary to use it. Current research suggests that low-income people can only afford to pay $10-15 per month for broadband, and local governments and community institutions have demonstrated that digital-skills training is important.
• Community Anchor Institutions. High-Performance Broadband connections empower community anchor institutions to fulfill their missions, reach their users wherever they are, and serve as launching pads for communitywide access. The federal government should expand its support to community institutions, like schools and libraries. As of 2018, 60 percent or more of community anchor institutions in the United States lacked robust and scalable connections that HighPerformance Broadband networks can provide.

[Jonathan Sallet is a Benton Senior Fellow. He works to promote broadband access and deployment, to advance competition, including through antitrust, and to preserve and protect internet openness. He is the former-Federal Communications Commission General Counsel (2013-2016), and Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Litigation, Antitrust Division, US Department of Justice (2016-2017).]

The Northeast Michigan Council of Governments (NEMCOG), in conjunction with Connected Nation Michigan, has created a vertical asset inventory for the region, which is largely rural. The project identifies and catalogs publicly and privately held assets upon which wireless equipment can be mounted. These structures include silos, water towers and the like. The interactive tool can be accessed at Discover Northeast Michigan. Identifying these assets is vital in rural areas that long have lagged in broadband penetration. According to the Federal Communications Commission, 36% of households in the NEMCOG region did not have access to high-speed Internet as of September, 2017. The project takes direct aim at this digital divide. “Access to broadband infrastructure is critical for Michigan and its rural communities, regions, residents, and businesses as they strive to compete on a global scale,” Tom Stephenson, the Community Technology Advisor for CN Michigan, said in a press release. “Just as water and sewer, electricity, and telephone utilities have their place in community and economic development, access to broadband has become the 21st century’s most critical infrastructure.”

Twitter will ban all advertisements about political candidates, elections and hot-button policy issues such as abortion and immigration, a significant shift that comes in response to growing concerns that politicians are seizing on the vast reach of social media to deceive voters ahead of the 2020 election. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said paying for political speech has the effect of “forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.” “While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions,” Dorsey said.

The policy covers ads targeting office-seekers and elections including those around ballot measures, as well as those that address “issues of national importance." But the change doesn’t affect what users can tweet and share on their own, meaning it may not have much impact on widely followed accounts including President Trump, whose tweets already reach more than 66 million users each day.

The policy will take effect in late November.