More than three years ago, Jessica Rosenworcel could only react in horror as her Republican counterparts on the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal the US government’s net neutrality rules. Now, Acting FCC Chairwoman Rosenworcel controls the very commission she once criticized for failing to heed the public’s outcry. And her stewardship — along with Democrats’ broader resurgence in Washington — has brought new, sky-high expectations that the party deliver on its past promises, restore open-Internet protections and resolve one of the most intractable policy battles in the digital age. Reinstating those protections may prove difficult for Chairwoman Rosenworcel and her Democratic peers, at least at first. The FCC, with two Democrats and two Republicans, is politically deadlocked, lacking a fifth member, and Congress is otherwise distracted in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The fiercest advocates for net neutrality, however, say they plan to press the issue — and push newly powerful Democrats under President Biden to act as soon as they can.

The federal government lacks the economic, technical and social science research to make smart decisions on where and how to invest to close the digital divide in rural America.  The same can be said of the states, which are increasingly major players in funding both infrastructure and digital inclusion initiatives, and, I sincerely hope, will be partners with the federal government in crafting and executing broadband policy. In keeping with the rule of three, I’ve come up with three categories of research that will help both federal and state governments make smarter broadband investment decisions. I call them mapping, impact and adoption, or MIA. And yes, that acronym is somewhat purposeful. 

[Gigi B. Sohn is a Distinguished Fellow, Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate]

The Jackson County Housing Authority (JCHA) in Murphysboro (IL) has partnered with PCs for People to provide hundreds of computers and mobile internet hotspots to its residents. Alexandra Hamilton is the director of social services for JCHA, and worked in 2020 to secure an opportunity to provide residents of the JCHA with much-needed tech access. Hamilton found help through PCs for People, a group that refurbishes recycled business electronics to offer technology to low-income households. Hamilton said she has secured 500 computers in total as well as 75 mobile hotspots with several months of internet service prepaid on them to give away. The computers were secured through local sponsorships. For $20, a sponsor could gift a computer to a JCHA resident. For $15, a sponsor could give a mobile hotspot.

On Jan 25, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance submitted comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission’s public notice on the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB). Along with thirty-six signatories, they wrote their comments focusing on:

1. The FCC and Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) should implement the EBB program with maximum public transparency with respect to providers’ offerings, participation data, and operational issues.
2. They support placing the administration of the EBB fully within USAC. Still, USAC must aggressively step up to this role — assuming primary responsibility for the overall marketing of the EBB and offering program participants and community stakeholders easy access to a robust ombudsman resource.
3. The FCC and USAC should make every effort to engage experienced digital inclusion practitioners as partners in program design, marketing and troubleshooting; and to encourage provider and third-party support for EBB education and enlistment efforts led by competent, trusted community leadership.
4. In creating its process for qualifying EBB providers, the FCC must recognize the growing role of nonprofit, mission-driven affordable networks in many communities, as well as innovative arrangements that community bodies such as school boards and housing authorities have made with a variety of providers to ensure broadband access for their students, unemployed residents and others during the pandemic.
5. The EBB should offer participating households the greatest degree of choice among internet services and plans that is possible within the law’s requirements.

AT&T added over 1 million new fiber subscribers in 2020, with 273K net adds in 4Q20 alone. AT&T fiber penetration now stands at 34%, up from 28% a year ago. That’s a 21% year-over-year improvement in AT&T fiber penetration, with the company now counting 4.9 million total FTTP connections. With this momentum, the company also announced plans to increase homes passed with fiber by an additional 2 million locations in 2021. While AT&T fiber penetration is on the rise, its legacy DSL and VDSL base is a drag on the company’s overall broadband numbers. When you add these legacy broadband customers into the mix, AT&T actually lost 2K broadband subscribers in 4Q20 and 19K for all of 2020. 

While AT&T is bullish on fiber penetration, don’t expect the company to extend its fiber footprint into rural markets, even if regulatory subsidies encourage it. AT&T CEO John Stankey commented that he doesn’t see fiber as viable in rural markets to reach the remaining third of subscribers who don’t have great broadband options. As a result, AT&T is not likely to extend fiber to its rural markets, Stankey said. This view of rural fiber probably contributed to AT&T’s absence in the recent RDOF auction. “I actually believe, candidly, even if there was subsidy put in, it would be a better use of taxpayer money to do something that was more hybrid oriented in the technologies that are applied and not exclusively lean on fiber in that space,” Stankey said.

This is the third in our series of reports on the digital divide with Boston Consulting Group, and presents a clear roadmap for closing it once and for all. The report offers new and more granular detail on the root causes of the digital divide, cites work by many other groups in this field, and shows that previous COVID relief efforts have still left millions of kids caught in the gap and have funded mainly short-short-term solutions that are set to expire. Beginning on page 14, you’ll find federal and state policy solutions to address this issue that impacts an estimated 16 million students and 400,000 teachers nationwide. It is our hope that, taken together, this report and the two that preceded it will spur policymakers and stakeholders at the federal, state, and local levels to embrace the student digital divide with the sense of urgency that it deserves and act quickly to close the digital divide now and keep it closed.

Many Democrats, as well as some Republicans, want to take on Big Tech with laws and regulations to address issues like market power, data privacy, and disinformation and hate speech. Those ambitions have only grown since the insurrection of Capitol Hill, with more members of Congress pointing to the power of the tech companies as the root cause of many problems. The growing talk of new federal laws adds to the industry’s many headaches. Facebook and Google are fighting federal and state regulators in court over allegations of anticompetitive conduct. Regulators continue to investigate Amazon and Apple over antitrust violations. President Joe Biden and his nominees for attorney general and commerce secretary have also promised to hold tech companies to account for the speech they host and to strengthen policing of competition violations.

In coming weeks, Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) plans to introduce a bill aimed at limiting corporate monopoly power across the economy, with a particular eye on tech. The legislation would erect new hurdles for giant corporations trying to gobble up smaller competitors, preventing a repeat of deals like Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012. The federal and state lawsuits against Facebook argue that the deal, which regulators did not object to at the time, eliminated competition that could have one day challenged the company’s dominance. The bill would also include roadblocks for acquisitions of “maverick” companies that present better offerings for consumers, in the way T-Mobile did before its merger with Sprint. And it would pump more money into the antitrust agencies.