Issie Lapowsky

Maps or not, the 'starting gun' for states that want broadband funds is in May

Alan Davidson, the administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) who is overseeing the disbursement of the $42 billion Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, said the "starting gun" of the program will go off May 16 when states can officially start declaring they want the money.

Inside the scramble to fix Biden’s plan for the future of the internet

The White House is set to announce plans for its much-anticipated Alliance for the Future of the Internet, a bid to rally a coalition of democracies around a vision for an open and free web.

The infrastructure bill devotes $65 billion to broadband. Now what?

President Biden signed Congress's $1.2 trillion infrastructure package into law, including a whopping $65 billion to expand broadband access. Now, it's up to federal agencies, states and civil society groups to implement it. The bill prioritized broadband projects that target unserved communities — as laid out in the bill, that means communities that either have no broadband access or lack sufficient speeds.

An unsung, unnamed bureaucrat could soon be in charge of closing the digital divide

As far as telecommunications regulators go, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has always felt like something of a bit player compared to the Federal Communications Commission. But if the Senate infrastructure bill successfully makes its way through the House and to President Biden's desk, that could change.

Who wins and who loses in the Senate infrastructure bill

Telecommunications giants are among the winners of the infrastructure bill, according to Protocol. The package includes $65 billion to expand broadband connectivity and does away with some parts of President Biden's initial proposal that were the least popular with the telecommunications industry, including more aggressive requirements regarding network speed and provisions that would have targeted grant funding to municipal networks.

The FCC’s emergency internet discounts are leaving millions behind

Nearly 4 million households have enrolled in the Federal Communications Commission's emergency broadband benefit program since it launched in May. But as researchers have begun digging into data recently released by the FCC, they're finding that not only are the vast majority of eligible Americans still being left out of the $3.2 billion program, but there are also stark geographic differences in where people are being enrolled.

Glitches and confusion are blocking users from Emergency Broadband Benefit Program assistance

The Federal Communications Commission has already signed up 2.3 million households for the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, which was designed to help low-income users with affordable internet access during the pandemic. But while the agency is heralding these numbers as a success, the program appears to be plagued by ongoing issues that are causing some internet service providers to block eligible Americans from accessing up to $50 a month off of their internet bills.

Spectrum is forcing full-price plans on people seeking FCC benefit

Spectrum is forcing customers who are eligible for a new federal subsidy for internet service to opt into full-price plans once the subsidy runs out. The policy appears to skirt rules set forth by the Federal Communications Commission, which is running the Emergency Broadband Benefit program. The $3.2 billion emergency broadband benefit, which launched earlier this month, gives people up to $50 off of their monthly internet bill. The stopgap funding was allocated in response to the pandemic and is expected to run out within the year.

In President Biden’s broadband plan, cable is in for the fight of its life

Comcast, Charter, AT&T and their respective industry associations have spent years beating back municipal broadband networks in states across the country, lobbying for laws that prohibit such networks and arguing that government-funded broadband puts the thumb on the scale of competition.

As schools experiment to close the homework gap, will new E-rate funding help?

The COVID crisis has highlighted both the severity of the so-called "homework gap" and the shortcomings of early remedies like mobile hotspots and even low-cost home broadband plans. Now, more than a year into the pandemic, schools and cities across the country are increasingly testing novel ways to get students connected, not just for the duration of the pandemic, but for the long term.

Democrats are poised to take the Senate. Here’s what it means for tech.

Here are the top reforms and nominations that could stand a chance in the new Congress assuming — as now seems likely — Democrats control both chambers and the White House.

Big Tech spent millions to close California’s digital divide this year. It’s hardly making a dent.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, California estimated that 1 million of its 6.2 million school kids didn't have the equipment they needed for virtual learning, prompting leaders from across the tech industry to immediately open their wallets to help. But six months later, with school back in session, only a fraction of the devices those contributions were supposed to purchase are actually in students' hands. Amassing these donations, it turns out, was the easy part.

Employees say Marc Rotenberg put their health at risk and undercut EPIC's message

A chief critic of the tech industry's attempts to track coronavirus patients went to work and held meetings with employees after his doctor directed him to take a test for COVID-19 that subsequently came back positive. Marc Rotenberg, the president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, acknowledged in a memo to his staff and his board that he should have quarantined and alerted his staff that he was taking a coronavirus test on March 9, instead of continuing to work alongside them for two days.

