By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-27-21 Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) have introduced a bill to boost online content moderation transparency and prevent algorithmic discrimination, with Markey saying it was time to “open up Big Tech’s hood.” Facebook, for one, has been calling for legislation on transparency. Among other things, the [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-26-21 A Facebook ad airing frequently on cable and online these days features young people talking about all the wonderful things the Internet has done and is doing and how much it has changed in their lifetime, arguing that the last time Internet regulations were updated was 25 years [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-25-21 Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) has introduced a bill, the No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act (H.R. 3346), that would prevent the FCC from regulating broadband access rates. Kinzinger introduced the bill four Congresses ago, where it passed the House. This time around, the bill comes as [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 10-26-20 Microsoft has asked the FCC to reverse its decision, made under then-chairman Ajit Pai, to allow broadcaster signals from distributed transmission systems to go "significantly" beyond a station's current authorized service area as those broadcasters roll out their Next Gen TV broadcast transmission standard. Microsoft told the FCC [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-24-21 Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill, recently passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature, that the governor promotes as a way to stop Big Tech from censoring his citizens. Republicans have argued that Silicon Valley giants have attempted to suppress conservative speech in the guise of [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-20-21 House Republicans have unveiled their response to the Biden $100 billion broadband infrastructure plan, the American Broadband Act, which provides $23 billion in targeted infrastructure deployment funds, to be overseen by the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, rather than the FCC. According to House Energy & Commerce Committee Republicans, [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-20-21 As promised, Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) has introduced a bill, the Expanding Opportunities for Broadband Deployment Act, that would eliminate the ETC (eligible telecommunications carrier) requirement for accessing Lifeline broadband subsidies. Butterfield represents a rural North Carolina that desperately needs broadband, he has said, but that qualified providers [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-18-21 The White House Tuesday was promoting the American Jobs Plan infrastructure package's $100 billion for universal broadband as a big investment in cybersecurity. That was part of a fact sheet the White House issued early Tuesday (May 18) as the President tries to drum up support, both on [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-17-21 President Joe Biden has rescinded former President Donald Trump’s May 2020 Section 230 executive order on online censorship (order 13925 on “Preventing Online Censorship”),  which was targeted at social media sites Trump had long argued were biased against conservatives and his administration. The current president has his own [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-14-21 A federal appellate court agrees with the FCC that China Telecom was premature in asking the court to review the FCC's initiation of license revocation proceedings. That FCC asked the court to dismiss the China Telecom request as premature since license revocation proceedings had not concluded so there [...]