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DigitalC, the nonprofit selected by the City of Cleveland to deliver citywide broadband access for $18 per month, presented its third-quarter progress report to Cleveland City Council's Utilities Committee on October 30, highlighting growth, transparency, and national recognition for what is now known as "The Cleveland Model." About two years into Cleveland's citywide broadband initiative, DigitalC has connected nearly 7,000 households and brought high-speed home internet to over 17,000 residents across the city—representing 85% of its 2025 goal of 4,700 new connections.
Capozzi said his team in the Arizona State Broadband Office has been working on the Permit Finder for about a year and a half.
Senators Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) and Peter Welch (D-Vermont) have introduced a new bill that would fund USDA ReConnect grants with $650 million annually through 2030. It seems probable that, if passed, this would be the only federal grant program for the foreseeable future. The requirements listed in the bill are pretty basic and reminiscent of…
Policy analyst Bartlett Cleland says the Charter-Broadcom 10 Gbps Demo at SCTE TechExpo25 Stays a Cool Science Project if Licensed Carriers Can Hog the Airwaves.
- NTIA’s Roth said BEAD providers must agree not to take additional federal subsidies
- The agency clarified this rule won’t apply to providers that already receive support for non-BEAD areas
- But it still gives ISPs fewer options to fund costly rural builds
Just when we thought the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program has seen enough adjustments, NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth indicated BEAD participants would have to forego other federal funding or else lose out on their money. Providers must certify to the NTIA “in writing” that they will not require or take additional federal subsidies – including operational subsidies – to complete or operate their BEAD projects, said Roth at a Hudson Institute event last week.
The FCC is looking to pare back internet “nutrition labels” that let you spot hidden fees and how much prices will shoot up. Home internet service is one of the least transparent consumer products in America. You can find typical airfare prices and know if you’re getting a bad deal. But basic information about internet service — What’s the typical price? What extra costs are in my bill? What internet speeds should I expect? — are shrouded in mystery and marketing obfuscation. Starting last year, though, the Federal Communications Commission mandated internet “nutrition labels” that disclose a standard set of facts about the costs and quality of home internet service. Now under the Trump administration, the agency is looking to pare back the internet label requirements. Your internet bill is probably on the path to get murkier again. I’ll tell you how to make use of these labels, which are modeled on the nutrition information for packaged foods, and how they might change in the coming months.
The Appalachia Digital Accelerator works with local champions to plan for fast, affordable, reliable internet that is advancing opportunity across the region.
Phone numbers and home addresses are also widely leaked, NordVPN reports.
Tech industry groups NetChoice and Chamber of Progress are urging the Supreme Court to hear Google's appeal of an antitrust injunction that requires the company to make extensive changes to its app
store.
Economists praise “price discrimination” as “efficient.” That’s when a company charges different customers different amounts based on inferences about their willingness to pay. But when a company sells you something for $2 that someone else can buy for $1, they’re revaluing the dollars in your pocket at half the rate of the other guy’s. That’s not how economists see it, of course. When a hotel sells you a room for $50 that someone else might get charged $500 for, that’s efficient, provided that the hotelier is sure no $500 customers are likely to show up after you check in. The empty room makes them nothing, and $50 is more than nothing. There’s a kind of metaphysics at work here, in which the room that is for sale at $500 is “a hotel room you book two weeks in advance and are sure will be waiting for you when you check in” while the $50 room is “a hotel room you can only get at the last minute, and if it’s not available, you’re sleeping in a chair at the Greyhound station.” But what if you show up at the hotel at 9pm and the hotelier can ask a credit bureau how much you can afford to pay for the room? What if they can find out that you’re in chemotherapy, so you don’t have the stamina to shop around for a cheaper room? What if they can tell that you have a 5AM flight and need to get to bed right now? What if they charge you more because they can see that your kids are exhausted and cranky and the hotel infers that you’ll pay more to get the kids tucked into bed? What if they charge you more because there’s a wildfire and there are plenty of other people who want the room? The metaphysics of “room you booked two weeks ago” as a different product from “room you’re trying to book right now” break down pretty quickly once you factor in the ability of sellers to figure out how desperate you are — or merely how distracted you are — and charge accordingly. “Surveillance pricing” is the practice of spying on you to figure out how much you’re willing to spend — because you’re wealthy, because you’re desperate, because you’re distracted, because it’s payday — and charging you more: https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again
I think we can now foresee the demise of traditional telephone service delivered over the PSTN (public switched telephone network). My best guess is the PSTN will ether be dead or dying by the end of 2030. This doesn’t mean the death of telephone voice service, but the end of the regulated service that has…
Last week, the NTIA announced a requirement that could derail America's $42.45 billion investment in rural broadband.
Shopify is bullish on AI-powered shopping agents, citing AI as an "incredible tool" to enable more entrepreneurs and calling it the "biggest shift in technology since the internet" during its third-quarter earnings call.
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Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) has drafted a bill—the Recovering Excess Communications Appropriations while Protecting Telecommunications Upgrades, Reinvestment, and Expansion Act or the ‘RECAPTURE Act—that would amend the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to require remaining funds under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program to be used for deficit reduction. The RECAPTURE Act would change a section of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that redirects unused state BEAD funds to other states.
