Rep Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA) reintroduced three bills during Infrastructure Week to expand access to broadband:

1. The Broadband Conduit Deployment Act, commonly ‘dig once,’ is bicameral, bipartisan legislation that mandates the inclusion of conduit—plastic pipes which house fiberoptic cables—during road construction receiving federal funding.
2. The Community Broadband Act is bicameral legislation that removes roadblocks for public-private partnerships and locally-owned broadband systems.
3. The Clearing Local Impediments Makes Broadband Open to New Competition and Enhancements (CLIMB ONCE) Act helps local communities streamline the pole attachment process to make the deployment of broadband faster, cheaper, and more competitive.

SpaceX’s plans are set to jump forward May 16 with a launch of 60 internet-beaming satellites. But don’t count out solar-powered, high-altitude drones — or giant balloons. Advances in solar-cell and battery technology have made those technologies more feasible. In April, Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank said it would partner with Simi Valley drone maker AeroVironment Inc to build a drone capable of flying to the stratosphere, hovering around an area for months and serving as a floating cell tower to beam internet to users on Earth. Airbus and Boeing are also working on their own versions of high-flying, solar-powered drones. Industry experts estimate only 10% to 20% of the Earth’s land area is covered by terrestrial cell towers. Mobile operators are interested in providing continuous service across the globe, particularly in light of the coverage needed for advanced, 5G applications. Drones could also be used in emergency situations in which cell towers have been destroyed or taken offline.

Earlier in May, Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel sent letters to major phone companies asking for an update on their progress toward halting the sale of customers’ real-time location information. A series of press reports over the past year revealed that geolocation data collected by phone companies was being made available to hundreds of bounty hunters across the country. However, the FCC so far has not provided the public with any details, despite the ongoing risk to the safety and security of American consumers. Nor has it taken any public action to ensure that this activity has stopped.

On May 16, Commissioner Rosenworcel is made public the responses she received. “The FCC has been totally silent about press reports that for a few hundred dollars shady middlemen can sell your location within a few hundred meters based on your wireless phone data. That’s unacceptable. I don’t recall consenting to this surveillance when I signed up for wireless service—and I bet neither do you. This is an issue that affects the privacy and security of every American with a wireless phone. It is chilling to think what a black market for this data could mean in the hands of criminals, stalkers, and those who wish to do us harm. I will continue to press this agency to make public what it knows about what happened. But I do not believe consumers should be kept in the dark. That is why I am making these letters available today.”

All four major wireless carriers told Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel that they have ended the practice.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), whose House Commerce Subcommittee is leading efforts to craft privacy legislation, raised the prospect of tackling concerns over competition and data protection at the same time. Asked about next steps on privacy legislation, Chairwoman Schakowsky said the question is where to limit the “scope” of a bill. “You can really get into a whole lot of things,” she said. “There’s talk about breaking up the big tech companies. Is that a part of this? Is that a separate [issue]? So I think figuring out a manageable terrain is going to be an issue.” Chairwoman Schakowsky said the op-ed by Facebook co-founder Hughes “raised important issues that we need to consider.” Inclusion of antitrust language would likely cripple the bill’s chances of garnering support from Republicans, who have long resisted the trust-busting rhetoric of some progressive lawmakers.

A lack of data and transparency from social media companies has been a crucial force behind Republicans’ accusations that social networks are biased against conservatives, piggybacking off of rising left-wing concerns about data privacy and market power. Again and again, conservatives, like Sens Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) have used personal stories and anecdotes to stoke resentment against platforms and their moderators. And with no broader data to disprove them, the anecdotes are hard to argue with. On May 15, the White House took those theories one step further with a new tool for people who feel as though they’ve been censored by social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. It’s a mystifying tool, working equally well as a threat to social media companies and a list-building tool for the Trump campaign. But the true point of the form could be to fill the data gap pointed out by Sen Cruz and further reinforce President Trump supporters’ sense that they’re being victimized by moderators. The form is most likely to gain submissions from users who already agree that bias against conservatives is a problem, heavily skewing the results. In the next congressional hearing, Republicans could point to White House data indicating that the vast majority of moderation incidents target conservatives, all based on the White House form. With no hard data to say otherwise, it could turn into a powerful talking point.

For 5G boosters, the benefits of installing the wireless technology are obvious: It allows delivery of super-fast internet speeds. But to hook up the “small cells” that power 5G grids, wireless providers have to install thick wires and poles and antennae on nearly every block they want to cover, outfitted with equipment that is about the size of a large backpack. It’s not just that 5G requires a lot of gear, which alone can provoke the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) backlash that puts a stop to all sorts of projects. It’s also that some people really don’t like it when they see it. “These things can be quite ugly,” says Christopher Mitchell, the director of Community Broadband Networks at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. In April, in what could be a precedent-setting decision, a San Francisco (CA) judge ruled that the aesthetic argument alone can be enough to justify the rejection of new 5G infrastructure.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) raised concern at the Federal Communications Commission oversight hearing about the agency’s response to “major consumer problems,” suggesting the commission had been deferring to corporate interests when it comes to fixing things like “robocalls or widespread communications failures after disasters like Hurricanes Maria and Michael.” The criticism came days after the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau issued a report detailing “the unacceptably slow restoration of wireless service” after 2018’s Hurricane Michael, the most severe storm in the history of the Florida Panhandle. The investigation identified three culprits: weak backhaul connectivity, inadequate roaming arrangements, and poor coordination among wireless providers, power crews and local authorities. But critics say the FCC should shoulder more of the blame. Free Press, which put out its own report about the telecom crisis in Puerto Rico after Hurricanes Maria and Irma, blasted the FCC for failing to do its part in holding carriers accountable for insufficient storm preparedness and response. “What happened in Puerto Rico is a man-made disaster, exacerbated by the neglect of carriers and the one agency that’s supposed to hold these businesses accountable to the public interest,” said Carmen Scurato, the group’s senior policy counsel.