Daily Digest 8/16/2021 (Digital Equity)

Benton Institute for Broadband & Society
Table of Contents

Infrastructure

The Senate infrastructure bill’s four interconnected broadband components  |  Read below  |  Blair Levin  |  Analysis  |  Brookings
For the US to fully realize the economic and cultural benefits of broadband, it must reach everyone and be built to last  |  Read below  |  Rick Barrett, Kelli Arseneau  |  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Digital Equity

Closing the Digital Divide: Teens believe internet access is critical for equality  |  Read below  |  Research  |  4-H

From the States

Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development announces over $32 million for broadband  |  Read below  |  Press Release  |  Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development
MetroNet Expands Fiber Footprint to Wisconsin  |  Read below  |  Phil Britt  |  telecompetitor
Not a luxury: Rural residents want better broadband  |  Read below  |  Hannah Yang  |  MPR News

Spectrum/Wireless

Encouraging Coexistence: NIST Model Cuts Measurement Needs for Spectrum Sharing by About 33%  |  National Institute of Standards and Technology
Should Smaller Cable Operators Enter the Wireless Market? Maybe, Says CoBank  |  telecompetitor
DC Court Smacks Down FCC Decision to Keep 5G RF Emission Standards  |  Next TV
How NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunication Sciences Uses Machine Learning to Measure and Improve Speech Quality  |  National Telecommunications and Information Administration

Platforms/Social Media

Google files to dismiss Ohio lawsuit to declare search engine a public utility  |  Read below  |  Rebecca Klar  |  Hill, The
AlgorithmWatch forced to shut down Instagram monitoring project after threats from Facebook  |  AlgorithmWatch
Twitter is pausing its verification program again, after giving fake accounts blue checks  |  Vox
Digital Addictions Are Drowning Us in Dopamine  |  Wall Street Journal
Richard Waters: The coming battle over the metaverse  |  Financial Times

Companies

The top 6 cable, satellite and telco pay-TV operators in Q2 of 2021  |  Read below  |  Ben Munson  |  Fierce
Frontier, Lumen, Windstream: supply chain isn’t an issue for us  |  Fierce
Zayo plans to 'get more active' selling lit fiber to 35,000 buildings  |  Fierce
LEO satellite ventures OneWeb, Lightspeed score new investments  |  Fierce
Video: Nokia’s Bassam El-Zakhem Outlines the Gigabit Era and its Implications  |  telecompetitor

Devices

Trade Judge Says Google Infringed on Patents Owned by Sonos  |  New York Times
Apple Told to Pay $300 Million After Wireless Patent Retrial  |  Bloomberg

Privacy

Editorial: Apple’s new child safety tool comes with privacy trade-offs — just like all the others  |  Washington Post
Pretty Good Phone Privacy can mask wireless users' locations from carriers with a simple software upgrade  |  Ars Technica

Stories From Abroad

Google and Facebook’s New Cable to Improve Internet Connectivity in Southeast Asia  |  Read below  |  Vlad Savov  |  Bloomberg
Today's Top Stories

Infrastructure

The Senate infrastructure bill’s four interconnected broadband components

Blair Levin  |  Analysis  |  Brookings

Congress has done a lot more than just set goals for access to broadband services—it finally provided the funding to do so. Most recently, the Senate passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which, if passed by the House, would provide another $65 billion in funding. But to understand what the Senate both did and did not do in the new infrastructure package, we cannot simply focus on spending levels. It is essential to understand how the legislation's four primary pieces of broadband policy fit together to move the country toward its long-held goals of universal access and adoption. First, the Senate funded the capital expenditures likely to be sufficient to deploy a future-proof network to nearly every business and home in the United States. Second, the Senate provided a subsidy for low-income Americans to connect to broadband, sufficient to both build an appropriate system and to give the FCC time to restructure the current inadequate and fragile universal service program. Third, the Senate ordered the FCC to come up with a plan to reform universal service. Fourth, the Senate provided a surge of funding to address digital training and literacy.

