The Trump Administration announced that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing more than $12.5 million to provide broadband service in unserved and underserved rural areas in Georgia. This investment is part of the $100 million in grant funding made available for the ReConnect Pilot Program through the CARES Act. In rural Georgia, DoveTel Communications, LLC (dba SyncGlobal Telecom) will use a $12.5 million grant to deploy a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network to connect 7,348 people, 121 farms, 15 businesses, four fire stations, and one elementary school to high-speed broadband internet in Heard, Troup, and Carroll counties.

“The Republican Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have put together a smart and comprehensive set of infrastructure reforms. Their thoughtful reforms would bring families across the digital divide and further extend America’s leadership in 5G by helping to accelerate the build out of high-speed Internet services. Their ideas, including legislation that would tackle the permitting delays that persist for Internet builds on federal lands, would make an immediate difference for rural communities across the country. I look forward to working with the congressional leaders on Energy and Commerce on this important set of infrastructure reforms."

Twenty-eight projects in Illinois will receive a total of $50 million for broadband expansion. The state Connect Illinois grants will be matched by $65 million in nonstate funding for a total of $115 million, with plans to expand access for more than 26,000 homes, businesses, farms, and community institutions across Illinois. These funds are being released as part of the state's $420 million statewide broadband expansion, Connect Illinois—the governor’s plan to bring basic access to all communities by 2024. Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said Connect Illinois aims to improve access through an unprecedented capital investment and with the nation’s largest grant matching program.

The US Government Accountability Office was asked to examine the current state of broadband investment and deployment. This report examines (1) industry and federal investments to deploy broadband in the US since 2009, and (2) efforts federal agencies are making to address deployment challenges. GAO analyzed industry and federal government data from 2009 through 2017 or 2018 (the most recent year of available data) on broadband investments and deployment; reviewed statutes and regulations, rulemaking proceedings, and Federal Communications Commission, the Rural Utilities Service, and National Telecommunications and Information Administration program information; interviewed federal officials; and obtained information about deployment challenges from interviews with 32 industry, academic, and consumer stakeholders, including 16 broadband providers selected to represent a range of provider sizes and types of technologies. 

In prior work, GAO recommended that FCC improve its mapping data and RUS better manage its broadband programs. The agencies have addressed some, but not all, of the recommendations. FCC and RUS reviewed a draft of this report and provided technical comments. Continued communication and coordination on topics such as collecting and using improved data will be especially important in assuring that federal dollars are effectively targeted as agencies' efforts to improve mapping and target resources progress.

Trump administration officials have talked about inserting the federal government deep into the private sector to stiffen global competition against Chinese telecom giant Huawei. The ideas -- discussed intermittently with US tech giants, private-equity firms, and veteran telecom executives -- include prodding large US technology companies like Cisco to acquire European companies Ericsson or Nokia. In more than one case, the company wasn’t interested in buying into low-margin businesses. Policymakers have also discussed shoring up Ericsson and Nokia with tax breaks and export-bank financing, or supporting a private-equity group that would take one of the European equipment makers private. Other proposals would support “open” network technology that would make it easier for U.S. startups to develop new technology for 5G equipment. The ideas show how far the US is willing to go in its fight with China over who will supply the world with advanced technologies.

The Spectrum IT Modernization Act of 2020 (S. 3717) would require the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to establish goals and performance measures to modernize the infrastructure of federal agencies that is related to the electromagnetic spectrum they use. Under the bill, the NTIA would report to the Congress on its own management of spectrum infrastructure. Additionally, each agency that uses federally assigned spectrum would submit a plan to the NTIA describing its plans to modernize its infrastructure to use it more effectively.

The Congressional Budget Office assumes that S. 3717 will be enacted late in fiscal year 2020. Using information from the NTIA, CBO estimates that it would cost the agency about $1 million (including the cost of three employees) to establish goals and complete the necessary report to the Congress. CBO expects that about 10 other federal agencies that use federally assigned spectrum would require one employee each at an average cost of $200,000 to prepare plans and submit them to the NTIA. In total, CBO estimates that it would cost $3 million over the 2020-2025 period to implement S. 3717; that spending would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.

