The House passed, on a 217 to 197 vote, a package of fiscal year 2021 appropriations bills. The package consists of six bills that fund federal departments including Defense, Commerce, Justice, Energy, Treasury Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development from October 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021. The $1.3 trillion package, H.R. 7617, consists of the FY 2021 Defense, Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy and Water Development, Financial Services and General Government, Labor-HHS-Education, and Transportation-Housing and Urban Development appropriations bills. The Financial Services and General Government funding bill, among other things, provides $376.1 million for the Federal Communications Commission and includes funding to implement new broadband mapping legislation. The bill also includes $61 billion in funding for the FCC to expand availability of broadband to unserved areas, and for broadband mapping and replacement of telecommunications equipment deemed to pose a national security threat to the United States.

Connect Americans Now (CAN) sent a letter to Congressional leaders, co-signed by 46 organizations, calling on lawmakers to provide funding to eliminate the digital divide for all Americans as part of the next COVID-19 relief package. The letter -- addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) -- encourages Congress to support urgently needed solutions to expand broadband connectivity. The letter encourages Congress to follow certain guiding principles in allocating resources, including maintain a technology neutral focus on rapid deployment, targeting particular challenges like remote learning, minimizing cost through a competitive bidding process, and reducing regulatory hurdles and market distortions.

5G wireless is no longer vaporware, but a lot of haze still surrounds the forms of 5G each nationwide carrier sells. The major carriers began rolling out 5G coverage more a year ago. However, their maps don’t clarify what sort of next-generation mobile broadband touches your neighborhood, nor can you easily identify the level of 5G service a phone provides. “Marketing from a 5G perspective is all over the place,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies. The underlying problem here is that US carriers offer three kinds of 5G, each on different sets of frequencies that trade speed and coverage.

Although Lifeline eligibility is now linked directly to the Department of Agriculture's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program, Lifeline has adopted none of the technology advances designed to make it both consumer and provider-friendly.  If the Lifeline program is to play a bigger role in addressing the well-documented internet usage gaps for low-income Americans, the program must be modernized. In a modernized Lifeline program, eligible households would apply to the National Verifier and get a Lifeline Benefit Card in the mail.  Loaded (and reloaded) with the monthly benefit amount, the Lifeline Benefit Card accounts would function like the millions of prepaid cards, health savings account cards, or merchant gift cards already in common use.  Lifeline customers could use their Benefit Card account to help pay for broadband services from any participating provider.  Any amount owed in excess of the Lifeline benefit would be the consumer’s direct responsibility.

The National Security Agency issued new guidance for military and intelligence-community personnel, warning about the risks of cellphone location tracking through apps, wireless networks, and Bluetooth technology. The detailed warning from one of the nation’s top intelligence agencies is an acknowledgment that Silicon Valley’s practice of collecting and selling cellphone location information for advertising and marketing purposes poses a serious national-security risk to many inside the government. “Location data can be extremely valuable and must be protected. It can reveal details about the number of users in a location, user and supply movements, daily routines (user and organizational), and can expose otherwise unknown associations between users and locations,” the NSA bulletin warned. Among its recommendations, the NSA advises disabling location-sharing services on mobile devices, granting apps as few permissions as possible and turning off advertising permissions. The NSA also recommends limiting mobile web browsing, adjusting browser options to not allow the use of location data, and switching off settings that help track a misplaced or stolen phone.

Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) says President Donald Trump’s recent handling of Federal Communications Commission nominations is a “disaster.” The Trump administration withdrew the nomination of FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, shortly after O’Rielly criticized an executive order demanding that the agency unilaterally revise Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Sen Wyden, one of the coauthors of Section 230, said the move called the agency’s independence into question. “I think his handling of it is a disaster. One nomination after another is brought up, and the litmus test is: will the nominee do exactly what the president of the United States wants to do on any given issue at any particular moment?” said Wyden. “I think the bottom line is basically about working the refs, bullying the tech companies, and forcing Twitter and other platforms to print his lies.”