Reporting

Google, Facebook, Amazon and other big American tech companies collectively spend tens of billions of dollars each year on things like massive warehouses of computer and internet equipment that let them speed along your Instagram posts and home shopping purchases. You might have driven by some of these computing centers and never noticed them. But the tech giants’ efforts to make these boring workhorses more efficient and effective is one of the most important advancements in technology in the last decade.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is angering a lot of powerful people as his chairmanship hits its fourth and potentially final year. The Pentagon, the Commerce Department and the Department of Transportation. Electric utilities, airlines and the auto industry. Public safety officials and weather forecasters. Top lawmakers of both parties, including Sen John Kennedy (R-LA) an ally of President Donald Trump’s who controls the FCC’s purse strings on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Federal Communications Commissioner Geoffrey Starks spoke about internet inequality during a USTelecom webinar "The Role of Connectivity in Digital Equity and Inclusion." Commissioner Starks said he uses the term internet inequality rather than the digital divide because beyond the issue of access was the issue of affordability. He said there are millions of Americans who simply can't afford the internet. While the rural digital divide is very important, Commissioner Starks said the lack of connectivity in certain urban areas was a problem he was increasingly fixated on.  

Chicago Connected — "a groundbreaking initiative to provide free Internet" — aims to connect 100,000 students, giving them Internet at home for minimum of four years. Chicago officials say they hope the program will be the first phase of a broader effort that ultimately bridges the city’s digital divide. The four-year scope really sets the program apart from those found in other parts of the country, “This is really just phase one of what we’re trying to do,” said Chicago Chief Financial Officer Jennie Bennett.

Mozilla and others that had challenged the Federal Communications Commission's deregulation of internet access in the 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIFO) have decided not to take that challenge to the Supreme Court. This moves the issue to the states that implemented their own net neutrality legislation in response to the FCC's RIFO. The deadline was July 6, and Mozilla signaled there would be no challenge in the high court. "After careful consideration, Mozilla—as well as its partners in this litigation—are not seeking Supreme Court review of the DC Circuit decision," Mozilla.

The broadband industry has lost a key initial ruling in its bid to kill a privacy law imposed by the state of Maine. The top lobby groups representing cable companies, mobile carriers, and telecoms —ACA, CTIA, NCTA, and USTelecom — sued Maine in Feb, claiming the privacy law violates their First Amendment protections on free speech and that the state law is preempted by deregulatory actions taken by Congress and the Federal Communications Commission.

Here’s a look at what some digital privacy experts view as standouts in legislative online privacy efforts at the state level, and some of the sticking points in those and federal proposals.

A fleet of high-altitude balloons started delivering internet service to Kenya on July 7, extending online access to tens of thousands of people in the first-ever commercial deployment of the technology. The balloons, which hover about 12 miles up in the stratosphere — well above commercial airplanes — will initially provide a 4G LTE network connection to a nearly 31,000-square-mile area across central and western Kenya, including the capital, Nairobi. Loon, a unit of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, launched 35 balloons in recent months in preparation for July 7’s start.

Big Valley is a living postcard of Pennsylvania. But they had slow, unreliable, and expensive internet. The government couldn’t help. Private suppliers have long said improved speeds were too costly to provide for such a sparsely populated area. So a group of mostly retirees banded together and took a frontier approach to a modern problem. They built their own wireless network, using radio signals instead of expensive cable. “We just wanted better internet service up our valley.

Tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade, human rights, the handling of Covid-19, and Chinese misinformation are escalating global divisions around the deployment of 5G. A growing number of countries are aligning with either a Western or a Chinese version of the tech.