The Federal Communications Commission issued its 2020 staff report on the availability and effectiveness of call blocking tools offered to consumers. Surveying data submitted by a variety of commenters, the FCC found that call blocking tools are now substantially available to consumers at no or low cost. In addition to this report, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the FCC will
consider at its July 16 Open Meeting an Order that would, among other things, give voice service providers a safe harbor from liability for the unintended or inadvertent blocking of calls so long as such action is based upon reasonable analytics indicating that such calls were unwanted and therefore should be blocked. The proposal would also enable responsible providers to block calls from the bad actor providers that facilitate illegal and unwanted calls.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau will no longer accept new applications for funding from the COVID-19 Telehealth Program. Based on the applications received to date, demand for funding exceeds available Program funds and, as a result, the public interest is not served by imposing burdens on health care providers who may prepare new
applications that cannot be funded under the current appropriation. 

The Bureau began accepting applications for the Program on April 13, 2020. Since then, the Bureau has continued to expeditiously review applications and issue funding commitments and, in accordance with the FCC’s Report and Order, has prioritized funding applications that target areas that have been hardest hit by COVID-19 and where the support will have the most impact on addressing the health care needs. As of June 24, 2020, the Bureau has issued $157.64 million in total Program funding commitments for 444 applications. The Bureau anticipates that funding requests in applications already received will exhaust the remaining Program appropriation and continuing to consider applications would impose unnecessary burdens on health care providers who may be preparing applications that will not be considered before the Program funds are exhausted. Therefore, it is not in the public interest to accept new Program applications.
 

Chicago Connected is a groundbreaking program that will provide free high-speed internet service to approximately 100,000 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students. This first-of-its-kind program will be one of the largest and longest-term efforts by any city to provide free, high-speed internet over the course of four years to increase internet access for students. According to Census data, an estimated 100,000 students lack access to high-speed internet in Chicago. In order to narrow the digital divide for CPS families, Chicago Connected will provide up to four years of high-speed internet for CPS families who are most in need. Students who are eligible for the program and are planning to enroll in summer school in 2020 will be prioritized as the program rolls out in the coming weeks.

‘Chicago Connected’ will begin notifying eligible families beginning Monday, June 29, 2020 with the goal of connecting as many of the 100,000 students as possible prior to the 2020-21 school year. While the initial phase of ‘Chicago Connected’ will provide wired internet access, Chicago Connected will also extend existing hotspot service for students in temporary living situations for up to four years.

With five months to go until a presidential election that promises to be a major test of American democratic institutions, American laws are in desperate need of update to address digital forms of voter suppression and how political debate and campaigning has moved online. Several ideas for rules that government could enact to provide the necessary transparency to help ensure that voter suppression does not run unchecked online include:

1. Updating campaign finance laws to include digital advertising. In addition to setting enforceable rules for companies like Facebook and Google to follow, this would allow the Federal Election Commission to fulfill its mandate of tracking money in political advertising. One lingering piece of legislation that addresses some of this is the bipartisan Honest Ads Act.
2. Limiting the ability of advertisers to target users based on criteria—which the civil rights community could help define—that would allow campaigns to broadcast divisive ads about voting to the those who are most receptive while reducing public scrutiny of those ads. Just as the U.S. government sued Facebook in 2019 for violating the Fair Housing Act by allowing housing ads to target users by race and gender, the U.S. government should ensure that the platforms do not allow political ads that violate the tenets of the Voting Rights Act.
3. Demanding transparency about how ads are targeted that goes beyond the basic details contained in the Facebook ads library, such as whether custom audiences and “look-alike tools” are used, whether the company algorithms amplify the ads, and whether the advertiser listed in the “paid for by” disclaimer is verified and matches the actual name of the authorized advertiser.

I believe that if Facebook continues to allow blatant lies about our elections system continue unabated, they will be on the wrong side of history. And when, in 2021, Facebook executives roll out the same excuses that “nobody could have seen this coming,” remember this moment.

[Yael Eisenstat is a visiting fellow at Cornell Tech’s Digital Life Initiative, a former elections integrity head at Facebook, and a former intelligence officer and White House advisor.]