The Federal Communications Commission is proposing to maintain the US broadband standard at the current level of 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream. That's the speed standard the FCC uses each year to determine whether advanced telecommunications capabilities are "being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion." FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel has called on the FCC to raise it, but a new proceeding launched at the FCC this week proposes keeping the standard the same for another year. Keeping the current speed standard would likely mean that the FCC will conclude that broadband deployment is already happening fast enough throughout the US. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai could use that conclusion in attempts to justify further deregulation of the broadband industry.

In 2016, 15.4 percent or 48.9 million people lived in low-adoption neighborhoods, down from almost one-fifth in 2015. However, when looking at the share of folks living in low adoption neighborhoods by rurality, interesting dynamics surface. In 2016, more than half or 55 percent of those living in low-adoption neighborhoods were rural folks.

[Roberto Gallardo is Assistant Director of the Purdue Center for Regional Development and a Purdue Extension Community & Regional Economics Specialist]

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the internet are not media. They are something new we do not yet fully understand. To call these platforms publishers is to presume that their task is merely to produce content. It is to presume, then, that the internet should be produced, packaged, and polished, and that when someone says something bad anywhere on it then the entire internet is beschmutzed. The larger question, of course, is what the internet is and how it fits into society and society into it. We are just beginning to see what it can be. The essential value of the internet is conversation, not content. The internet connects more than 3 billion people and enables a grand diversity among them to speak, if not yet to be heard. We should view the evolution of the internet in context.

• First, it is vital to judge the totality of the value of the platforms and the net.
• Second, we need to understand the problem we are trying to address: not technology, but human behavior using technology, the bad acts of some small—yes, small—number of propagandists, trolls, misogynists, bigots, thieves, and jerks.
• Third, those of us in media must acknowledge our responsibility for the messes we’ve made. 
• Fourth, it is hubris to think that we understand the full impact of the internet already. 

[Jeff Jarvis is the Leonard Tow Professor of Journalistic Innovation in the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, where he directs the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism]

Children and preteens are more connected to the Internet than ever, which means retailers are looking for new ways to market — and sell — directly to young shoppers on their phones, tablets and laptops. Gone are the days of blanket television ads, marketing experts say. Instead, companies are flocking to Snapchat, YouTube Kids and other mobile apps to reach children with personalized messages. Nearly half of 10- to 12-year-olds have their own smartphones, according to Nielsen. By the time they’re teenagers, 95 percent of Americans have access to a smartphone.

“Kids are shopping on their phones and influencing much more of their families’ spending,” said Katherine Cullen, director of retail and consumer insights for the National Retail Federation. “As a result, retailers are paying a lot more attention to pint-size customers.”

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s singularly nasty breakup with Tribune Media may put a serious damper on the conservative-leaning broadcast giant's ability to expand, despite its persisting hunger to do so. Sinclair insists it will press on with business as usual and is already eyeing other acquisition targets in its bid to expand into a full-fledged conservative media titan on par with Fox News. But with few Washington allies outside of President Donald Trump, and now having botched the Tribune deal, the company may struggle to find other partners willing to roll the dice on facing regulators side-by-side with Sinclair. “Tribune flat-out says from the beginning Sinclair was a bad partner,” said Yosef Getachew, director of the Media and Democracy Program at Common Cause. “Any company that is interested in an agreement is going to think twice.”

[see more: Sinclair’s bumpy road ahead]