Tech issues aren’t likely to be at the top of Joe Biden’s agenda on Jan 20. But tech needs a seat at the Biden table to navigate what have been increasingly thorny issues for the industry: net neutrality, privacy, antitrust challenges, broadband access, science and technology investment, and H-1B visas.

The first item on Biden’s tech agenda should be to send Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai packing and replace him with someone who will restore net neutrality, preserving equal access to the internet for users. The president-elect would receive strong support from the tech industry if he pushes for the United States to make a bigger investment in science and technology research and development. He should also gain bipartisan support for an infrastructure package that would include expanding broadband access throughout the nation. The COVID-19 pandemic makes clear how important it is for Americans to have universal internet access.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau addresses the petition of the National Lifeline Association (NaLA), seeking a waiver of the FCC’s rules updating the Lifeline program’s minimum service standard for mobile broadband usage, which otherwise would take effect on December 1, 2020. NaLA also seeks to halt the phase-down of the support amount for Lifeline service that does not meet the broadband minimum standard, which will decrease from $7.25/month to $5.25/month on December 1, 2020. Given the large increase to the mobile broadband minimum service standard that would result from the formula the FCC adopted in 2016, the FCC’s stated intent to regularly and predictably increase the minimum service standard for mobile broadband usage to ensure that Lifeline supports an evolving level of service, and the increased reliance by Americans on mobile broadband as a result of the pandemic, good cause exists to partially grant the petition on this issue. Specifically, the bureau waives the rule to the extent it would establish a minimum service standard greater than 4.5 GB/month, beginning on December 1, 2020, finding that this moderate 50% increase—equal to the 50% increase permitted by the FCC’s partial waiver of the rule in 2019— balances the program’s goals of accessibility and affordability. The bureau further finds that NaLA has not shown that good cause exists to halt the scheduled phase-down of support for Lifeline voice service, and therefore denies that portion of the petition

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed by Congress and signed into law in March 2020, provided more than $2 trillion in economic stimulus to address the pandemic. Among its provisions, the act created the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF), designating $150 billion for payments “to state, local, and tribal governments navigating the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.” States can use this funding to cover pandemic-related costs incurred from the beginning of March through the end of 2020 that were not anticipated in their budgets before March 2020, including broadband access. States’ efforts to expand connectivity using these federal resources have focused on four specific needs: increasing access to online learning for K-12 and postsecondary students, supporting telehealth services, deploying more public Wi-Fi access points, and investing in residential broadband infrastructure, especially in rural and underserved areas. States have directed significant Coronavirus Relief Fund resources toward providing temporary help, such as hotspots and public Wi-Fi access, for people who lack reliable home internet connectivity. These efforts, though important, are not long-term solutions to the problem of inadequate residential broadband service. As policymakers work to provide reliable, high-speed internet access to more underserved neighborhoods, they should:

• Prioritize connecting more residences to existing infrastructure. 
• Invest in planning and oversight for long-term solutions. 
• Coordinate across levels of government to support broadband deployment.

As the Cameron Peak fire burned in the distance on the morning of Oct. 17, Josh Cramer sprung into action. He worried the fire might reach Estes Park (CO) and cause a literal meltdown that could wipe out the town’s internet, emergency lines and prevent reverse 9-1-1 calls.  The town needed access to backup broadband. But where? And how?  Cramer, network architect at Trailblazer Broadband, began making calls and learned the Platte River Power Authority was worried about the same thing. One possible answer lay on the other side of the Continental Divide, where a new 481-mile internet line named Project Thor offered backup broadband to western Colorado. Cramer found the contact information for Nate Walowitz, who spearheaded Project Thor, and emailed him. “He calls me back 15 minutes later and we talk and he says, ‘Yeah, if you can get here, we can connect things up,’” Cramer said. 

By that evening, there’d been three conference calls with dozens of people representing power companies, local governments and internet services. Getting to Project Thor’s connection in Granby required locating available fiber along the way and gaining permission from various agencies, utilities and fiber owners — something that usually takes weeks, months and sometimes years to pull together. But something just clicked with everyone.

At least 16 organizations got together to contribute a piece to the emergency plan. There were no permits issued. Verbal agreements were made. People worked on the weekend.  “It truly is an amazing story how we all worked together to pull this off,” said Walowitz, Regional Broadband Program Director for Northwest Colorado Council of Governments. “If any one of these partners hadn’t participated, this wouldn’t have happened.” “The way I decompressed it all and thought about it is you’ve got a lot of great government agencies. They’ve got a lot of great processes. We’ve got a lot of good policies to follow,” Cramer said. “But at the end of the day, this was just humans helping humans try to survive.”

This paper analyzes the asserted need for, and likely consequences of, four types of broadband regulation proposals in recent circulation: 1) facilities-sharing obligations; 2) retail price controls; 3) internet interconnection obligations; and 4) amorphous and open-ended ISP conduct rules like those the FCC imposed in 2015. For the most part, we see little merit to any of these proposals under current market conditions. None of them is needed to address any identifiable market failure, and each would impose significant costs, including the investment-chilling prospect of regulatory creep. But market forces by themselves will not help America close two stubborn and unacceptable digital divides: between rich and poor, and between urban and rural. These are real, universally acknowledged problems that call for real solutions. In particular, they call for expanded subsidy mechanisms—one directed to low-income subscribers and the other to broadband providers that commit to new infrastructure deployment in rural and other high-cost areas. But the challenge of closing these digital divides does not even logically support a call for more intrusive regulation of the broadband industry. To the contrary, such regulation would, if anything, make the underlying problems worse by placing a thumb on the scale against additional broadband investment.

C Spire is adding 15 community colleges to the Mississippi Optical Network (MissiON). The MissiON network is the research and education network supporting universities in the state. The 15 community colleges – which are not identified in the press release – will gain additional capacity and fully redundant connectivity to commodity Internet services and state university research programs, according to C Spire. C Spire has been quite involved with MissiON, having previously added universities to the network and “enhanced connections” to the network for others. The MissiON network facilitates collaboration among Mississippi’s research universities, regional universities and community colleges and provides access to resources in the ITS State Data Center and C Spire data centers that are located in Jackson and Starkville.

A Q&A with former President Barack Obama. 

When asked, "Is this new malevolent information architecture bending the moral arc away from justice?" Former President Obama said, "I think it is the single biggest threat to our democracy. I think Donald Trump is a creature of this, but he did not create it. He may be an accelerant of it, but it preceded him and will outlast him....Part of the common narrative was a function of the three major networks and a handful of papers that were disproportionately influential. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You’re not going to eliminate the internet; you’re not going to eliminate the thousand stations on the air with niche viewerships designed for every political preference. Without this it becomes very difficult for us to tackle big things."

When asked about holding tech companies responsible, he said, "At the end of the day, we’re going to have to find a combination of government regulations and corporate practices that address this, because it’s going to get worse. If you can perpetrate crazy lies and conspiracy theories just with texts, imagine what you can do when you can make it look like you or me saying anything on video. We’re pretty close to that now."