Federal law seeks to make communications technology like telephones and the internet, in the words of one older statute, “available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States.” A longstanding federal program that seeks to implement this goal is now before the Supreme Court, in a case known as FCC v. Consumers’ Research, and the stakes could be enormous. If the Supreme Court accepts an argument raised by a federal appeals court, which struck down the federal program, it would bring about one of the biggest judicial power grabs in American history, and hobble the government’s ability to do, well, pretty much anything. The Court will hear arguments in Consumers’ Research on March 26.  While Congress has long called for universal service for telecommunications and similar technology, there are practical obstacles to this goal, especially in rural areas that are far more expensive to wire because residents are more spread out. In these areas, if telephone and internet providers charged a fair market rate, their services could be prohibitively expensive. Which is why Congress created the Universal Service Fund. It effectively taxes telephone and internet service providers, and uses that money to pay for service to underserved communities. As a practical matter, service providers pass the cost of these taxes on to their customers in urban and other cheap-to-serve areas, so Americans living in cities wind up subsidizing telephone and internet in more sparsely populated regions of the country. Because the amount of money the Fund must raise to achieve universal service will vary from year to year, Congress also tasked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with determining how much money the Fund should collect from service providers each year. The statute also provides the FCC with detailed instructions on how to determine the amount it should collect, and how that money should be spent. Consumers’ Research case is worth watching for two reasons. One is that the Fifth Circuit’s decision was authored by Judge Andy Oldham, a Trump appointee who is widely considered a strong candidate for promotion to the Supreme Court in this administration. Oldham’s opinions are often sloppy, and his opinion in Consumers’ Research is no exception. The second is that Judge Oldham relied on a legal doctrine known as “nondelegation” in his opinion targeting the Universal Service Fund. The nondelegation doctrine claims there are strict constitutional limits on Congress’s power to empower federal agencies to do all kinds of things, from limiting pollution from power plants, to setting minimum standards for health insurance, to, at least if Oldham gets his way, providing broadband to rural communities.

Today, we published Older Adults Online: Measuring Internet Access and Use, guidance to help states develop the indicators and methodologies that will help them measure progress and identify ongoing connectivity gaps and hurdles. Our guide provides an overview of statutory requirements about indicators and measurable objectives from the Digital equity Act (DEA). We’ve analyzed states’ digital equity plans and examined how states are approaching the DEA’s five focus areas—1) broadband availability and affordability, 2) online accessibility of public resources, 3) digital literacy, 4) online privacy and cybersecurity, and 5) access to consumer devices—and where there remain opportunities to improve metrics and data collection. In developing our recommendations, we cover how older adults are impacted by the digital divide and digital ageism and identify technology trends using data from the 2023 American Community Survey. The national picture of broadband subscription and device ownership can serve as a benchmark to understand how states fare and establish ambitious but achievable targets. The trends in device and internet access highlighted in the report also offer direction on how states can approach addressing and measuring digital equity for older adults. Most notably, we demonstrate that 65 is not 75 is not 85. The needs of people in their eighties, who may have retired 20 years ago, will be different than those in their sixties who were in the workforce recently and are more likely to have used digital technology there. Stratifying older adult populations will be critical. 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-MO), in partnership with Missouri Farm Bureau President Garrett Hawkins, directed a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, urging it to rightfully return defaulted funding through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to Missouri to expand broadband and rural internet access. The letter follows the recent reveal that the RDOF will not connect 85,000 Missouri service locations, and Missouri will lose approximately $177 million in federal investment. Attorney General Bailey urges “that action be taken by the FCC to rightfully return previously allocated funding to Missouri so that we can continue to expand needed broadband access in our state."

AT&T ran a wavelength that carried two 800 Gigabit Ethernet circuits across 296 kilometers of its commercial long-distance fiber network, creating "a full, uninterrupted data path utilizing a single light frequency across the entire fiber length between two points.” Practically speaking, this means AT&T can brace itself for the incoming barrage of network traffic, which is set to double by 2028. Importantly, AT&T's trial took place “with other customers’ live traffic alongside it,” said Dell’Oro Group analyst Jimmy Yu. The 296-kilometer benchmark is also important, as it gets “harder and harder to increase the span length as the wavelength speed goes up.” 

Commissioner Geoffrey Starks will resign from the Federal Communications Commission this spring. Starks' exit will give FCC Chairman Brendan Carr a Republican majority, as the FCC has had two Democrats and two Republicans since the January resignation of former Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.  Even with a 2-2 deadlock, Chairman Carr has gotten to work on some of his priorities, such as investigating news stations accused of bias against President Donald Trump and dropping a Biden-era proposal to increase regulation of broadband providers. Commissioner Anna Gomez, who is staying at the FCC, has said that Carr's investigation of CBS is "politicizing our enforcement actions" and "sets a dangerous precedent that threatens to undermine trust in the FCC's role as an impartial regulator." Commissioner Starks also criticized Chairman Carr for launching investigations into media organizations and into the DEI practices of Verizon and Comcast. With a Republican majority, Chairman Carr can get aggressive in removing existing telecommunications regulations through his "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative. Starks' departure has been anticipated since shortly after Trump's election win. In December, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) reportedly urged Starks to stay at the FCC for awhile to delay the Republicans gaining a majority. There might be another Republican seat to fill sometime soon. Carr's fellow Republican on the commission, Nathan Simington, "has also wanted to depart to take on different work," a Bloomberg report said.

President Donald Trump fired the only two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, handing the remaining Republican commissioners exclusive control over the agency that oversees antitrust and consumer protection laws and serves as the U.S. government’s primary regulator of the tech industry. FTC  Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter announced their dismissals on the social media site X, with both calling their firings illegal. “The law protects the independence of the Commission because the law serves the American people, not corporate power,” Commissioner Slaughter wrote in a statement posted to X. Commissioner Bedoya indicated that he intends to sue over his firing, writing, “I’ll see the president in court.” Bedoya decried his dismissal from what he called “an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists,” adding, “Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies.” The White House says the president has total control over whom to hire and fire within the executive branch and maintains complete authority over its policies. “President Donald J. Trump is the head of the executive branch and is vested with all of the executive power in our government,” FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson said. “I have no doubts about his constitutional authority to remove Commissioners, which is necessary to ensure democratic accountability for our government.”