X-Lab

06/05/2024

More coverage of broadband data concerns -- how are we going to implement a national digital equity intervention without accurate baseline information? If the needs assessment is poor, how do you address the need?

Officials plan accurate speed tests to determine where high-speed Internet is lacking — and where best to deploy federal funding. The state is due to receive nearly $1.2 billion in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding.

06/04/2024

I'm extremely happy to announce the establishment of the Center for Tribal Digital Sovereignty - a joint venture of the American Indian Policy Institute and National Congress of American Indians!

https://mailchi.mp/asu/ctds_launch

06/03/2024

This came out over the weekend -- where I strongly critique our continuing self-enforced ignorance of broadband reality. At this point, the United States has spent a half-a-billion tax payer dollars on broadband mapping, and has managed to create both remarkably inaccurate maps, as well as a compendium of data that is being horded like dragon's gold by the FCC and its proprietary vendors.

I would argue that the FCC is in direct violation of federal statute, which "require[s] the biannual collection and dissemination of granular data...that the Commission shall use to compile the maps created under subsection (c)(1) (referred to in this section as ‘coverage maps’), which the Commission shall make publicly available." Currently, many facets of these coverage maps (as well as their underlying data) are *NOT* publicly available.

Officials are collecting data to determine how to allocate the nearly $1.2 billion the state will receive in federal funding, though experts say measures are not always accurate.

05/17/2024

Raising awareness with my Pennsylvania Broadband Research Institute colleagues about a looming legal paradox that's been left to fester, and is now coming to the fore: https://www.benton.org/blog/bad-business-bead Chris Ali David Elliot Berman Sydney Forde Victor Pickard

The Biden Administration’s unwillingness to enforce federal statute could threaten billions in broadband funding.

04/23/2024

https://www.broadband.pa.gov/funding/capital-projects-fund-cpf

Several folks were asking about the analyses we did when Pennsylvania announced that the Capital Project Funds were awarded for broadband buildout this past week. Here's the totals & percent of total allocation for the 12 winners:

COMCAST $61,664,038 30.20%
ABI $1,809,524 0.89%
Verizon $78,387,788 38.39%
Claverack $4,771,248 2.34%
Armstrong $12,470,081 6.11%
Windstream $11,979,593 5.87%
Frontier $3,529,171 1.73%
Zito $26,388,039 12.92%
Upward $1,476,288 0.72%
Blueridge $524,857 0.26%
Brightspeed $782,163 0.38%
Adams $387,969 0.19%

Overall, 97% went to for-profits, and 0% to municipal/county networks.

There is one cooperative (Claverack).

There is also only one non-profit winner ABI [Allegheny Broadband].

The winners represent entities that have routinely failed to live up to their broadband commitments -- e.g., Verizon, quite infamously, failed to roll out the promised 45Mbps service they promised to the State of Pennsylvania; Frontier has been so terrible in failing its commitments that it had to enter bankruptcy just three years ago (when it was facing clawbacks do to their rollout failures).

Overall, I have a hard time understanding the criteria that were used (and the scoring/weighting that was granted), which lead to this particular group of winners. They would seem to be at odds with the scoring metrics that the Broadband Authority says that they used.

Funding Capital Projects Fund Program The U.S. Department of Treasury awarded $279 million to Pennsylvania for critical capital projects. In June 2022, the Pennsylvania General Assembly appropriated this funding to the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (PBDA), which is using the funds to....

04/11/2024

The Broadband Nutrition Label is now the law-of-the-land! 15 years to go from genesis to implementation:

New labels are intended to make shopping for broadband internet service more consumer-friendly and transparent.

02/16/2024

Can we talk about how utterly *crazy* Congress has acted this past week vis-a-vis reauthorization. Manufacturing a national security crisis (that wasn't) to prevent the reining in of warrantless surveillance of Americans is a new low:

Russia has been experimenting with ways to disable satellites, raising concerns that classified intelligence about a new weapon could indicate a strategic threat to national security.

02/13/2024

So yes, this happened: "A company allegedly tracked people’s visits to nearly 600 Planned Parenthood locations across 48 states and provided that data for one of the largest anti-abortion ad campaigns in the nation..."

The details in Wyden's letter, sent Tuesday morning, reveal what’s believed to be the largest publicly known location-driven anti-abortion ad campaign.

11/03/2016

The Facebook checkin at Standing Rock is a turning point for surveillance activism, says X-Lab researcher Jeff Landale in the Christian Science Monitor. "Without more transparency into the modern surveillance tools that police are using around the country, it's impossible to know where law enforcement is crossing the line and violating long-standing boundaries to protect privacy and First Amendment rights." http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode-Voices/2016/1102/Standing-Rock-check-in-marks-turning-point-for-activists

While it's unknown if the Facebook check-in campaign to support pipeline protesters at the Standing Rock is effective, it shows protesters are pushing back against online surveillance.

10/17/2016

We've joined with 75 other public interest groups in calling on the FCC to protect consumers in the digital age https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1TbK3kkG-mGN04yX0Y5X0FjakU/view

09/14/2016

We're with America's entrepreneurs calling on the FCC to reform the broken business data services market. Read the letter here:http://trycompetify.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Startup-BDS-Letter.pdf