The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau issued an order granting two petitions seeking waiver of obligations to provide service to a specific number of locations as part of the rural broadband experiments program, filed by Allamakee-Clayton Electric Cooperative and Consolidated Communications Networks. The bureau said petitioners demonstrated the required number of locations exceeds the actual number the petitioners have been able to identify within their respective study areas. The bureau also said in granting these waiver requests, it made pro-rata adjustments to the petitioners’ support amounts and directed the Universal Service Administrative Company to prorate reductions in future payments for the remainder of the support term.

[On July 14, 2014, the FCC established the RBE program as part of its universal service high-cost program. The FCC designed this program to test future Connect America Fund (CAF) auction processes that would allocate support in price cap territories where the average cost of service exceeded a certain high-cost threshold, as determined by the Connect America Model (CAM). For this program, the FCC set bidding areas based on census block and limited available funding only to residential and small business locations in eligible high-cost census blocks. The FCC required successful bidders to serve every CAM-determined location within their winning bid areas (including locations for which no support had been allocated). In addition, RBE support recipients were required to submit information about their served locations on an annual basis and to certify, by certain deadlines, incremental progress in meeting their defined deployment obligations, measured as a percentage of their full obligation (build-out milestones).]

Internet usage is no longer a good deal in the US. In France, consumers pay about 90 euros (or $100) a month for a combination of broadband access, cable television and two mobile phones. A similar package in the United States usually costs more than twice as much. Many Americans have a choice between only two internet providers. A few companies have grown so large that they have the power to keep prices high and wages low.

What explains the difference? Politics. The European economy certainly has its problems, but antitrust policy isn’t one of them. The European Union has kept competition alive by blocking mergers and insisting that established companies make room for new entrants. In telecommunications, smaller companies often have the right to use infrastructure built by the giants. That’s why the French can choose among five internet providers, including a low-cost company that brought down prices for everyone. The irony is that Europe is implementing market-based ideas — like telecommunications deregulation and low-cost airlines — that Americans helped pioneer.

The Department of Justice announced that it has filed an amended complaint that adds Arkansas as a plaintiff in the suit and proposed settlement relating to the proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint.Arkansas joins Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota in the settlement, which is designed to launch Dish Network as a fourth nationwide provider of retail mobile wireless services.  In addition to protecting competition, the proposed settlement will expedite the availability of high-quality 5G networks for American consumers and entrepreneurs.

The Federal Trade Commission announced a $60-million settlement from wireless giant AT&T for not playing straight with the public. The issue is "throttling" and wireless companies intentionally slowing down your speed to near unusable levels if you consume too much of its "unlimited" data. AT&T said it was sorry, that the practice was way in the past – dating back to 2011 – and that it had moved on to different policies. But, actually, AT&T hasn't stopped throttling. Neither has Verizon, T-Mobile or soon to be swallowed up Sprint. AT&T and its rivals are just more upfront about it now. What hasn't changed is the game of semantics the wireless companies play. 

Fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal that engulfed Facebook was a wake-up call for investors such as Boston Common Asset Management, underlining the damaging social effects of digital technology if left unchecked. “These are the red flags coming up for us again and again,” says Lauren Compere, director of shareholder engagement at Boston Common. Fund managers have come under pressure in recent years to divest from companies that can harm human rights — from gun manufacturers or retailers to operators of private prisons. The focus is now switching to the less tangible but equally serious human rights risks lurking in fund managers’ technology holdings. Attention on technology groups began with concerns around data privacy, but emerging focal points are targeted advertising and how companies deal with online extremism.

Facebook is considering restricting politicians' ability to use highly detailed demographic and personal information to narrowly target would-be voters with ads, policy chief Nick Clegg confirmed in a possible shift in the social network's broadly permissive policy on political advertising. Clegg declined to discuss any other changes, saying the company is still in the decision-making process. But he said Facebook is also looking at "whether users are sufficiently aware of when they’re being exposed to political ads as opposed to organic content," the company's term for material such as ordinary users' posts. “We’re now working actively to reflect, in the face of all the criticisms, on what we should do to adjust our own posture on all this. We want to get this right,” Clegg said. "It's actually quite a good thing in the long run that we're having this debate now rather than two months before the election." Clegg reiterated that, even amid the policy tweaks Facebook is mulling, it won't be following Twitter's lead to block political ads entirely. "We don’t think getting out of political ads altogether is the answer," he said, arguing that Twitter's approach has a "ton of downsides," such as the difficulty of determining what counts as a political or issue ad and the disadvantage some argue such a ban places on non-incumbent politicians.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-South bend), who has been a Silicon Valley favorite in the 2020 presidential race, is calling out several tech giants for harming workers. In his new policy plan, Mayor Buttigieg singles out Facebook, Google and Uber for troubling labor practices, and pledges to hold employers accountable under labor laws, strengthen unions and expand protections for gig workers. “The status quo with companies like Facebook and Uber setting the rules and government sitting on the sidelines must change,” the plan says. “Government and business policies have relentlessly tilted the balance of power away from workers and toward corporations. ... Bargaining does not even exist for some workers, especially for those who work for Uber, McDonald’s, Google, or countless other companies that claim they don’t directly employ their workers.” With the Democratic field dwindling and the final two Democratic debates of the year on the horizon, the Silicon Valley sweetheart is likely to face more pressure to articulate where — relative to Warren and other tech critics in the running — he stands on major tech policy issues.