Tuesday, July 13, 2021
Headlines Daily Digest
Don't Miss:
Michael Copps: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
AT&T adds benefits and eliminates deprioritization for its top-tier plan
Broadband Service
Media & Democracy
Infrastructure
Competition
Wireless
Platforms/Social Media
Telecom
Patents
Lobbying
Stories from Abroad
Broadband Service
Consumer Reports launches Broadband Together — a nationwide search for the truth about your internet service
In a first-of-its-kind effort, the Broadband Together initiative is asking people across the country to share their monthly internet bills — so we can find out what we’re really getting for our money, and advocate for a better internet that costs less. Consumer Reports is asking thousands of consumers to share their monthly internet bills at broadbandtogether.org so CR can analyze the cost, quality, and speeds that are being delivered to people in communities across the US, and to better understand the factors that affect price and why consumers pay different rates for the same service. The findings from this major initiative will help CR in its effort to press internet service providers and government officials to deliver greater access to fair, affordable, reliable internet services. In a recent CR survey, 76 percent of Americans say that internet service is as important as electricity and running water in today’s world, and 86% say they rely on the internet at least five days a week.
CR is working with a broad coalition of partners to examine these issues by asking thousands of consumers to share information about the quality and cost of their internet connection. The diverse coalition includes more than 40 organizations across the country that have partnered together for this critical initiative. The Broadband Together steering committee includes Access Now, American Library Association, Amerind, Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, BroadbandNow, Color of Change, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, mLab, National Digital Inclusion Alliance, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, Rural Assembly, Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association, and The X-Lab @ PSU.
July 2021 brings us things to celebrate, things to denigrate, and things to absolutely deplore. On the good side, we have come to see that high-speed broadband has become an essential component of modern-day infrastructure. The ambitious broadband proposals of the Biden Administration have rightly gained strong public support, not just in one party, but both. We are also witnessing the reinvigoration of public agencies to protect the public interest, something Biden made clear in his Executive Order on competition. However, many of our most important institutions still stand in the way of needed progress. The ever-increasing dominance of consolidated and often monopolistic businesses has thwarted the kind of robust competition that an open, dynamic, and opportunity-creating economy demands. In government, the filibuster is a gag rule every bit as insidious as those John Quincy Adams spent years protesting when he went to Congress after being President.
Ugliness pervades in our rapidly deteriorating judiciary, as the increasing partisanship that bedevils too much of our court system threatens to stop needed change in its tracks. The sad state of our news and information infrastructure also fails to provide us with the facts and information citizens must have if we are to perpetuate self-government. If we are to have democracy, we must have media democracy. We need citizens—you and me—to take up this cause and organize to make sure elected officials at all levels understand that we are demanding a news and information system that serves the needs of successful self-government. We now have an opportunity to advance this goal. I hope I am right that the clouds are parting instead of gathering.
[Michael Copps served as a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from May 2001 to December 2011 and was the FCC's Acting Chairman from January to June 2009. In 2012, former Commissioner Copps joined Common Cause to lead its Media and Democracy Reform Initiative. Common Cause is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization]
AT&T is adding a few more benefits to its $85-per-month top-tier unlimited plan at no added cost. Unlimited Elite subscribers will now truly have access to unlimited high-speed data and will no longer be subject to deprioritization after hitting 100GB of data per month. Customers will also get a bump from 30GB of monthly hotspot data up to 40GB as well as up to 4K video streaming—boosted from a maximum of 1080p. The new plan features will be added automatically for all current subscribers starting this week. T-Mobile did more or less the same thing earlier this year; in fact, AT&T’s Unlimited Elite now matches T-Mobile’s Magenta Max nearly feature-by-feature. T-Mobile’s move to do away with data deprioritization for its highest-paying customers appears to have put pressure on its competitors to do the same.
The Internet Association (IA) has been shedding staff, losing influence on Capitol Hill and shrinking to near-obscurity in media coverage of tech policy debates in Washington, even as the industry faces controversies ranging from alleged monopolization to privacy to how it treats its legions of workers. The declining prominence of IA, a nine-year-old group that used to call itself “the unified voice of the internet economy,” comes as a larger fragmentation is splitting the tech industry’s lobbying efforts into factions. In its place, other tech-focused advocacy groups—including a new startup headed by a former Google executive—have stepped into the void to speak for the companies on antitrust. Because IA is a coalition of small and large companies, with vastly different perspectives on the topic, it declared from its founding that it would not lobby on competition-related issues. That’s a real impediment as Congress gets serious about passing sweeping antitrust bills that could fundamentally change how Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple do business, while pleasing smaller rivals like Yelp and Spotify.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
© Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 2021. Redistribution of this email publication — both internally and externally — is encouraged if it includes this message. For subscribe/unsubscribe info email: headlines AT benton DOT org
Kevin Taglang
Executive Editor, Communications-related Headlines
Benton Institute
for Broadband & Society
727 Chicago Avenue
Evanston, IL 60202
847-328-3040
headlines AT benton DOT org
Share this edition:
The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society All Rights Reserved © 2021