Federal Communications Commission

By its own motion, the Federal Communications Commission waived its rules to allow rate-of-return carriers (i.e. a telephone company that provided local service prior to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which owns most of the local loops and facilities in a serving area) to include their actual rates for consumer broadband-only lines for the first three months of 2019 on their FCC Form 509, rather than imputing revenues based on the maximum rate that would have been assessable.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai praised the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), a standards organization, for its efforts to improve the geographic accuracy of Wireless Emergency Alerts. “Wireless Emergency Alerts are a more powerful public safety tool than ever before, but I’ve been clear that more should be done to improve the geographic accuracy of these life-saving messages,” said Chairman Pai.

Content is moving online and the government needs to keep pace. This accelerating shift toward Internet-based platforms is transforming the media marketplace, and the regulatory framework must change accordingly.  In 2020, for example, Google and Facebook are each expected to bring in more ad revenue than every TV and radio station in the U.S. combined.

This paper uses data on broadband connections and the production and sales of agricultural products to empirically estimate the impact of improved connectivity on US farming outcomes. The Federal Communications Commission has detailed data on broadband subscriptions from its semi-annual Form 477 collection. The US Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) releases a complete census of agriculture every five years to measure agricultural activity.

Welcome to the Federal Communications Commission’s first-ever Forum on the Quantum Internet! Quantum networks promise to unleash this power by enabling distributed quantum computing and giving us a level of computational clout far beyond what is possible with today’s Internet. This would be an incredibly powerful tool for solving complex problems and enabling scientific discoveries. When we think about the possible benefits of the Quantum Internet, the first big advancements we are likely to see involve network security.

Mike O’Rielly has been both a colleague and friend during his tenure at the Federal Communications Commission. I am grateful for his public service. I am also grateful for the work we were able to do together to expand the availability of unlicensed spectrum and Wi-Fi and safeguard funding for public safety and 911. I appreciate his consistently principled approach to the issues before the agency and I wish him all the best in the future.