benton's blog

On August 26, our good friends at the Pew Internet and American Life Project released their latest research on home broadband adoption. As the Pew survey will be the most up-to-date, most quoted numbers when policymakers consider broadband-related measures, we take some time here to look at Pew’s findings. (1)

Increasing Internet access around the world was one of the hot stories of the week. Observers wondered, however, if all the smoke really indicates there's a fire to connect everyone to the Internet.

Politico’s Brooks Boliek wrote an article this week that really caught our eye. In “Broadcast TV landscape is shifting under FCC” Boliek notes there’s been a string of broadcast television station deals announced of late. We’ve seen the headlines, too, obviously:

On July 19, 2013, the Federal Communications Commission launched a major effort to review and modernize the E-rate program (more formally known as the schools and libraries universal service support mechanism) which helps schools and libraries to obtain affordable telecommunications services, broadband Internet access and internal network connections.

“Be Aware, and Beware, of COPPA” one headline blared this week. On July 1, updated rules for the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) go into effect. The updated rules are a big part of a renewed recent interest in privacy. But revelations of the government’s data collection efforts have sparked a necessary and overdue debate on how to balance national security against citizens’ privacy rights.

Obama Boosts Wireless Broadband with Spectrum-Sharing Plan

For a second straight week, government surveillance of American’s telecommunications dominated the Headlines – and, also for a second week in a row, the Obama Administration made a major announcement about expanding access to high-speed broadband in the U.S. [See “ConnectED: Here Comes E-rate 2.0” for last week’s major announcement]