On November 22, seven Republican US senators led by Sen Steve Daines (R-MT) wrote to National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) head Alan Davidson about the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program: "Unfortunately, in your recent BEAD Notice of Opportunity Funding (NOFO), NTIA excluded broadband service using entirely unlicensed spectrum from its definition of reliable broadband, a stark contrast to Congress’s tech-neutral intent and previous determinations reached by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)." On December 20, Administrator Davidson replied saying that BEAD contains provisions specifically designed to address concerns about overbuilding:

• First, as required by the statute, the NOFO defines unserved locations as “those without any broadband service at all or with broadband service offering speeds below 25 megabits per second (Mbps) downstream/3 Mbps upstream,” and underserved locations as “those without broadband service offering speeds of 100 Mbps downstream/20 Mbps upstream.”
• Second, the NOFO includes a specific provision to prevent overbuilding due to potentially duplicative federal funding commitment.
• Further, the ACCESS BROADBAND Act established the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth (OICG) within NTIA and directed OICG to, among other things, “track the construction and use of and access to any broadband infrastructure built using any Federal support in a central database.” NTIA is coordinating closely with the FCC, Treasury, USDA, and others to fully implement NTIA’s statutory coordination duties under the ACCESS BROADBAND Act and to ensure that states, tribes, and communities have the information they need for planning and coordination purposes

Twenty-six US senators—led by Sens Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Roger Wicker (R-MS), John Thune (R-SD)—sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel highlighting important next steps in ensuring that the National Broadband Map provides a reliable depiction of broadband availability across the country. The senators are calling on the FCC to:

• work with stakeholders to make sure that all serviceable locations are represented on the map,
• make it easier to make adjustments to the Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric (the Fabric),
• update the Fabric more than twice each year,
• make sure broadband providers are accountable for their reports prior to the map being finalized (do not allow a provider to claim coverage at locations where challengers can demonstrate they can't receive service), and 
• ensure that the crowdsourcing challenge process works effectively and promptly in response to parties filing robust testing data.

The Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022 was passed by the House of Representatives and is headed to the President’s desk. This historic victory comes a decade after Color Of Change, its members and partners pressured Securus, the largest prison telecom company, to publicly support the prison phone justice legislation after decades of opposing it. The legislation gives the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the authority to establish maximum service rates in prisons for communication providers. This will allow incarcerated individuals to stay in contact with their families and loved ones, without paying exorbitant fees and is a step toward ending carceral profiteering, once and for all. “Enactment of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022 helps everyone, not just the incarcerated and their families,” stressed Benton Senior Counselor Andrew Jay Schwartzman on the broader impact of the new legislation. “Our entire society benefits when families can stay together; reducing recidivism reduces taxes for all of us and also makes the job of law enforcement easier and cheaper.”

Congress passed the bipartisan Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022, which restores the Commission’s authority to ensure service providers charge “just and reasonable rates” for intrastate and interstate calls and other communications methods used by incarcerated individuals in correctional facilities. The legislation is the result of the dedication of the late Martha Wright, who led the charge in 2003 to create positive change and ensure families with incarcerated individuals had the ability to stay in contact with their loved ones by eliminating the burden of exorbitant inmate calling rates. Commissioner Starks issued the following statement: “Jails and prisons have charged predatory rates to incarcerated individuals for far too long. [This] action ensures the Commission has clear authority to act to ensure that rates charged for incarcerated individuals are just and reasonable no matter the phone technology used to make the call or whether the call crosses state lines. I hope the FCC moves quickly to implement the rulemaking as required by the statute soon after President Biden signs the legislation. 

A bill that would free up more money for the Federal Communications Commission suspect tech rip-and-replace program — mandated by Congress — did not make it into the $1.7 trillion must-pass omnibus appropriations bill, according to an unhappy Competitive Carriers Association. The fact that the bill did extend FCC auction authority for a few more months, though, was some solace. In the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks legislation, Congress mandated, and the FCC fully supported, a program for compensating providers with 10 million customers or fewer for removing and replacing network technology the agency has concluded is a potential national security threat — a list that started with Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei and has since expanded. The proposed cap on reimbursing providers of advanced telecom services for the reasonable costs of removing, replacing, and disposing of equipment had been for providers with 2 million customers. Now, the cap is 10 million. (The FCC in July 2021 voted to extend the reimbursement program to larger players.) Congress set aside $1.98 billion of funding in the legislation mandating the program, while the FCC said in February it had received more than $5.5 billion in funding requests. The FCC may not approve all of those asks, but it will clearly need more money than Congress set aside.

Twitter executives have claimed for years that the company makes concerted efforts to detect and thwart government-backed covert propaganda campaigns on its platform. Behind the scenes, however, the company provided direct approval and internal protection to the US military’s network of social media accounts and online personas, whitelisting a batch of accounts at the request of the government. The Pentagon has used this network, which includes US government-generated news portals and memes, in an effort to shape opinion in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and beyond. The accounts in question started out openly affiliated with the US government. But then the Pentagon appeared to shift tactics and began concealing its affiliation with some of these accounts — a move toward the type of intentional platform manipulation that Twitter has publicly opposed. Though Twitter executives maintained awareness of the accounts, they did not shut them down, but let them remain active for years. Some remain active.

Democrats in a vacant Richmond-based congressional district nominated Virginia State Senator Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond) for the seat, putting her on a path to becoming the state’s first Black woman in Congress. State Sen McClellan received 85 percent of the vote, compared to 14 percent for State Sen. Joe Morrissey (D-Richmond), and less than 1 percent each for two other candidates. State Sen McClellan is the vice chair of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus and a former gubernatorial candidate. She spent more than 10 years in Virginia’s House of Delegates and succeeded Don McEachin in the state Senate after he was elected to Congress in 2016. Rep. McEachin died on Nov. 28, just weeks after winning reelection. McClellan raked in dozens of endorsements from local and national Democratic politicians and groups including the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, EMILY’s List, End Citizens United/Let America Vote, NewDem Action Fund, Virginia’s entire Democratic congressional delegation and Colette McEachin, the wife of the late congressman. The district is heavily blue, so McClellan is very likely to win the special election on Feb. 21, when she’ll face off against Republican Leon Benjamin.

Iran’s government has throttled down bandwidths, stepped up filtering of social-media sites and taken down virtual private networks, according to analysts and reports by nongovernment organizations. It has also sought to intercept Starlink and other satellite internet devices, which are illegal in Iran. The number of Iranians with access to Starlink is a tiny fraction of the millions who use virtual private networks and other platforms to evade government restrictions, users say. But the terminals provide internet access free from the government’s controls, making them especially useful for protesters seeking to send video files and communicate securely. Social-media apps have been widely used to organize and share footage of the protests. One of the main efforts to get Starlink gear into Iran is by a group of Iranian-American activists and tech entrepreneurs in California, who began making plans to buy and ship the devices only days after the protests broke out.