Affordability/Cost/Price

Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are calling on the U.S. Department of Commerce to immediately issue guidance regarding the use of Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program funds for non-deployment activities so that communities can get funding out the door to eligible projects.

Christopher Ali, the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications at Penn State University, recently called for consideration of rate regulation for broadband providers. His main argument is that some households still have difficulty paying their Internet bill. That may be true for some in the short term. However, the best way to ensure lower prices and greater innovation for most consumers over the long term remains continued promotion of increased competition with market-determined prices.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved permanent, automatic disaster relief protections for customers enrolled in the California LifeLine program, helping ensure that low-income Californians can maintain access to essential communications services when disasters cause a disruption. Under the decision, affected California LifeLine customers will receive:

The internet revolution was accompanied by a digital divide. Now, the artificial intelligence revolution threatens a token divide. Access to the internet opened new possibilities for everyone. The eighth grader doing her homework and the local business serving its customers both benefited. Broadband connections gave them information. Now, AI offers them intelligence. Tokens are the unit through which intelligence is organized, measured, and sold. Access to tokens governs access to intelligence.

Washington has a familiar playbook when an outdated federal program runs into trouble: Rather than fixing what’s broken, it just finds someone new to pay for it. That is the danger Congress faces today with the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund. For nearly three decades, USF has helped connect rural communities, low-income Americans, schools, libraries, and rural healthcare providers.

Comcast has sparked a plan to transform its cost structure and the overall business in a way that will save billions of dollars and enable Comcast to redirect those funds toward growth initiatives, CFO Jason Armstrong revealed at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference. "We embarked earlier this month on the largest cost transformation in the company's history. This will be billions of dollars in costs," he said. "I frame it [as] more of a transformation. It's not a budget exercise.

The United States is a global technology leader, yet millions of Americans lack the internet access, devices, or skills to benefit from its technological capabilities or participate fully in the digital economy. Recognizing this divide in 2021, Congress passed the largest federal investment in broadband in U.S.

If the character Edward Cullen of the ubiquitous Twilight saga taught us anything (aside from the fact that Robert Pattinson’s hair can do no wrong), it is that being a heretic can be cool. In the series, the Volturi—the Vampiric Council—operates as an authoritative government dictating the terms of vampire life: encouraging slaughter of humans, forbidding certain romance, and eventually seeking the destruction of Edward and Bella’s baby. Cullen went against these vampire norms to protect his loved ones, doing so in a way that made many hearts flutter.

The House overwhelmingly passed a stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown at the end of the month, sending it to President Trump’s desk and punting a spending fight until after the midterm elections. The legislation includes language temporarily blocking the White House budget office from carrying out a proposed rule that would allow the administration to cancel grants to recipients that do not conform to Trump’s political views and enable his team to steer significant funding to causes and organizations aligned with him.

A new "consensus-driven roadmap" on the future of the Universal Service Fund argues that universal service should be understood as an ongoing responsibility, not a goal to achieve, and offers six principles for Universal Service Fund reform.