Sen Harris Wants to Give States Millions to Overhaul Tech

Democratic presidential candidate Sen Kamala Harris (D-CA) is introducing the Digital Service Act of 2019 on March 14 that would give state and local governments access to a pool of $15 million a year in grant funding, which they could use to set up tech teams and overhaul the often outdated tools and websites their constituents use every day. The bill is modeled after the United States Digital Service, an elite team of geeks inside the White House working on ways to make federal government technology less clunky and confusing—and maybe even good.

Get Ready for a Privacy Law Showdown in 2019

Washington spent the better part of 2018 talking tough to tech companies and threatening a crackdown on the wanton collection, dissemination, and monetization of personal data. But all of that was just prelude. The real privacy showdown is slated for 2019.

The Fight Over California's Privacy Bill Has Only Just Begun

Lobbying groups and trade associations, including several representing the tech industry, are pushing for a litany of deep changes to California's new data protection law that they say would make the law easier to implement before it goes into effect in January 2020. But privacy advocates worry that pressure from powerful businesses could end up gutting the law completely. "This is their job: to try to make this thing absolutely meaningless.

YouTube Debuts Plant to Promote and Fund 'Authoritative' News

YouTube has announced a slew of new features it hopes will help makes news on the platform more reliable and less susceptible to manipulation. The company is also investing $25 million in grants to news organizations looking to expand their video operations as part of a larger $300 million program sponsored by YouTube's sister company, Google.

CA bill could give Californians unprecedented control over data

Lawmakers in CA have introduced a sweeping privacy bill to the state legislature that would give Californians unprecedented control over their data and reign in the power of their Silicon Valley neighbors. The bill would allow California residents to find out what information businesses and data brokers collect about them, where that information comes from, and how it's shared. It would give people the power to ask for their data to be deleted and to order businesses to stop selling their personal information.

The Man Who Saw the Dangers of Cambridge Analytics Years Ago

In December 2014, John Rust wrote to the head of the legal department at the University of Cambridge, where he is a professor, warning them that a storm was brewing. Rust informed the university that one of the school’s psychology professors, Aleksandr Kogan, was using an app he created to collect data on millions of Facebook users without their knowledge. Not only did the app collect data on people who opted into it, it also collected data on those users’ Facebook friends.

FCC Delays are Keeping Broadband from Rural School Kids

Under the Trump administration, rural schools requesting funding for broadband expansion have faced record delays and denials, according to the non-profit EducationSuperHighway, which works to get schools connected to the internet. By their count, more than 60 eligible fiber projects have been unfairly denied since 2017, a rate that EducationSuperHighway CEO Evan Marwell says has spiked dramatically from years prior. Meanwhile, more than 30 schools have been waiting about a year for approval. On average, they currently wait an average of 240 days for an answer.

What Facebook Isn't Saying About Trump's and Clinton's Campaign Ads

According to Facebook, during the 2016 election, President Donald Trump’s campaign actually paid higher rates to advertise on the platform overall than Hillary Clinton’s campaign did. But, Facebook's chart does not show what the Clinton and Trump campaigns would have paid for an apples-to-apples ad buy.

President Trump Names Digital Guru Brad Parscale Campaign Manager for 2020 Run

The former digital director of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Brad Parscale, has been named campaign manager for the 2020 re-election campaign. A political novice prior to the 2016 race, Parscale oversaw the campaign’s digital operations from the San Antonio (TX) offices of his web design and strategy firm Giles-Parscale.

Gothamist Lives, Thanks to a Boost from Public Radio

After billionaire Joe Ricketts announced the shuttering of local news organizations Gothamist and DNAInfo last fall, readers across the country mourned the loss of the beloved sites, and worried about the vulnerability of journalism in the digital age. Now, a consortium of public radio stations, including WNYC in New York, WAMU in Washington DC, and KPCC in Southern California, has banded together to bring some of those sites back from the dead.The three stations are acquiring the assets of Gothamist and some of its associated sites, including LAist, DCist, and DNAInfo.

Mueller's Team Has Interviewed Facebook Staff As Part Of Russia Probe

Apparently, the Department of Justice's special counsel Robert Mueller and his office have interviewed at least one member of Facebook's team that was associated with President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The interview was part of Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and what role, if any, the Trump campaign played in that interference. Mueller's team speaking with a Facebook employee does not necessarily implicate Facebook in any wrongdoing.