Lobbying

Google, Amazon and Microsoft have donated tens of thousands of dollars to key members of the Senate over the past three months. Some of the most significant conversations about the future of tech regulation are moving to the upper chamber, with Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) negotiating with bipartisan lawmakers over tech antitrust legislation and senators considering how to respond to the Senate Commerce Committee’s explosive hearing with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in October 2021.

T-Mobile has made rural America a clear aim, with a push on brand recognition alongside deployments, retail stores, and initiatives like its Hometown Grant program. The company announced 25 small town winners that are part of its five-year commitment to provide $25 million in grants for community projects, alongside earlier stated plans to hire 7,500 new employees in small towns and rural areas.

Major broadband providers, both telecom and cable, have chosen not to build their networks to areas they deem less profitable and not to upgrade many existing customers left behind by outdated technology. These choices entrench the far too wide digital divide and mean Americans pay some of the highest prices for service. At the same time, the largest ISPs have used their outsized influence in Congress to block any legislation that would undermine their stranglehold over the broadband marketplace.

The Internet Association (IA) has been shedding staff, losing influence on Capitol Hill and shrinking to near-obscurity in media coverage of tech policy debates in Washington, even as the industry faces controversies ranging from alleged monopolization to privacy to how it treats its legions of workers. The declining prominence of IA, a nine-year-old group that used to call itself “the unified voice of the internet economy,” comes as a larger fragmentation is splitting the tech industry’s lobbying efforts into factions. In its place, other tech-focused advocacy groups—including a new startu

Former Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and INCOMPAS CEO Chip Pickering are launching a new coalition, BroadLand, urging Congress to demand faster internet speeds as part of any multibillion-dollar broadband infrastructure initiatives. The floor should be at least 100 megabits per second for both downloads and uploads, the group says. Those speeds may sound awesome to anyone who’s tried to stream Netflix movies at home while roommates or family members conference over Zoom or attend virtual classes.

President Joe Biden's promise to cut the price of Americans' internet bills has provoked a fierce lobbying campaign by cable and telecom companies to prove that the cost of broadband has already dropped. Internet providers are desperate to fend off any move to regulate the prices they charge, while the government is increasingly viewing connectivity as an essential service.

The Biden Administration’s goals of restoring a functional federal government, driving economic recovery, and “building back better” lend themselves to a new strategy for universalizing broadband, with a three-pronged approach to directly address each of the barriers I have described that have stalled universal access. First, any significant plan for investing in infrastructure must include sufficient funding in the form of grants and loans for both initial capital investment and ongoing operations and maintenance of universal, future-proofed broadband networks. Second, the Administration s

Greg Walden, former Chairman of both the House Commerce Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, announced the creation of Alpine Advisors, a new policy and strategic advisory firm. Alpine Advisors is a partnership between Walden and the Alpine Group, a leading Washington government affairs firm. Walden will serve as Chairman of Alpine Advisors, which will service a wide range of clients, with a particular focus on the energy, technology, telecommunications and health care sectors. The Alpine Group is consistently ranked one of the top lobbying firms in Washington.

Facebook is looking externally for a new US policy chief as it moves Kevin Martin, a Republican and former Federal Communications Commission chairman who now holds the job, to lead the firm's global economic policy team. Facebook is moving on from the Trump era in which Republicans held most of the power in Washington and Facebook was particularly eager among tech companies to forge warm relations with GOP policymakers.

Silicon Valley's leading lobby, the Internet Association, is struggling to manage the competing interests of the companies it represents just as the industry faces a tide of bipartisan anger. Lobbying hasn't been working for tech for a while because too many firms are working at cross purposes. "A trade association can only do what its members tell it to do," said one person familiar with IA's work. "Facebook begging to be regulated puts the smaller companies in a bad position.