Universal broadband access is crucial for Wisconsin. Over the past two decades, the growing importance of broadband for business, farming, school, and governments has been obvious. The COVID-19 pandemic has re-emphasized its critical nature. While broadband access is nearly universal in Wisconsin cities and villages, there are major gaps in rural Wisconsin. According to the most recent data from the Federal Communications Commission, 25% of rural residents lack access to 25 Mbps broadband, the speed which is now considered the standard. Wisconsin’s level of inaccessibility is worse than the national average and 35 other states. Rural access to 25 Mbps broadband varies widely by county. The highest levels of access generally are in the relatively small rural parts of urban counties, such as Kenosha, Racine, and Waukesha counties. However, in nine more sparsely-populated counties—Ashland, Clark, Douglas, Iron, Marinette, Price, Richland, Rusk, and Taylor—less than half of the rural population has broadband at that speed available. Wisconsin’s broadband infrastructure does have key successes, though. Access levels at speeds of 10 Mbps or higher are better than the U.S. average—93.6% of rural Wisconsin residents had access to those speeds vs. 91.3% nationally. In areas with 10 Mbps access, the strategy for achieving universal 25 Mbps access will involve upgrading current service rather than bringing new broadband to areas where it does not exist. The state has also shown how a variety of technologies and strategies can be employed to provide broadband to rural populations. In Vernon, Ozaukee, Kewaunee, and Pierce counties, at least 92% of the rural population has access to 25 Mbps broadband. In Vernon County, fiber is by far the primary technology for accessing it. In Ozaukee, nearly 90% gain access through cable or DSL lines. Eighty percent of Kewaunee County residents receive broadband via fixed wireless towers. Pierce County has no dominant technology; a combination of these technologies are employed for a high level of broadband access. Local governments can play a leadership role in solving the problem of adequate universal broadband. They are uniquely positioned to identify underserved areas, which is a critical first step in addressing the access issue. Additionally, local governments can help connect local private providers to various state or federal grant programs, as successful broadband projects often require the collaboration of multiple stakeholders to identify and address the problem.

The United States continues to build on its 5G leadership and is critically focused on repurposing radiofrequency spectrum – especially through investment in America’s mid-band spectrum. Our country leads the world in availability of high- and low-band spectrum for commercial wireless services. Now, as this Report highlights, the United States is making tremendous strides in repurposing important mid-band spectrum. The 2018 Presidential Memorandum “Developing a Sustainable Spectrum Strategy for America’s Future” required the Secretary of Commerce to report annually on efforts to repurpose spectrum – either on an exclusive or shared basis – to support commercial wireless services. This is the second such report, and it highlights spectrum repurposing activities through August 30, 2020 that are meeting statutory requirements and advancing President Trump’s policy objectives.

In the end, two billionaires from California did what legions of politicians, prosecutors and power brokers had tried and failed to do for years: They pulled the plug on President Donald Trump. Permanently suspending Trump's accounts was a watershed moment in the history of social media. Facebook and Twitter had spent years defending Trump’s continued presence on their platforms, only to change course days before the end of his presidency. These companies, corporate autocracies masquerading as mini-democracies, often portray their moderation decisions as the results of a kind of formulaic due process, as if “don’t incite an insurrectionist mob” had been in the community guidelines all along. But high-stakes calls like these typically come down to gut decisions made under extreme duress. In this case, Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg considered the evidence, consulted their teams, weighed the trade-offs and risks of inaction — including the threat of a worker revolt that could damage their ability to attract top talent — and decided that they’d seen enough. Journalists and historians will spend years unpacking the improvisational nature of these bans, and scrutinizing why they arrived just as President Trump was losing his power, and Democrats were poised to take control of Congress and the White House. The bans have also turned up the heat on a free-speech debate that has been simmering for years.

Tim Berners-Lee believes the online world has gone astray. Too much power and too much personal data, he says, reside with the tech giants like Google and Facebook — “silos” is the generic term he favors, instead of referring to the companies by name. Fueled by vast troves of data, he says, they have become surveillance platforms and gatekeepers of innovation. Regulators have voiced similar complaints. The big tech companies are facing tougher privacy rules in Europe and some American states, led by California. Google and Facebook have been hit with antitrust suits. But Berners-Lee is taking a different approach: His answer to the problem is technology that gives individuals more power. The goal, he said, is to move toward “the web that I originally wanted.” “Pods,” personal online data stores, are a key technical ingredient to achieve that goal. The idea is that each person could control his or her own data — websites visited, credit card purchases, workout routines, music streamed — in an individual data safe, typically a sliver of server space.