For the US to fully realize the economic and cultural benefits of broadband, it must reach everyone and be built to last

Rick Barrett, Kelli Arseneau  |  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The best broadband, it's generally agreed, is an affordable connection that supports the needs of consumers and businesses for many years into the future. It's not unreasonable to achieve because fiber-optic cable, the industry's gold standard, has near-limitless capabilities. Once buried in the ground, it can be upgraded through electronics rather than digging up the cable. Conversely, it's a waste of time and money to rebuild networks over and over because they were based on the needs of the past, not the future, said Shirley Bloomfield, chief executive officer of NTCA - The Rural Broadband Association, which represents about 850 community-based telecommunications companies. Broadband must be able to simultaneously support a family's need for connecting to the office, participating in virtual classrooms, live chats with a doctor or friend group. The internet has become the linchpin for rural businesses as well. Farmers need it to buy equipment and follow crop prices. Factories need it to connect with suppliers and customers. Rural health centers, tourism businesses, shops on Main Street, all need a robust, reliable connection.

Small, for-profit broadband businesses have sometimes been the unsung heroes in rural areas where the bigger companies haven't made many improvements. Extending internet service has been a good fit for some electric cooperatives because they have essential infrastructure such as cable and poles, service crews and customer support. "I think they should be encouraged," said Jonathan Sallet, a senior fellow at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and a former general counsel for the Federal Communications Commission. "The rural electric cooperatives and rural telephone companies have been more willing to put in modern networks than some of the larger companies," he said.

Digital Equity

Closing the Digital Divide: Teens believe internet access is critical for equality

Research  |  4-H

A new report found that teens believe unreliable broadband access contributes to economic and social inequities, perceptions of reduced career prospects, significantly lower digital literacy, and less confidence in their future success. Teens reveal the drastic impact that slow internet speeds have on their opportunities and urge the government to pick up the pace toward universal broadband access. Key findings include:

  • 73% of teens agree that “Digital skills will be the key to getting the best jobs for my generation.”​
  • 1 in 10 American teens does not have access to broadband internet (1 in 6 in rural communities).​
  • Broadband access dropped 7% at both homes and schools since 2019.​
  • Only 37% of teens with an unreliable connection feel that high-quality, K-12 education is within reach for their community.​
  • Only 38% of teens with unreliable connections feel their community has access to a wide variety of job opportunities.​
  • 89% of teens say their need for high-speed Internet access at home has increased or stayed the same in the last 18 months.​
  • Ultimately, teens see broadband availability as a barrier to staying in their community long-term (25% unreliable internet, 14% reliable internet). 

From the States

Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development announces over $32 million for broadband

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) announced $34.6 million in grants to 15 Minnesota cities and counties from the Small Cities Coronavirus Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG-CV). As part of the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, Minnesota received a special allocation to address community needs to prevent, prepare for and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the funding – nearly $32.2 million – will be used for broadband improvement projects. Projects under CDBG-CV are not associated with the Border-to-Border Broadband Development Grant Program managed by the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development. “The pandemic has made clear how vital broadband is to the lives of Minnesotans and to the economic vitality of our state,” said DEED Commissioner Steve Grove. “These grants will help communities fund broadband and other important projects as we write the next chapter of our economy.”

MetroNet Expands Fiber Footprint to Wisconsin

Phil Britt  |  telecompetitor

MetroNet is expanding its fiber footprint to its 12th state, Wisconsin, and is planning to spend $12 to $15 million on the project, which is expected to start in the Spring of 2022. LaCrosse will be the initial city in the Badger State to have the MetroNet fiber network, which boasts 100 percent fiber to the home with symmetrical speeds of up to 10 Gbps without any long-term contracts. The first LaCrosse customers are expected to go online next summer further expanding the company’s customer base, which is expected to total more than 1 million residential households and business locations in the near term.

