Less than 20%, or one in five people, live in a geographically rural area. Although each community is unique, certain trends have been observed – rural America has become older, poorer, and less populated. One step the US government is taking to improve conditions in rural areas is investing almost $700 million in rural broadband internet and e-Connectivity. Proponents believe that strengthening internet infrastructure will not only assist economic recovery, but also have positive externalities that will connect people to resources related to healthcare, education, food, and infrastructure. Time will tell whether or not the efforts to close the rural broadband gap will be successful.

Rep Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) hosted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai as they joined Eastern Washington’s Broadband Action Team meeting. After the event, Rep McMorris Rodgers said, “Everywhere I go in Eastern Washington, one of the top concerns I hear about is the need for rural broadband. It’s basic infrastructure in our 21st Century economy, and especially during this uncertain time, people need to have reliable Internet access at home...I’m pleased that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was able to join today’s meeting to hear from local leaders directly about the great work they are doing and how the FCC and Congress can be effective partners."

AT&T Communications CEO Jeff McElfresh told investors how fiber underpins the company's wireless, broadband and streaming video services, saying it takes a lot of fiber and physical site locations with high densification in order to realize the full potential of the wireless spectrum the company owns. "I can tell you, densification of our wireless network and an increased footprint expansion of our fiber offerings is in the making for AT&T over the next several years." McElfresh said AT&T now has multiple fiber networks that serve and connect its wireless services, enterprise customers, and residential broadband subscribers. "As we drive deeper fiber penetration in our wireless expansion and as we string out more C-RAN or small cells to densify our signal throughout our key markets, we passed a ton of small businesses," he said. "We passed a ton of houses. And what might have been thought about in the past as a consumer-based residential broadband offering and a business case and investment plan, now today is viewed as one integrated network. One set of fiber strands that serve enterprise—dedicated and shared—residential shared, backhaul, front haul for our cellular network and even up to wholesale offerings. And it's with this integrated planning approach that we have put in place since last October that gives us a really good efficient spend on an ability to expand further our fiber footprint."

The Federal Communications Commission approved an additional 62 funding applications for the COVID-19 Telehealth Program.  Health care providers in both urban and rural areas of the country will use this $23.25 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 367 funding applications in 45 states plus Washington (DC) for a total of $128.23 million in funding.  [A list of health care providers that were approved for funding at the link below]

During the COVID-19 school building closures, big equity problems around internet access emerged. But one layer of this equity issue went largely unexplored: Some households have access to the Internet, but only at slow speeds that make school tasks like videoconferencing or completing homework assignments next to impossible. That's especially true for families with multiple children, or for parents using the home internet while forced to work remotely during the pandemic. 

Helping those households get connected isn't simply a matter of the Federal Communications Commission or another entity footing the bill. The fix for those communities will be a long-term effort that involves significant engineering and infrastructure investments. Technology experts have identified 5G connectivity and low earth orbit satellites as possible solutions, but both could be a long way off from widespread availability. Could massive internet service companies play a role? Perhaps, but with limits, said Tyler Cooper, editor-in-chief of Broadband Now, a consumer tool that tracks Internet connectivity nationwide. "If you're a massive internet service provider, it doesn't make financial sense to build a robust fiber network in a town of 5,000 people. You won't see a return on that investment," he said. Cooper believes the solution will ultimately have to be a public-private partnership.

Concerning President Donald Trump's Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship, I first want to talk about process and why the FCC needs to keep it from dragging out. Second, I want to move on to the question of the FCC’s rulemaking authority here. And finally, I want to raise some key questions around the substance of the Executive Order. 1) Given the role Section 230 has played in shaping American life online, we have to get this right. And we need to act quickly. 2) I am skeptical that there’s any role for the FCC here. 3) If the FCC does proceed with a rulemaking, we will have to confront challenging substantive questions. Perhaps most importantly, the Executive Order’s approach raises serious First Amendment concerns. 4) We have to be mindful of how broad the consequences of FCC action could be.

Several leading experts and groups announced support for the Banning Microtargeted Political Ads Act (HR 7014), legislation introduced by Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) to strengthen our democracy by prohibiting microtargeted political ads. Leading privacy and campaign reform scholars Woodrow Hartzog, Shoshana Zuboff, Ashkan Soltani, and G. Michael Parsons, along with Mozilla, Open Markets Institute, and Avaaz, became the latest experts and organizations expressing support for the Banning Microtargeted Political Ads Act.  The bill prohibits online platforms, including social media, ad networks, and streaming services, from targeting political ads based on the demographic or behavioral data of users. HR 7014 applies to all electioneering communications and advocacy for candidates, and violations will be enforced by the Federal Election Commission and through a private right of action. Targeting ads to broad geographies – states, municipalities, and congressional districts – is permitted under the bill, as is targeting individuals who opt in to receive targeted ads.

