At least two rural service provider groups have voiced opposition to the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to add a new 50/5 Mbps speed tier to the bidding categories for the proposed Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). Both NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) argue that adding the new speed tier creates two speed tiers that are below the average broadband speed already experienced in urban areas. The FCC is scheduled to vote Jan 30 on whether to adopt the RDOF order. A draft of the RDOF order originally circulated within the FCC several months ago had three speed tiers, which would be used for a weighting system designed to favor bids to provide service at higher speeds. But when the FCC made a new draft public earlier in Jan, a fourth 50/5 Mbps speed tier had been added.

Public Knowledge, Common Cause, New America’s Open Technology Institute, et al. met with Federal Communications Commission Wireline Competition Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics staff on January 16, 2020, to express concern regarding the methodology, analysis, and conclusions in the Fifteenth Broadband Deployment Report Notice of Inquiry. They disagreed with the FCC’s conclusions in its two prior broadband deployment reports that broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a timely fashion. They discussed increasing the current benchmark speeds and said mobile broadband is not a substitute for fixed broadband, among other things.

Ten years ago, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s landmark speech on internet freedom elevated the promotion of a free and open global internet to a key US foreign policy priority. A decade later, online freedom across the world has declined steadily—including, recently, in America. The new decade represents an opportunity to reverse this trend. But to do so, we need national leadership committed to forging a comprehensive and positive vision of the internet—one that strengthens human rights and democracy—starting right here at home. A viable model for a democracy-compatible internet must support people’s ability to hold power accountable, innovate, and take advantage of economic opportunity. Key policy elements include:

• Privacy and security. It’s imperative to protect people from being tracked by actors seeking to manipulate, threaten, control, or exploit them. Robust laws and oversight mechanisms must hold authorities accountable and prevent them from abusing surveillance power.
• Freedom of speech for open and inclusive societies. Extremists have weaponized free speech to justify behavior that threatens vulnerable populations. We need a progressive vision of free speech that strengthens other values necessary for democratic discourse.
• Competition. Antitrust laws must be strengthened and enforced in order to allow for new ideas and business models—and to check the power of a small number of globally powerful platforms whose governance structures allow CEOs to evade accountability.

Opensignal released its Jan 2020 Mobile Network Experience: USA Report. Verizon claimed the top position in three of seven categories, holding onto the award for Video Experience. AT&T was close behind with wins in two categories, including Download Speed, and a tie with T-Mobile for Voice App Experience. While Sprint missed out on awards this time, it still scored a big gain in its users' Video Experience – jumping almost 17% in just six months.  And all four operators are delivering extremely high levels of 4G Availability – over 90 percent. Verizon has been dueling with T-Mobile over the 4G Availability award for the past year but in this report Verizon was victorious scoring a 95.9% rating, which is just slightly ahead of T-Mobile’s score of 95.4%.