Not a luxury: Rural residents want better broadband

Hannah Yang  |  MPR News

Rural counties in Minnesota are competing for better broadband, and have seen the shift in how their communities are viewing the necessity for it. About 90 percent of Minnesota households have a computer statewide, according to the Blandin Foundation, and 81 percent have a laptop; 76 percent have a smartphone and 59 percent have a tablet. But, there are many areas in Minnesota where access to high-speed internet is limited, and working remotely and distance learning have run into problems. Rural counties have been working to bring high-speed internet into the area for several years, but small local internet service providers say they can’t afford to invest large amounts of money into areas where there aren’t a lot of people. Money to subsidize rural broadband initiatives has also been limited, but recently the Minnesota Legislature approved $70 million for high-speed internet and the US Senate passed an infrastructure package that would give the state at least $100 million for broadband upgrades.

Platforms/Social Media

Google files to dismiss Ohio lawsuit to declare search engine a public utility

Rebecca Klar  |  Hill, The

Google is seeking to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the Ohio attorney general seeking to declare the company's search service a public utility. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R-OH) filed the lawsuit in June, arguing Google has used its dominance to prioritize its own products in a way that “intentionally disadvantages competitors.” Google’s lawyers argue in a court motion that the company does not meet the state’s requirements to be considered a common carrier. “Ohio’s Complaint mistakenly assumes Google Search is a common carrier or public utility because Ohioans choose to use Google Search. Under Ohio law, common carriers charge a fee to deliver a standardized service, and public utilities are regulated by a set of state regulations. Google has none of those attributes, and there is no basis in the law to conclude otherwise,” the motion states. “The whole point of Google Search is to provide results tailored to a specific query. Google Search is not shipping a commodity product, but constantly working to provide useful information in response to people’s unique queries."

Companies

The top 6 cable, satellite and telco pay-TV operators in Q2 of 2021

Ben Munson  |  Fierce

The second-quarter earnings season has wrapped up for the top publicly traded pay-TV operators in the US, and it's time to break down the numbers. Altice USA, AT&T, Charter Communications, Comcast, Dish Network, and Verizon combined to lose approximately 1.1 million video subscribers during the second quarter across both residential and commercial subscriber bases, down significantly from the 1.6 million combined subscribers lost in the first quarter. Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne estimated that pay-TV subscriber loss rates slowed down substantially. “Pay-TV subscribers declined only 3.9 percent during the quarter…which was ahead of our expectation for a 4.3 percent decline and over 6 percent as we headed into the pandemic last year,” he wrote. “Despite a transforming pay-TV model tethered around app-centric distribution and content consumption through streaming, we think this quarter benefitted from the return to live sports and favorable comps relative to Q2 2020. While the better than feared losses this quarter are encouraging in light of using video to manage broadband churn, we expect the overall pay-TV decline to accelerate to -5.4 percent by year-end.”

Stories From Abroad

Google and Facebook’s New Cable to Improve Internet Connectivity in Southeast Asia

Vlad Savov  |  Bloomberg

Google and Facebook announced their participation in a new subsea cable system for 2024 set to improve internet connectivity across the Asia-Pacific region. Dubbed Apricot, the infrastructure project will link Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines, and Indonesia and help serve growing demand for broadband access and 5G wireless connectivity. In March 2021, the company also announced two new transpacific subsea cables connecting Singapore to the US west coast, Bifrost and Echo, with Google participating in the latter. The Echo and Apricot cables are complementary submarine systems and will improve the resilience of Google Cloud and the company’s other digital services. The new fiber-optic link spanning the Asia-Pacific has an initial design capacity of more than 190 terabits per second, according to Facebook. Both Silicon Valley giants have been investing in building out internet infrastructure in the regions they see offering the highest growth potential, with Google last year announcing a $10 billion spending plan to help India’s digitization push over the next five to seven years.

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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.


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Benton Institute
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