John Eggerton

Lobbying groups representing broadband internet access service providers—including ACA Connects, NCTA, CTIA and USTelecom—dropped their challenge of a federal district court's ruling upholding California's net neutrality law. The ISPs had already lost a federal district court challenge to the law and two appeals court efforts to block enforcement. The suit was dismissed without prejudice, which means ISPs could refile it if they chose.

The Conference of National Black Churches, along with five other groups representing Black clergy and congregations, has called on the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) to allow the $40 billion-plus broadband subsidy money it is handing out to states to be used for whatever technology -- fiber, wireless, etc. -- best fits their communities. That came in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and NTIA administrator Alan Davidson.

Some former Democratic members of Congress have joined what is increasingly a concerted effort to block the nomination of Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow & Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society], President Joe Biden‘s nominee to the open Democratic seat on the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC presently stands at a 2-2 political tie, as it has been since before Biden took office.

Alan Davidson, head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, said his agency is taking a customer service approach to overseeing the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) initiative going to the states for broadband buildout. Each state will have a point person at NTIA to make sure stakeholders know how to apply for the money, Davidson said.

Smaller and mid-sized cable/broadband operators are telling the Biden Administration not to hand out billions of dollars in broadband subsidies to the states until there are better broadband deployment maps, and when they do hand it out, to make sure it goes to unserved areas first.

Consumer Reports (CR) is telling the Federal Communications Commission that, according to many of its members, some cable and telecom broadband operators are continuing to charge for modems or routers even when consumers are using their own equipment and the agency should investigate.

Broadcasters are pushing back hard on the Federal Communications Commission’s potential restoration of the mandate that broadcasters file data on the diversity of their workforces and that the data be available to the public, including by blaming Big Tech for some of broadcasting's diversity recruiting problems. The annual collection of Form 395-B data on workforce composition (race and gender) has been in limbo for two decades.

Cable broadband operators are telling the Federal Communications Commission that it should not start making them pay into the Universal Service Fund, especially given the tens of billions of dollars in broadband subsidies the Biden Administration has offered up in COVID-19 and infrastructure laws.

Internet-service providers (ISPs) weighed in on the White House‘s promotion of the 10 million households now served by its Affordable Connectivity Program. The ISPs wanted to point out they have been offering affordable broadband to millions through their own subsidy programs for years, though they welcome the Biden administration‘s help (as long as it is targeted to the unserved and not to overbuilding in the name of price and competition).

The Federal Communications Commission is starting to get input on its examination of the future of the Universal Service Fund (USF). That input includes whether to make internet service providers (ISPs) pay into the fund, as telecommunications companies currently do, given that the baseline advanced communications service that USF is paying for is increasingly broadband rather than the phone service the program was designed for. Also on the table is whether to make streaming services pay into the subsidy given that they are riding that broadband service into homes.