AT&T is giving wireless customers more flexibility by letting them pick a different unlimited plan for each line on their account. The program, which AT&T is calling Unlimited Your Way, lets you select the unlimited plan you want -- Starter, Extra or Elite -- instead all lines having to use and pay for the same plan. For an account with four lines, the Unlimited Starter plans starts at $35 a month; the Unlimited Extra plan starts at $40 a month and includes 15GB of hotspot data and 50GB of premium data; and the Unlimited Elite plan starts at $50 a month and includes 30GB of hotspot data, 100GB of premium data and HBO Max. 

Computer shortages have raised nationwide concerns about educational inequities, which are amplified in tribal communities that resisted the Bureau of Indian Education’s (BIE) desire for in-person instruction in an effort to control rising cases of COVID-19. At least five BIE-operated schools in Arizona and five in other states were not prepared to start online because the bureau’s late disbursement of federal relief funding delayed purchases for needed laptops and internet hot spots in communities where fewer than half of rural households have access to broadband internet. BIE schools lagged behind the rest of the country in providing online instruction after closing this year. About 45% of BIE schools offered digital learning for students, compared with 85% of public schools serving Native students. Adding to the challenges, limited cellular service in certain tribal communities hinders the effectiveness of wireless hot spots.  BIE officials have previously acknowledged that 95% of students in some of the agency’s schools cannot access the internet at home.

In March, Congress allocated more than $150 million to the BIE for coronavirus relief in its K-12 schools. The money was supposed to address immediate deficiencies: mental health services for students affected by the pandemic, protective equipment meant to ensure school buildings were safe to reopen and laptops and internet hot spots for distance learning. In its reopening plan, released in late Aug, the BIE said its schools would provide distance learning opportunities for all students. Children would receive laptops, Wi-Fi hot spots and solar chargers if they lived in homes with no electricity, according to the plan. Citing supply chain issues caused by the pandemic, the BIE warned that the devices might not arrive by the start of the school year.  The BIE did not begin distributing money to schools until June. And once schools received the money, they had to buy the technology through the US Department of the Interior’s system, which requires multiple offices to sign off on a purchase before an order is placed.

Shemar, a 12-year-old from East Baltimore, is good at math, and Karen Ngosso, his fourth grade math teacher at Abbottston Elementary School, is one reason why.  Remote learning started in earnest on April 6. For Shemar, that meant just four hours per week of live online instruction — an hour for each of the four main subjects once a week, with nothing on Fridays. Shemar had an Xbox but no computer, so the pastor at our church, Rob Hoch, said that it would reimburse me for buying Shemar a laptop. It soon became clear that, even with the computer, this form of schooling wasn’t going to work for Shemar. He had a wireless connection at his grandmother’s house, but he spent some of his days at a row house, a mile to the southwest, that his mother had moved into, in one of her repeated efforts to establish a home for them. A few weeks earlier, a 21-year-old man had been killed a block away. There was no internet, and when his mother called Comcast to ask about the free Wi-Fi it was offering to the families of Baltimore schoolchildren, she was told that a previous tenant had applied, so she couldn’t do so herself. It was a familiar situation for her: so often, when she made an effort on her son’s behalf, it foundered quickly in a bureaucratic dead end.

I have chosen to tell the story of Shemar’s remote-learning difficulties, with his family’s permission, because it was his plight that alerted me to the fact that remote learning was proving disastrous. As the spring went on, I grew increasingly distressed by the lack of public alarm over students like Shemar, who were sitting in countless dark rooms, safe from COVID-19, perhaps, but adrift and alone. Society’s attention to them has always been spotty, but they had at least been visible — one saw them on the way to school, in their blue or burgundy uniforms, or in the park and the playground afterward. Now they were behind closed doors, and so were we, with full license to turn inward. While we dutifully stayed home to flatten the curve, children like Shemar were invisible.

The Federal Communications Commission could look very different next year, even if President Donald Trump is reelected. If President Trump wins a second term, industry observers believe the agency will push ahead with the administration's desire to reform a prized legal shield for content moderation on online platforms and remain focused on expanding rural broadband policies.

While FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's current term would allow him to stay on at the commission until Jan 2023, if he chooses to stay that long, recent precedent among FCC chairs from both parties is to step down after a full four-year term. Doug Brake, director of broadband and spectrum policy at the nonpartisan public policy think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said that if President Trump is reelected, he thinks Pai could stay on as chair if he wanted to, but noted that it is "not uncommon to have two different chairmanships" under the same presidential administration. In the event that Pai does choose to leave the commission in the coming months, Brake believes current FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr could be at the top of Trump's list to lead the commission. Chris Lewis, president and CEO of public interest group Public Knowledge, agreed that if President Trump is reelected and Chairman Pai steps down, Commissioner Carr would "have the greatest amount of experience … so that's the name you hear most often."

As for what the policy priorities would be at the agency under a second Trump term, Brake said that much of that will depend on who becomes the next chair. If the agency were to prioritize reform of Section 230 in the next term, Brake believes that "even if you get the sort of more aggressive chair on those issues, that even if they do move forward, I think those would likely be challenged and rolled back in court." Lewis agreed that he expects that the "230 discussion" will continue in a second Trump term.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has launched a webpage to notify the public when the USDA has received applications from rural electric cooperatives and utilities for loans and loan guarantees in which up to 10 percent of the funds will be used to deploy broadband service. The applications pertain to the Electric Infrastructure Loan and Loan Guarantee Program. The new webpage also will list the proposed broadband service areas. The funds must be used in areas without broadband speeds of at least 25 megabits per second (Mbps) downstream and 3 Mbps upstream for both mobile and fixed service. This website supports a final rule authorized by Section 6210 of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (The 2018 Farm Bill) to allow the use of funds under select programs to help expand access to broadband services in rural America. (For additional information, see page 57077 of the Sept. 15 Federal Register.) USDA encourages applications that will support recommendations made in the Report to the President of the United States from the Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity to help improve life in rural America. Applicants are encouraged to consider projects that provide measurable results in helping rural communities build robust and sustainable economies through strategic investments in infrastructure, partnerships and innovation. Key strategies include:

• Achieving e-Connectivity for Rural America
• Developing the Rural Economy
• Harnessing Technological Innovation
• Supporting a Rural Workforce
• Improving Quality of Life