Reporting

The Open Technology Fund is requesting that the US Office of the Inspector General investigate its parent, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), for breaching a firewall provision that is supposed to protect government-funded media agencies from political interference. In a letter to USAGM CEO Michael Pack and the Office of the Inspector General, Open Technology Fund interim CEO Laura Cunningham requests that Pack recuse himself from reviewing the OTF's funding and security matters in order to keep politics out of the process. The letter alleges that USAGM and Pack have attempted to under

Verizon is appealing to the Federal Communications Commission to prevent T-Mobile from getting its hands on leases of more 600 MHz spectrum. T-Mobile applied for instant spectrum leases with Channel 51 License Company and LB License Co. to lease 600 MHz spectrum in a number of major markets, including Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, New Orleans, St. Louis, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, and Seattle, among others. Channel 51 and LB License Co. had been lending 600 MHz spectrum to T-Mobile to help the carrier boost its network during the Covid-19 pandemic.

There are 45,000 households in Charlotte (NC) without a subscription to broadband Internet. Unlike rural swaths of the state, the city is rich in infrastructure and competition from service providers. Across North Carolina, about 20% of homes have no Internet subscription, but in certain urban neighborhoods, that number is more than doubled.

A group of veteran journalists for the Voice of America delivered a letter of protest Aug 31 denouncing their parent agency's new CEO, Michael Pack, and alleging Pack's remarks in a recent interview prove he has a damaging agenda for the international broadcasters he oversees. Pack's comments and decisions "endanger the personal security of VOA reporters at home and abroad, as well as threatening to harm U.S. national security objectives," the letter to VOA Acting Director Elez Biberaj read.

Widespread internet outages knocked down Cloudflare, the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Amazon, Hulu, and a slew of other sites on the morning of Aug 30, and it’s apparently all because of a single internet service provider: CenturyLink. Given that Cloudflare’s online security services are designed to keep websites up and running, when it went down, so did dozens of the popular sites and services that rely on it, including Discord, Feedly, and League of Legends. Cloudflare began seeing “an increased level of HTTP 5xx class errors” early Aug 30 morning.

As COVID-19 has shifted life online, residents of towns like Monterey (MA) — they lack internet at home — have had to drive to public Wi-Fi hot spots to stay connected. Disparities in internet access took center stage during the Aug. 18 Massachusetts US Senate debate between incumbent Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) and his challenger, Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA).

The White House is searching for a replacement for Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons, a Republican who has publicly resisted President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on social media companies. Chairman Simons, a veteran antitrust lawyer, hasn’t announced he’s leaving the agency. He is serving a term that doesn’t end until September 2024, and he cannot legally be removed by the president except in cases of gross negligence.

The dual crises of changing census guidelines and the COVID-19 pandemic have shined a “great spotlight” on the impact that lack of access to broadband has in rural communities. “Access to education, access to jobs, it’s one of those areas where the whole partnership between business and government needs to happen, because it’s not going to be cheap,” said Lynden Schuyler, a director for census outreach at the Illinois Public Health Association.

A new fight between Facebook and Apple over the mechanics of ad tech is surfacing an industry divide over user privacy and spotlighting longstanding dilemmas about the tracking and use of personal information online. Facebook warned advertisers jAug 27 that a coming change to Apple's iOS could devastate revenue for ads that sends users straight to the App Store to install an app — an approach that's used widely by developers including mobile game makers.

With the end of the federal Keep Americans Connected pledge and the failure of Congress to pass comprehensive broadband aid, it’s clearer than ever before that local governments are the last line of defense against the digital divide, which has been exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic. However, in 21 states, legal barriers — often enacted at the behest of corporate telecommunication lobbyists — prevent local governments from investing in community broadband solutions to close the digital divide.