The Federal Communications Commission solicits nominations for membership on a new Increasing Broadband Investment in Low-Income Communities Working Group of the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC). This new working group will assist the BDAC in providing advice and recommendations to the Commission on new ways to encourage the deployment of high-speed broadband infrastructure and services to low-income communities. The work of this new BDAC group will help further the Commission’s top priority—closing the digital divide for all Americans. Nominations for membership on the BDAC’s Increasing Broadband Investment in LowIncome Communities Working Group should be submitted to the FCC no later than March 19, 2019. Nominees for membership on the BDAC need not reapply. 

Despite the tremendous innovation in fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks over the last decade, growing bandwidth demands from households and enterprise business applications are likely to exceed today’s Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON) network capacity levels in the near future. Network traffic is expected to grow by an order of magnitude over the coming decade, in part because more high-bandwidth applications will become commonplace. Next-generation 10 Gbps PON network architectures offer the ability to support current service needs and scale economically as needed to address multigigabit bandwidth demands well into the future. The primary value of 10G technologies lies in capacity. For a municipal utility looking to better manage smart-grid applications through communications network advancements, a next-gen 10G network architecture offers an optimal path to servicing public power demands and providing symmetrical 10 Gbps service for residential subscribers, business customers and mobile backhaul services, all over a single, common infrastructure.

In a tail of not one but two affairs and emails between the philandering parties has come a victory for data privacy, a federal appeals court has ruled that “previously opened and delivered emails” stored 'in a web-based email client' are protected 'electronic storage' for purposes of the Stored Communications Act. The court ruled that emails which have been opened and then left on the servers of an online web email service are considered being stored for the purposes of backup protection, and thus entitled to the privacy protections detailed in the Stored Communications Act (SCA). Center for Democarcy & Technology had filed a brief in the case (Hately vs. Watts)--which was cited in the decision--arguing that it was the right call. “This is an important victory for privacy," said Greg Nojeim, director of the CDT Freedom, Security and Technology Project. "A contrary ruling would have meant that spam emails nobody opens are better protected from government access than sensitive, personal messages you open and save."

T-Mobile says it’ll launch a 5G home internet service with fast speeds, easy installation, and low prices that will reach half of all US homes within five years and meaningfully shake up the woefully anti-competitive cable industry. There’s just one catch: T-Mobile says this only comes true if its Sprint merger is approved. In a blog post and Federal Communications Commission filing, T-Mobile outlines in the most detail yet what its 5G home internet service will look like. The company started divulging some details around the offering last September, but with today’s post, T-Mobile is starting to advertise its promises in a far more public fashion. T-Mobile says it plans to create a true cable competitor using 5G, offering speeds at 100 Mbps or higher. It’ll come at an unspecified lower cost, and customers will be able to set up the system themselves, so they won’t have to wait around for someone to install it. T-Mobile thinks it can have 9.5 million customers within five years, and save customers up to $13 billion in that time because of the increased competition.

State antitrust enforcers are expressing deep concerns that T-Mobile's proposed takeover of Sprint could raise prices for consumers, signaling they might seek to thwart the deal. Some state attorneys general who are investigating the $26 billion transaction took the unusual step this week of publicly voicing worries that the combination could harm competition, offering insight for the first time into how they view the tie-up. Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said combining T-Mobile and Sprint would further concentrate an already consolidated industry by leaving just three national carriers. "That’s dangerous for competition. That’s dangerous for consumers," Frosh said. The comments come after more than a dozen states joined to investigate the deal in parallel with the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, which are nearing the end of their reviews. 

I moved quickly to re-charter the Federal Communications Commission’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment, which had gone dormant. When it was chartered in July 2017, I charged the Committee’s leaders with developing real-world solutions to spur diversity and digital empowerment in under-served communities. I asked them to bring recommendations that could be quickly implemented in order to get solutions to the public rapidly. One of the deliverables to come out of this Advisory Committee is today’s workshop. And have they ever delivered!

We initially chartered the Advisory Committee in July 2017 for a two-year period. I’m pleased to announce today that I will start the process to re-charter this advisory committee in April. I can promise you this: The Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment is a real asset to the Commission and to the country, and it won’t wither away on my watch. On behalf of the agency, we are grateful to all the members of the current committee and working groups for their hard work and commitment to these important issues.