In 2012, 70 percent of schools lacked internet connections fast enough to support basic administrative and instructional needs (100 kilobytes per person), but now only 1.6 percent of school districts fail to meet that low bar. Despite this progress, the Federal Communications Commission is considering changes to the E-Rate program, which subsidizes internet access in schools across the country. The proposal would cap spending and potentially decrease the funding available to schools. This would threaten recent gains and create additional barriers to helping the few remaining school districts that lack adequate internet connections.

The proposal to cap E-Rate spending is only in the early stages, and there’s not sufficient information to judge at this moment whether it would threaten current progress. The original purpose of E-Rate according to the FCC was to ensure that schools have access through discounts and grants. But capping spending seems insufficient for addressing the avowed goals of dealing with fraud in the E-Rate program. Stepping up enforcement or requiring more-detailed reporting would better address that problem. If a cap prevented school districts from getting E-Rate funds that they currently receive, then it would slow down average internet speeds. School district demand for broadband is somewhat close to supply. School districts use E-Rate to pay not just for equipment like routers and Wi-Fi, but also monthly internet connection fees. Any cuts to E-Rate could directly influence a school’s ability to afford internet access.

First, the only way to fix the Digital Divide is to deal with the fact that America has paid multiple times for fiber optic deployments, upgrades of the state-based telecommunications utilities that are mainly controlled by AT&T, Verizon and Centurylink. Unfortunately, for the most part, the companies never delivered and this, in part, created the Digital Divide. Second, at the core — IRREGULATORS v FCC is new, current challenge to expose one of the largest accounting scandals in American history. We uncovered that the Federal Communications Commission's accounting rules, either by design or happenstance, have been manipulated; they now put the majority of all wired expenses into the state utility’s local service, and this made the entire US wired state-based public utility infrastructure to appear unprofitable. At the same time, it has allowed the companies’ other lines of business, including wireless, or even the internet, to be cross-subsidized, funded by charging local phone customers, and inflating the retail prices of almost all other services, including wireless, broadband or phone service. This must be addressed and fixed immediately, before the FCC completes the dismantling of the state utilities (in conjunction with a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, “ALEC”), shuts off the wired retail services and hands over the publicly-funded state utilities to their wireless (5G) companies as private property for private use, while making sure that the wired and wireless customers pay multiples for all services.

[Bruce Kushnick is the executive director of New Networks Institute]

A class action suit has been filed alleging that AT&T pumped up the subscriber count for its DirecTV Now streaming service (since rebranded to AT&T TV Now) to mask "serious technical problems due to premature roll-out." AT&T has recently reported subscriber losses across multiple platforms, including AT&T TV Now. The complaint claims that AT&T and "Executive Defendants," which includes CEO Randall Stephenson, "falsely depicted DirecTV Now as a fast-growing product with increasing subscribers and strong margins that would offset declining subscriber levels in AT&T’s other video products, including its mature satellite DirecTV product." Instead, the plaintiffs allege, that depiction was a "mirage" created by salespeople "dropping DirecTV subscriptions into customer accounts without their knowledge using short-term promotions" that were still used in public statements about the service's "dramatic growth" despite the expiring discounts that led to lots of churn. The suit also alleges AT&T salespeople were directed to bundle multiple accounts in a single activation, even creating false e-mail addresses and running a credit card multiple times to create imaginary accounts.