Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly and Rep. Suzan DelBenne (D-WA) agreed that the US government needs to help expand internet access to more households as the coronavirus pandemic exposes significant gaps in coverage. Commissioner O'Rielly said that while many classrooms, doctor’s offices and workplaces have moved online, about 20 million Americans don’t have broadband. “COVID-19 didn't bring this issue upon us, but it's made it more prominent.” He said that lack of equipment and affordability are the main obstacles for households who aren't able to log on. At the same online event, Rep DelBenne, co-chair of the Women’s High Tech Caucus, also emphasized the need for connectivity, even for jobs that can’t be done online. “The situation we're in across the country has really highlighted how critical it is that we provide technology access, and particularly broadband,” she said. Francella Ochillo, executive director of Next Century Cities, called for “every stakeholder at the table” to get involved with expanding access to the internet.

The University of Illinois Extension Local Government Education Program and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity Illinois Office of Broadband partnered with the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society to implement the Developing Broadband Leadership Webinar Series. The leadership series is a four-part workshop launched as part of the Connect Illinois initiative, a phased $420 million initiative implemented to expand broadband in unserved and underserved municipalities statewide. On May 13, 2020, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker opened the inaugural webinar titled “Broadband — Now More than Ever” by sharing information about Connect Illinois and the first two rounds of grant awards. Participants also heard from Roberto Gallardo from the Purdue Center of Regional Development who shared statistics on broadband connectivity across Illinois, accounting for demographic factors such as race, education, and income. At the center of the call were local officials from three Next Century Cities municipalities in Illinois including Carbondale, Highland, and Jacksonville who spoke about broadband connectivity efforts in their respective communities. Next Century Cities’ own Francella Ochillo moderated the discussion. 

The Federal Communications Commission's Net Neutrality remand proceeding, INCOMPAS highlights several important points:

• Monopoly and duopoly do not equal competition: Over 75% of Americans are stuck in broadband markets controlled by two providers. Plus there is even LESS competition at faster speeds -- such as gigabit service that increases both upload and download times - and is imperative to help more families and small businesses work, learn and recover from COVID-19 economic disruption.
• Mobile is not a substitute for fixed: Duh.
• Large ISPs have the “means and the motive” to do harm: Merger mania, with large ISPs buying content providers, enables large ISPs to favor and discriminate against other broadband providers and competing streaming services.
• Interconnection threat: The streaming revolution is a result of smart interconnection policy. But the large ISPs’ ability to discriminate at the point of interconnection is very real. They have done so in the past, and are simply waiting for merger conditions rules to sunset.
• Investment by big ISPs is DOWN, not UP: The facts are stubborn here. The data shows that some large ISPs actually have decreased their broadband investment by billions of dollars. A recent study from George Washington University concludes that the passage and repeal of the net neutrality rules had no meaningful impact on broadband investment. Plus, at least half of the 5.6 million new fiber-connected homes in 2018 were the result of merger conditions.

Companies say internet network capacity has stayed strong the last two months, but some providers are struggling to repay loans, provide internet routers, or find enough personal protective equipment to protect workers from COVID-19. Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai told the House Communications Subcommittee May 19 one reason the networks have been able to handle the traffic increase is because of investments and improvements in broadband infrastructure in recent years. “Since 2016, for example, Internet speeds are up over 80%. The percentage of homes with access to 250 Mbps broadband has doubled, and we broke records for fiber deployment in each of the past two years,” Pai said.

During a Senate hearing, both Jonathan Spalter of US Telecom and NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association CEO Shirley Bloomfield testified, saying Congress should look at short- and long-term solutions to help providers. Bloomfield said in the near term, Congress can act by making sure people who are not connected get connected, and those who are connected can stay connected. In the longer-term, she said there needs to be "a coherent and coordinated national broadband infrastructure policy so that we are not back here again someday, staring at the next crisis and wondering why some customers lack broadband altogether, why other customers have unreliable access that does not enable effective use of virtual private networks or distance learning platforms, and why still other customers might have access to robust, future-proof networks but lack the ability to afford services atop those networks.” Bloomfield also said an increasing number of customers are becoming unable to pay for service and NTCA members are concerned about their ability to repay loans and buy critical supplies like routers, fiber or backbone access to the internet. She said finding PPE for workers in the field is also a challenge.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about 5G – the next generation of wireless technology — is that it manages to bridge the hyper-partisan divide in Washington (DC). Democrats and Republicans — including President Trump himself —  support Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s “5G Fast Plan” to open huge swaths of wireless spectrum necessary to support 5G technology and “win the 5G race” with China. It may, therefore, surprise you that the greatest resistance to the FCC’s 5G plan comes from within the Trump Administration itself. Federal agencies have mounted an increasingly public campaign against the FCC, declaring in ever more urgent terms how every FCC spectrum decision puts critical services at risk.

Things have now come to an all-out war between the Department of Defense and the FCC over the decision by the FCC to approve a new 5G network by a company called Ligado. The Defense Department claims Ligado’s operation will interfere with vital GPS operations. (The DoD runs the nation’s GPS satellites for military operations, despite the public’s ubiquitous use of GPS.) This has become a proxy for the general civil war on 5G within the Trump Administration and Congress, with cabinet secretaries publicly contradicting each other and members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees feuding with members of the Commerce Committee (which has jurisdiction over the FCC). Unless contained, this 5G civil war threatens to paralyze the rollout of new spectrum for 5G. 

The Federal Communications Commission approved an additional 43 funding applications for the COVID-19 Telehealth Program. Health care providers in both urban and rural areas of the country will use this $16.87 million in funding to provide telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic. To date, the FCC’s COVID-19 Telehealth Program, which was authorized by the CARES Act, has approved funding for 132 health care providers in 33 states plus Washington, DC for a total of just over $50 million in funding. 

[See which providers are getting funding at the link below]

The federal Lifeline program was created in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan to help low-income Americans afford telephone service. It has been expanded over the years to help provide access to a basic cellphone with a limited amount of data. The most recent evolution, to accommodate broadband, was demonized by some Republicans who labeled it the “Obamaphone” program. Here’s a modest but timely proposal, given President Donald Trump’s quest to reverse all markers of the Obama administration: Update Lifeline to cover educational tools like tablets and provide enough data for low-income kids to access their classes from home.  If President Trump wants to do the right thing and solve this problem quickly, he could direct the FCC to take these steps for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis:

• Ensure that Lifeline beneficiaries have access to 4G where available, and enable hot spot access;
• Temporarily suspend the limit of one device per household, and encourage Lifeline providers to make available larger-screen devices like tablets;
• Temporarily lift the 3-gigabyte data limit and instruct providers to deliver up to 40 gigabytes of data;

[Ben Crump is a civil rights attorney]

The Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission demanded that gateway providers allowing COVID-19 pandemic-related scam robocalls into the US cut off this traffic or face serious consequences. This is the second such action taken during the pandemic, following a successful push in April with similar letters from the agencies that led to the termination of other robocallers’ access to American phone networks. The letters sent May 20 give the companies 48 hours to cut off these scam robocalls. If they do not, the FCC expects that domestic providers will begin blocking all calls from them. The FCC and FTC will also consider other enforcement steps should the companies not comply.