Kansas broadband development official outlines next steps as Kansas nears BEAD deployment.
Castanet 5G intends to team with low-power TV stations on a national 5G Broadcast network that coexists with – rather than competes with – ATSC 3.0.
Over the past decade, the mobile wireless industry has promoted 5G as a transformative technology—one that will boost the U.S. economy by over $1 trillion and create millions of jobs. They described 5G not just as a faster internet connection, but as a technology that will transform everything affecting the average American’s life—from healthcare and transportation to manufacturing and education. The industry’s claims have shaped public policy debates, influencing decisions about spectrum allocation, infrastructure investments, and regulatory priorities. But once 5G began to roll out, the mobile wireless industry’s big promises started to face serious questions. Many users noticed little difference between 5G and the previous generation (4G). Some media outlets and tech experts called 5G an “overhyped technology bust.” And as talk of 6G begins to emerge, it’s worth asking: Has 5G really delivered the massive economic benefits we were promised?
Fifth Circuit stay halts proceedings in Consumers’ Research v. FCC until government funding resumes
One of the most difficult aspects of writing about the wireless industry is understanding the use of spectrum. But if I thought that was hard, I’ve been blown away by how complicated it is to understand the spectrum landscape in the satellite industry. At first, I thought it was just me. I must not be smart enough to easily grasp this stuff. After all, I have a degree in journalism, not rocket science. But then, I wrote a report for Fierce Network Research, “Satcoms + telecom: A match made in the heavens.” I talked to a number of people for this report, and I was surprised that many of them couldn’t answer my questions about spectrum. They would tell me that they covered GEO, but didn’t know much about the use of spectrum for LEO. Or others would tell me they were on the business side of the house, not the in-the-weeds technology side of the house. Ok. Fair enough. But that’s different than the terrestrial wireless industry where almost everyone I interview has a basic grasp on spectrum.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is urging a federal judge to reject X Corp.'s bid to strike down a state law requiring large social platforms to disclose their content moderation policies and
data regarding enforcement.
“We propose to abolish without replacement the long-term goal of 1,000/500 Mbps established in the 2024 Report. And thus, return to following the plain language of Section 706”. Quote from the FCC Meeting Agenda.
READ OUR COMPANION PIECE: Our Plain English response to the FCC is — “We want the money back from the Providers, The FCC must halt all of the financial cross-subsidies between the subsidiaries of the Provider Holding Companies and end rate increase perks the FCC has granted to the providers that was supposed to be used for the upgrade to universal wireline infrastructure but didn’t actually happen. We want audits of the books, especially each state’s telecom utilities and cable franchise, and that’s just the start.
On August 7th, the FCC is having another open meeting, and this has 2 proceedings that should make everyone “proud” that America’s new communications plan is for slow, expensive, inferior wireless/satellite service that is government subsidized. The first of this Section 706 proceeding, is for the annual FCC report to Congress of whether broadband has been deployed in a timely fashion. The second is about Special Access service where the goal is to have AT&T et al confiscate the customer funded utility networks — claiming that they are private property and let these data services be subsidized by the wired voice utility networks — or something like that. And note that these lines are also called BDS (Business Data Services) or backhaul service.
===== (This made up. there is not plain English to return to. This sentence needs to make sense) 11. As part of our return to following the plain language of section 706, we propose to abolish without replacement the long-term goal of 1,000/500 Mbps established in the 2024 Report. Not only is a long-term goal not mentioned in section 706; but maintaining such a goal risks skewing the market by unnecessarily potentially picking technological winners and losers. It would also appear to violate our obligation to conduct our analysis in a technologically neutral manner. At present, it is impossible to predict long-term technological developments and the evolution of consumer preferences.
Further, assuming a long-term goal of 1,000/500 Mbps may be unreasonably prejudicial to technologies such as satellite and fixed wireless that presently do not support such speeds. We believe it is prudent to continue to monitor technological developments and consumer preferences and adapt our current benchmark, as well as relevant high-cost support programs, accordingly. Do commenters agree with our proposal and reasoning? Are there other reasons not to maintain the long-term goal?
NTIA Assistant Secretary Arielle Roth recently made a speech at the Hudson Institute that outlined her policy positions related to reshaping the BEAD program. The changes to BEAD were initiated by Commerce Secretary Lutnick and are now being finalized and implemented by Roth. The bottom-line impact of the changes will be to cut the amount…
- Render CEO Stephen Rose predicts AI will soon play a bigger role in designing network blueprints
- Construction planning and design firms will soon evolve to “another variant of software firms”
- AI presents massive changes but he’s optimistic humans won’t be left out of the construction process
AI is already helping broadband construction crews automate routine tasks and monitor job sites, but it could soon play a bigger role in designing the network layout itself, according to Render Networks CEO Stephen Rose. “Having constructible designs done a lot by AI technology, that is a real opportunity,” he told Fierce. He thinks AI in the coming years will grow to a point where it will process info from a combination of geospatial data, drone technology and other forms of mapping technology to create more accurate network blueprints.
Drake is not named as a defendant in the suit, which accuses Spotify of ignoring bots to artificially inflate the size of the streaming service.
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Scoop.it!
