The internet is still functioning in Europe, aside from some of the same kinds of slowdowns, interruptions and scattered outages that specific US-based apps or services have also experienced in the past month. And US regulators haven’t been shy about intervening to try to keep the series of tubes at capacity — even without much in the way of legal authority to enforce their will. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has emerged as the most public figure in that effort, securing pledges from hundreds of internet providers to open Wi-Fi hotspots to Americans in need, waive any late fees for residential and small business customers and keep serving customers unable to pay bills during the pandemic. He has also made a series of regulatory tweaks to make the task easier for companies, from waiving deadlines to helping low-income consumers keep their telecommunications subsidies to allowing wireless carriers to boost their network capacity by tapping into new airwaves.

On the other hand, Chairman Pai has rejected calls from colleagues for the FCC to collect and disseminate regular reports on network demand and capacity. Instead, he has encouraged industry reporting mechanisms such as a dashboard of network performance metrics created by the cable industry. Democrats, though, are calling for a massive ramp-up in the FCC’s role. That includes a plea for the commission to spend billions of subsidy dollars — potentially coming from future congressional appropriations or a refashioning of existing FCC subsidy funds — to help ensure broadband connections for students stuck at home and for low-income households who may not be able to afford ISPs' offerings, even as Republicans question whether these ideas stretch the agency’s statutory limits.

The language on the Federal Communications Commission’s website seems simple enough. According to a “pledge” signed by the nation’s cable and internet providers, for the next two months, there will be no termination of “service to any residential or small business customers because of their inability to pay their bills due to the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.” Turns out, the pledge does not appear to apply to TV.  That was news to Kimberly Martinez Malo, a Broward resident, who discovered that her cable TV connection, Xfinity by Comcast, had been shut off. Martinez Malo has been indefinitely furloughed from her job as an administrative assistant, and currently has no source of active income. She had been led to believe by Comcast that no such shutoff would occur. A representative for Comcast confirmed that customers like Martinez Malo do have the option to go to a lower-tiered payment system to help maintain their internet connections. But Comcast said TV service is not part of its FCC pledge, noting “The FCC pledge, which Comcast signed and fully supports, applies to internet and voice customers.”

On December 12, 2019, the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), a Rural Development agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) and solicitation of applications for the Broadband Pilot (ReConnect) Program in the Federal Register. On March 31, 2020, RUS published a Notice in the Federal Register to extend the application window to April 15, 2020. This notice supplements the prior notice of March 31, 2020, and informs the public that the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) provides an additional $100 million for ReConnect grants to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus. The additional funding remains available until September 30, 2021. RUS will establish a set-aside for the $100 million for priority processing for applicants that submitted a 100% grant application during the first round of funding. For the application to be eligible for priority processing, the round one application must have been unsuccessful due to there being limited access to broadband in the proposed service area. Applicants are required to reapply during the second round of funding, which closes on April 15, 2020. The application must be for the same service area proposed by the applicant in the first round of funding to receive the prioritization, and the application must meet all other eligibility requirements. Applications already submitted during the second round of funding that meet these requirements will receive the priority consideration. The CARES Act also requires that at least 90 percent of the households to be served by a project receiving a grant shall be in a rural area without sufficient access to broadband. The CARES Act defines a rural area without sufficient access to broadband as 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. This definition will be reevaluated and redefined, as necessary, on an annual basis by the Secretary of Agriculture. In accordance with the CARES Act, an entity to which a grant is made under the ReConnect Program shall not use a grant to overbuild or duplicate broadband expansion efforts made by any entity that has received a broadband loan from RUS.

This study examines possible lessons learned from the deployment of residential Gigabit networks based upon the novel approach taken by the Google Fiber project started in 2010. Even though Google Fiber paused any project expansion in 2016, calling into question the viability of their business model, the approach taken by Google Fiber elicits further research interest given four major innovations that this analysis identifies in its fiber-to-the-home business model. Based on a “top-down” financial model to estimate the costs of fiber deployment, this analysis shows that these four innovations pursued by Google Fiber, and now adopted on a widespread basis by other broadband providers, lower the costs of building residential Gigabit networks, and therefore can improve the prospects for new entry of service providers of residential broadband services. With technology advances pointing to further cost reductions in the cost of Gigabit networks, this analysis elevates the need for more detailed study of ongoing changes in the cost structure of local access networks to better anticipate future prospects for broadband competition.

[Reed is Scholar in Residence, Technology, Cybersecurity and Policy Program, University of Colorado Boulder]

Unfortunately, the FCC is publishing eligibility maps that bear little relationship to where there is or is not actually coverage. The analysis itself notes that the maps released April 9 may bear little resemblance to the areas actually available for funding in an auction, which is extremely concerning. At a time when everyone is recognizing the importance of bridging the digital divide, the FCC seems intent on moving forward with spending $9 billion without bothering to measure the scope of the problem they are purporting to solve. This approach does nothing to help ensure that unserved and underserved areas have access to robust mobile broadband services. Instead of further analysis on what areas could be eligible, the FCC should focus on implementing the Broadband DATA Act to make data-driven decisions about what areas should receive funding for the next decade of mobile deployment.

In one of the most far-ranging attempts to halt the spread of the coronavirus, Apple and Google said they were building software into smartphones that would tell people if they were recently in contact with someone who was infected with the virus. The technology giants said they were teaming up to release the tool within several months, building it into the operating systems of the billions of iPhones and Android devices around the world. That would enable the smartphones to constantly log other devices they get close to through the short-range wireless technology Bluetooth, enabling what is known as “contact tracing” of the disease.

The unlikely partnership between Google and Apple, fierce rivals who rarely pass up an opportunity to criticize each other, underscores the seriousness of the health crisis and the power of the two companies whose software runs almost every smartphone in the world. Yet two of the world’s largest tech companies harnessing virtually all of the smartphones on the planet to trace people’s connections raises questions about the reach these behemoths have into individuals’ lives and society.