By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 3-24-21 As Democrats push a definition of broadband availability to include 100 Mbps speeds and perhaps even price, a bipartisan bill is resurfacing to focus $10 billion in 2021 on reaching "unserved areas" according to the FCC current definition of high-speed. Cable broadband operators were praising the bill's return. [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 3-24-21 The day before Facebook and Twitter CEOs are scheduled to testify before Congress on their platforms' hosting of disinformation, a dozen attorneys general have called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to do more to combat anti-vaxxer COVID-19 disinformation, signaling it is a matter [...]
By Mike Farrell, Multichannel News, 3-24-21 Comcast said Wednesday that it would invest $1 billion over the next ten years in its Internet Essentials program, the high-speed data service targeted at low-income households in its service footprint, to help further narrow the digital divide. Comcast started Internet Essentials in 2011 and in the past [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 3-23-21 The Senate on Wednesday (March 24) will hold its first hearing on a new bill that could reduce the media's massive election ad take by extending political ad disclosures to online ads on the largest digital platforms, beefing up content disclosures for political spots and other content on [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 3-22-21 A handful of prominent edge players including Mozilla and Reddit have asked the FCC to reinstate the net neutrality rules, but that is almost certainly not going to happen until there is a Democratic majority on the Commission. In a letter dated March 19, the above two joined [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 3-22-21 House Energy & Commerce Committee Republicans have a very different definition of "lift," as made clear by ranking member Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) in her opening statement Monday (March 22) for a Hill hearing on the Democrats' LIFT America Act infrastructure bill, which spends $300 billion on broadband, [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 3-22-21 The political climate might finally be ripe for giving news publishers more clout in negotiations with the Big Tech platforms that draw eyeballs and ad dollars by aggregating the original work of others, including cable and broadcast news operations. Proponents say the alternative could be the death of [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 3-20-21 A senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that liberal media bias ("nearly all television – network and cable – is a Democratic Party trumpet") has resulted in such abuse of the landmark Times v. Sullivan requirement that speech relating to public [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 3-19-21 With potentially as much as $120 billion in new broadband spending either in the pipeline or contemplated by Congress, the result could be "a golden age of broadband investment, or a costly sinkhole that squanders billions and does little to close actual broadband gaps." That is according to [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 3-18-21 The House Communications and Consumer Protection Subcommittees have come up with a catchy title for the planned March 25 hearing with the "Biggest Tech" CEOs. The hearing, scheduled appropriately for (high) noon, is titled "Disinformation Nation: Social Media's Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation." The hearing will be [...]