Senate Subcommittee on The Constitution Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai raising concerns about Google's latest actions to censor political speech with which it disagrees. Following reports that The Federalist, a conservative media organization and publisher, would no longer be able to generate revenue from any advertisement served by Google Ads - allegedly because of a reader comment that violated Google's advertising policies - Sen Cruz wrote: "The recent actions of Google to ‘demonetize' a conservative media publisher, The Federalist, raise serious concerns that Google is abusing its monopoly power in an effort to censor political speech with which it disagrees." Sen Cruz also said it was deeply ironic that Google is financially punishing a website for speech that appears on its platform, as Google has defended section 230's grant of immunity to Big Tech by saying that 'the best way to protect online speech...is to allow platforms to set and enforce standards for an appropriate speech on their services, and to do so general free from...the threat of private litigation." 

AT&T confirmed it is planning widespread job cuts that include managers and executives, in addition to 3,400 technician and clerical jobs. It will also close 250 retail stores, impacting 1,300 retail jobs. While the cuts can't be separated from the COVID-19 impact on the economy, the moves also come as the mobile industry has consolidated from four national players to three following T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint. AT&T said the store closures were planned, but accelerated by the pandemic. Most store employees will be offered another job with AT&T, the company said.

President Donald Trump’s conversations with China President Xi Jinping reflected not only the incoherence in his trade policy but also the confluence in President Trump’s mind of his own political interests and US national interests. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and others repeatedly pushed to strictly enforce US regulations and criminal laws against fraudulent conduct, including both firms’ flouting of US sanctions against Iran and other rogue states. The most important goal for Chinese “companies” like Huawei and ZTE is to infiltrate telecommunications and information-technology systems, notably 5G, and subject them to Chinese control (though both companies, of course, dispute the US characterization of their activities). 

President Trump, by contrast, saw this not as a policy issue to be resolved but as an opportunity to make personal gestures to President Xi. In 2018, for example, he reversed penalties that Sec Ross and the Commerce Department had imposed on ZTE. In 2019, he offered to reverse criminal prosecution against Huawei if it would help in the trade deal—which, of course, was primarily about getting President Trump re-elected in 2020. These and innumerable other similar conversations with Trump formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency. 

The Senate Commerce Committee held a nomination hearing on June 16 that featured Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly. Commissioner O'Rielly's term expired at the end of June 2019, but commissioners can continue to serve until the close of the next Congress. The new term would date from July 1, 2019. 

Senators brought up the upcoming Rural 5G Fund — a proposal to give out up to $9 billion over a decade for 5G buildouts. Commissioner O'Rielly signaled to the committee that he won't vote on a final order before the FCC comes up with new availability maps as directed by Congress. "[U]nlike the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) proceeding which was already in motion prior to the passage of the Broadband DATA Act, the Rural 5G Fund mechanism appears to be within the ambit of a 'new award of funding' for which the FCC would need to use the statutorily-required maps," he said when he voted for the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking back in April. At the hearing, Commissioner O'Rielly said that if Committee Chairman Roger Wicker's (R-MS) position as one of the authors of the Broadband DATA Act, which required new maps, was that the FCC could not proceed without them, then he agreed.

Chairman Wicker also brought up the debate over allowing Ligado to use satellite spectrum for a planned terrestrial broadband network, despite potential GPS interference. Commissioner O'Rielly defended the FCC's Ligado decision, saying the FCC's engineers had vetted it thoroughly and with the safeguards the FCC put in place at the outset — including a kill switch for the Ligado service if it did interfere — he was confident Ligado would not cause harmful interference to GPS. 

Sen Dan Sullivan (R-AK) expressed his unhappiness over the FCC's cut to some Alaska telehealth funding a couple years back. Sen Sullivan said he was strongly supportive of Commissioner O'Rielly's renomination, but lit into FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, and even suggested maybe the FCC needed a new chairman. Sen Sullivan said Chairman Pai had "clawed back" with "no transparency or opaqueness Universal Service telehealth programs in my state." He said his state had essentially written the book on telehealth "and yet we have a chairman of the FCC that seems hell-bent on collapsing that system in Alaska." A spokesperson for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai countered that the FCC was focused on providers, not carriers, including saying the clawback was about money Liberty-owned GCI should not have gotten.