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By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-17-21 President Joe Biden has rescinded former President Donald Trump’s May 2020 Section 230 executive order on online censorship (order 13925 on “Preventing Online Censorship”),  which was targeted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 [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-12-21 The FCC's launch of the $3.2-billion Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) Program Wednesday (May 12) proved popular inside the Beltway, particularly with Democrats and broadband providers who will benefit from the service boost, though providers were also making the point they have already been providing assistance to low-income households. [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-11-21 The majority of state attorneys general have called on Facebook to abandon plans to create a children's (under 13) version of Instagram. That came in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg from a coalition of 44 state AGs. They argue that social media in general can be [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-11-21The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday (May 12) will launch its $3.2-billion Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program, saying it expected the money to last a number of months, and signaling that the quicker the money runs out, the more successful it will have been.Congress provided the funds and some of [...]