Lobbying

Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] has weighed in on the political forces that prevented her from taking a seat on the Federal Communications Commission after her nomination by President Joe Biden and her decades of experience in communications, primarily as a public advocate and briefly as a top FCC adviser.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James (D-NY) secured $615,000 from three companies—LCX, Lead ID, and Ifficient—that supplied millions of fake public comments to influence a 2017 proceeding by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to repeal net neutrality rules.

When President Joe Biden nominated Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] to serve on the Federal Communications Commission, the longtime consumer advocate expected to face criticism over her desire to expand free internet access and improve competition among broadband providers. Instead, Sohn found herself the target of an aggressive campaign funded by a conservative group that doesn’t have to disclose its donors. The American Accountability Foundation called Sohn too partisan, anti-police, and soft on sex trafficking.

Gigi Sohn will serve as the Executive Director of the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB). Sohn will ensure public entities will have a visible, powerful, and consistent voice that will make the positive case for states to fund and communities to choose public broadband and oppose barriers to local choice. Founded by state and local broadband officials, AAPB is a 501 (c)(6) non-profit organization that will build a diverse membership of public broadband networks nationwide and advocate for municipal broadband and local choice at the federal, state, and local levels.

Federal efforts to pass children’s online safety protections have languished amid disagreements between House and Senate leaders about which proposals to rally around.

Service providers in the state of Washington are concerned about legislation pending in the state’s House of Representatives.

I ask this question after Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] recently withdrew her name from consideration as a Federal Communication Commissioner. But the objections to Sohn were all the kinds of smokescreens that politicians use to not admit the real reason they opposed the nomination; because she is in favor of regulating broadband and the public airwaves. The big broadband providers and the large broadcasting companies (some companies which are both) have been lobbying hard against the Sohn nomination since it was first anno

Although T-Mobile paid $304 million for 7,156 licenses of 2.5 GHz spectrum in 2022's summer auction, it now finds itself in the awkward position of not being able to deploy this spectrum. The reason is that Congress recently allowed the Federal Communications Commission's auction authority to lapse.

For over a year, [Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate] Gigi Sohn stayed relatively silent as she faced a barrage of attacks over her nomination to the Federal Communications Commission, which had languished in the Senate since President Joe Biden tapped her in October 2021.

If you’re a person living in the United States without quality broadband, you should be very disappointed in the way your elected officials have failed to meet the following challenge of closing the digital divide recently: