Total Internet connections increased by about 4.9% between June 2017 and June 2018 to 429 million. Mobile Internet connections increased 5.7% year-over-year to 320 million in June 2018, while fixed connections grew to 109 million – up about 2.8% from June 2017. Nearly 48% of connections were at 100 Mbps or more (downstream). Over 73% of connections were 25 Mbps or more. The percentage of fixed connections with a downstream speed of at least 25 Mbps has grown from 50% (or 50 million connections) in June 2015 to 74% (or 80 million connections) in June 2018. Over the same period, the percentage of fixed connections with downstream speeds of less than 3 Mbps has decreased from 7% (or 7 million connections) in June 2015 to 2.4% (or about 2.6 million connections) in June 2018. More than 52% of upstream connections were at least 6 Mbps and nearly 76% of upstream connections were 3 Mpbs or more. The median downstream speed of all reported fixed connections was 75 Mbps and the median upstream speed was 10 Mbps. For residential fixed connections, the median downstream speed was 90 Mbps and the median upstream speed was 10 Mbps.

California filed a brief in the lawsuit by the United States and Internet service providers like AT&T and Comcast that seeks to overturn California’s net neutrality law. SB 822, which was signed into law in September 2018, is the only state law that comprehensively restores all the net neutrality protections from the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 Open Internet Order. At issue is whether any state can protect its residents from misbehavior by the companies they pay to get online, and thanks to the United States' and the ISPs’ sweeping arguments, even whether states can regulate any online services, including enacting online privacy laws. There are 3 main issues in the ISPs’ and US’s request for an injunction: 

1. Is there a conflict between the FCC’s decision to eliminate its net neutrality protections and the state’s decision to bring it back for Californians? The answer is no.
2. Does the Communications Act ban states from regulating any online service at all? This is a sweeping argument that the FCC didn’t even make in its repeal of net neutrality. It is contrary to the case law, and the Communications Act wasn’t written to do so.
3. ISPs have to prove two big points: one, that they are likely to win the lawsuit, and two, that without an injunction, they would suffer irreparable harm. 

Comcast announced a multiyear program to launch more than 1,000 Wi-Fi-connected “Lift Zones” in community centers nationwide. Working with its network of thousands of nonprofit partners and city leaders, Comcast will provide Wi-Fi in facilities they have identified to help students get online, participate in distance learning, and do their schoolwork. The initiative will provide not only free Internet connectivity, but also access to hundreds of hours of educational and digital skills content to help families and site coordinators navigate online learning. Lift Zones complement Comcast’s Internet Essentials program, which, since 2011, has helped connect more than 8 million low-income people to the Internet at home. The first 200 Lift Zones have already been identified. Several are open and others will open this year in more than a dozen cities.

Additionally, in response to the COVID-19 crisis, Comcast announced in June that it will continue to offer, through the end of 2020, all new Internet Essentials customers two months of free Internet service and it will waive the requirement that customers not have back debt due so more families can apply. Comcast also continues to extend free access to its 1.5 million public Xfinity WiFi hotspots to anyone who needs them, including non-customers, through the end of 2020. These hotspots are located in public places like small businesses, parks, and transportation hubs and are in addition to the Lift Zones, which will be new, additional locations where low-income individuals and students can get online for free.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, California estimated that 1 million of its 6.2 million school kids didn't have the equipment they needed for virtual learning, prompting leaders from across the tech industry to immediately open their wallets to help. But six months later, with school back in session, only a fraction of the devices those contributions were supposed to purchase are actually in students' hands. Amassing these donations, it turns out, was the easy part. Thanks to supply chain issues, inequity in existing infrastructure and even President Trump's geopolitics, actually procuring, distributing and putting the devices to use has been far more complicated. Equally challenging: Tracking what progress has been made at all. That's true in California and even more true across the US as a whole. Once students do receive devices, issues still arise. Advocates say students are receiving hot spots only to find that they live in a dead zone or that the devices don't have the bandwidth to support Zoom. 

Leveraging high-speed broadband access, I present several ideas for ensuring all K-12 students can learn during a time of in-person schooling shutdowns and other uncertainties: transform vacant local establishments into classrooms and provide technology access through unused business equipment; enable Wi-Fi in federally assisted housing or in parked school buses; reconfigure digital parking lots into digital parks; and utilize local organizations to help solve local digital access challenges. Adoption of all or some these actions would help all students stay connected to learning, while ensuring that those from underserved communities do not fall further behind their more advantaged peers.

New America's Open Technology Institute sent a letter to the House of Representatives in advance of a hearing on oversight of the Federal Communications Commission, highlighting many failures and lost opportunities over the past four years at the agency, including:

• The FCC’s anemic response to the COVID-19 pandemic
• The FCC’s failure to help students access remote learning during the pandemic
• The FCC’s persistent neglect of its public safety duties and of first responders
• The FCC’s disrespect toward Tribal communities
• The FCC’s lack of transparency to the American people
• The FCC’s indulgence of President Trump’s dangerous agenda on Section 230