The House Appropriations Committee approved the fiscal year 2021 Financial Services and General Government bill on a vote of 30 to 22. The legislation provides annual funding for the Department of the Treasury, the Judiciary, the Executive Office of the President, and other independent agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission. The bill includes $376.1 million for the FCC, an increase of $37.1 million above the FY 2020 enacted level. This includes funding to implement new broadband mapping legislation. Additionally, the bill includes $61 billion in emergency funding for the FCC to expand availability of broadband to unserved areas, as well as multi-year funding for broadband mapping and replacement of telecommunications equipment deemed to pose a national security threat to the United States. The bill would prevent the FCC from working on the following:

• A recommendation regarding single connection or primary line restrictions on universal service support
• A 2019 notice of proposed rulemaking on Universal Service Fund contribution methodology 
• Creating a 5G Fund for Rural America before completing map that depicts the availability of mobile broadband internet access service

The bill includes $341 million for the Federal Trade Commission, an increase of $10 million above the FY 2020 enacted level, to bolster antitrust and consumer protection work. 

Once again, appropriators started the debate on allocations for the Technology Modernization Fund—a central pot of money loaned to federal agencies for specific, impactful IT modernization projects—at $25 million. The administration, as with years past, requested $150 million in the president’s budget proposal. But, year after year, House appropriators offered to boost the fund by only $25 million. If this year’s proposed $25 million increase is approved, it will raise the fund’s cap to $175 million.

Consumers in the US pay more on average for monthly internet service than consumers abroad—especially for higher speed tiers. This report examines 760 plans in 28 cities across Asia, Europe, and North America, with an emphasis on the US. Key Findings:

• Across North America, Europe, and Asia, the highest average monthly prices are in the US
• There's substantial evidence of an affordability crisis in the United States. Just three US cities rank in the top half of cities when sorted by average monthly costs. 
• Consumers must navigate a maze of additional fees and hidden costs to determine the total price of internet service. 
• Municipal networks appear to offer some of the best value in the United States. 
• The US market suffers from a lack of competition, dominated by just four companies: AT&T, Charter, Comcast, and Verizon.
• ISPs are not transparent with consumers, the government, or researchers. Many US consumers struggle to determine the total cost of internet service due to poor transparency, highly complex pricing structures, and confusing itemized billing. 

One of the recurring themes used to promote 5G is that wireless broadband is going to become a serious competitor to wireline broadband. The Federal Communications Commission and the industry have implied for years that 5G cellular will be a competitor for landline broadband. I still can’t see many homes accepting 5G cellular as a replacement for landline broadband. I can think of a number of important ways to compare and contrast the two broadband products:

• Speed: The 5G download speeds on regular cellphones should creep up 100 Mbps over the next 5 to 7 years, and would rival the base speeds on cable company networks – but by that time the cable companies are likely to upgrade all of their customers to 250 Mbps.
• Overall capacity: There is no scenario where cellular networks can somehow steal away a lot of the traffic carried by landlines.
• Household Usage: Household usage of broadband has exploded. By 2024 the average home might be using more than 700 gigabytes per month.
• Data Caps: The above shows the absurdity of the claim that cellular will somehow overtake landline broadband. Even the ‘unlimited’ cellular data plans today are capped or heavily throttled after 20 or so gigabytes of data used in a month. Cellular companies are not likely to raise the data caps much because they don’t want heavy data users sucking all of the capacity out of the cellular networks.
• Pricing: For 5G to compete with landline broadband, the cellular companies would have to kill the paradigm of selling an extra gigabyte of data for $10.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US will impose visa restrictions on Chinese technology firms, the latest move expected to strain relations between Washington and Beijing. “State Department will impose visa restrictions on certain employees of Chinese tech companies like Huawei, that provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally,” Sec Pompeo said. The secretary of State described Huawei as “an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state that censors political dissidents and enables mass internment camps in Xinjiang and the indentured servitude of its population shipped all over China.” He accused certain employees of the company of providing “material support to the Chinese Communist Party regime that commits human rights abuses,” but he didn’t offer specifics on the employees. “Telecommunications companies around the world should consider themselves on notice: If they are doing business with Huawei, they are doing business with human rights abusers,” the nation’s top diplomat said.