Reporting

After wildfires consumed an entire town, students and teachers who had planned for remote classes found some comfort in staying connected amid the chaos.

Ensuring all US households have high-speed internet will help provide similar education opportunities to students at different income levels, particularly during the pandemic, Democrats said. “Education justice involves giving everybody the same access to information,” said Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL).

Joe Biden may or may not have a short list of people he'd nominate to chair the Federal Communications Commission, but the rest of Washington does. Tech lobbyists, tech activists, and current and former FCC officials have all begun speculating about who Biden would choose if he wins.

The coronavirus crisis may offer a grim preview of further marginalization for Americans of color in the coming decades, a new Deutsche Bank report concludes. "COVID is a picture of what the world might look like in the future as it gets more digitized," Apjit Walia, a technology strategist with Deutsche Bank, told Axios.

Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is widely considered among the frontrunners to lead the FCC under a Biden administration. Protocol spoke with Commissioner Rosenworcel about whether the process around President Donald Trump's social media executive order has become corrupt, why she thinks FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is dropping the ball when it comes to helping students get internet access, and what she thinks a Democratic administration should prioritize on tech policy.

Scott Vanderlip can see Google’s headquarters from his house in the town of Los Altos Hills (CA) (pop. 9,000). But still, some of his neighbors struggle to access the online world that the tech company has helped shape. Even the residents who could connect to AT&T or Comcat’s networks, such as Vanderlip, were dissatisfied with the monopoly companies’ poor service quality. So they created Los Altos Hills Community Fiber, a nonprofit mutual benefit corporation that’s bringing a local, high-quality connectivity option to the area. 

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing more than $2 million to provide broadband service in unserved and underserved rural areas in North Carolina. This investment is part of the $100 million Congress allocated to the ReConnect Program through the CARES Act.In rural North Carolina, Randolph Telephone Membership Corporation will use a $2.3 million grant to deploy a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network to connect 3,333 people, 17 farms, 26 businesses and nine educational facilities to high-speed broadband internet in Moore County.

Ensuring all US households have high-speed internet will help provide similar education opportunities to students at different income levels, particularly during the pandemic, Democratic policymakers said. “Education justice involves giving everybody the same access to information,” said Rep Donna Shalala (D-FL). Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said, “We need a national policy of 100 percent of our households online,” she said.

The Trump Administration is considering an unconventional pick for the next commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission: Nathan Simington, a senior adviser at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) who has played a significant role in the agency’s social media regulation agenda. The choice is still tentative, but if confirmed, the nomination would represent a significant blow to Republicans who favor a light-touch approach to telecom policy.

NCTA – the Internet & Television Association, in partnership with EducationSuperHighway (ESH), announced a new initiative to help increase home connectivity solutions for students, as many schools adapt to remote and hybrid learning classrooms amid the coronavirus pandemic. The K-12 Bridge to Broadband initiative will scale innovative solutions that are helping public school districts and states identify and potentially connect students in low-income families, enabling more students to participate in remote or hybrid learning.