Eliminating the educational priority for EBS would be disastrous for online learning, 5G deployment, and rural consumers. The best way to encourage 5G in rural markets is to award licenses to educational institutions that live and work in their communities and whose mission is to serve the needs of students. Deploying broadband via EBS is not rocket science – it has been successfully done in northern Michigan, rural Virginia, and even at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We cannot understand why the FCC would overturn over 50 years of educational precedent based on exaggerated claims by the commercial carriers that they will deploy 5G in these rural markets. Dr. Raul Katz’s economic study estimates that commercial carriers will only deploy 5G in 24 of the 78 unserved markets, whereas educational institutions would serve almost all of them. The EBS rules need to be modernized, not obliterated. The SHLB Coalition intends to do everything in its power to preserve educational access to this vitally important wireless broadband spectrum.

Charter’s renaming of itself—after a megamerger with Time Warner Cable in 2018—as “Spectrum.” But changing your name doesn’t mean that you aren’t liable for misbehavior under your previous moniker. This is what Charter…er, Spectrum… found recently when, following a lengthy investigation, New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, filed an extraordinary lawsuit against the company. The company’s 2.5 million New York subscribers (of its 22 million nationwide) have been told they’re getting X (in terms of download and upload speeds) when actually they’re getting a lot less than X.

The AG is not a regulator. All his office can do is call Spectrum on its fraudulent and deceptive behavior. His lawyers can’t make rules or lower the barriers to actual competition. Indeed, in a world in which Spectrum faces little to no competition, now expects even less regulation than before, and has no need to spend money on better services, the lawsuit won’t by itself make much of a difference.

[Susan Crawford is a professor at Harvard Law School]

Apparently, the Federal Trade Commission is in the late stages of an investigation into YouTube for allegedly violating children’s privacy, in a probe that threatens the company with a potential fine and already has prompted the tech giant to reevaluate some of its business practices. The FTC launched its investigation after numerous complaints from consumer groups and privacy advocates. The complaints contended that YouTube, which is owned by Google, failed to protect kids who used the streaming-video service and improperly collected their data in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a 1998 law known as COPPA that forbids the tracking and targeting of users younger than age 13. The possibility of a hefty penalty against YouTube — including a settlement forcing YouTube to change its practices to better protect kids — could signal a new phase in the FTC’s enforcement of the child-privacy law, which many critics say has grown weak amid technology’s changes over the past two decades.

The House has approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the independent agency that dispenses federal funding for noncommercial media. The $495 million in funding, which was not only full funding but an additional $50 million, is for 2022. CPB is forward funded in an attempt to depoliticize the process. President Donald Trump has proposed phasing out the federal government's contribution of about 15% of CPB's annual budgets, but lawmakers from both parties have signaled that is not happening.