Localism

Right now, policymakers across the country are focused on strengthening American infrastructure. That effort includes roads, bridges, and broadband networks that support 5G wireless services. That’s vital—because to be first to a 5G future, we need to focus as much on the ground as on the skies. But figuring out how to deploy 5G infrastructure—which puts a premium on small cells—is a big task. It means acknowledging that we have a legal tradition of local control in this country but also recognizing that more streamlined and uniform practices can help speed deployment.

The Trump Federal Communications Commission has been working diligently since its first moments in office to help Sinclair expand its political messaging. By rewriting the rules governing local broadcasting, the Trump FCC is allowing Sinclair to turn supposedly “local” television operations into a coordinated national platform for the delivery of messages. Local television stations were licensed to multiple firms to promote a diversity of viewpoints. Using the public airwaves was supposed to deliver diverse editorial content and news coverage.

Across the country, cities are straining. Housing costs are exploding, transportation systems are overwhelmed, infrastructure is crumbling, and inequality is on the rise. Yet there’s little support from federal or state authorities — “infrastructure week” is a punch line in Washington, not a policy. Efforts to raise money for local projects are under siege from conservative activists, while measures to build more housing are halted by liberal ones. Into this void march the techies, who come bearing money, jobs and promises of out-of-this-world innovation. But there’s a catch.

AT&T and San Jose (CA) have added a public-private partnership to their existing small cell agreement. The new agreement calls for San Jose to trial AT&T's smart city solutions. AT&T's digital infrastructure, which the company has described as a "smartphone for cities," is connected hardware with integrated sensors that can be attached to lamp posts to capture information about the environment. AT&T said the solutions it plans to trial with San Jose may include LED smart lighting, public Wi-Fi, digital infrastructure and structure monitoring.

The Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) suffers from significant failures of design and execution. Due to these failures, I expect the BDAC and the FCC will adopt a framework in which industry gets all the benefits with no obligations, and municipalities will be forced to bear all the costs and receive no guaranteed benefits.

On both sides of the Atlantic, interest in news is high. The daily dramas of the Trump administration and the rollercoaster of the Brexit negotiations have fuelled sales of online subscriptions to US and UK newspapers grappling with the transition from print to a predominantly digital business model. The picture is bleaker for local newspapers. In the US there has been a hollowing out of a once-mighty sector.

North Carolina residents will be among the first to have faster 5G broadband access thanks to legislation approved by lawmakers making the state a leader in digital innovation, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said. “I remember Charlotte and the surrounding communities in the '80s and '90s and to see how quickly things are moving, the energy in this town and in this county, it’s a testament to the leadership on all kinds of levels, public and private sector,” Chairman Pai said.  He especially praised 2017 legislation to install 5G broadband in the state. But critics of th

On April 16, 2018, Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai regarding the merger between Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media Company. "In making its determination whether the proposed merger to allow a single company to reach 72 percent of U.S. television households serves the public interest, I urge the FCC to carefully consider Sinclair's conduct and the significant harm it poses," Sen Durbin wrote.

The TV news has a familiar feel to it in west-central Pennsylvania. News stories broadcast on WJAC, the NBC affiliate in town, have appeared on nearby station WATM, the ABC affiliate. And many of those stories are broadcast on WWCP, the Fox station here, as well.

[Commentary] University of California-Berkeley's Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber coined the term “wicked problem” to refer to problems that had reached a level of complexity that made them impossible to define, let alone solve. Every solution to a wicked problem is a one-shot operation: There are no second chances, because any change you make will have affected the whole system. The story of Sinclair’s rise from local TV station to major propaganda machine is a case study in Rittel and Webber’s “one-shot operation” warning.