Currently, Comcast offers 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds for $9.95 per month to people who are on government assistance. Perhaps sensing which way the wind is blowing (and under pressure from student activists), Comcast announced on Tuesday that, starting in March, it will double the download speeds on its Internet Essentials package to 50 Mbps download and bump the upload speed to 5 Mbps for no extra cost. One of the many signatories on the letter - all Democrats except for Angus King (I-ME) - was Massachusetts’ Ed Markey, who wrote the 1996 bill that created E-Rate in the first place and has been pushing for months for an expansion. “The statute authorizing this program does not preclude the FCC from freeing funds to connect students’ homes during the current crisis.” “Contrary to your predecessor’s assertions, the FCC has always had clear emergency authority to utilize existing E-Rate funding to connect students learning online during the coronavirus pandemic,” the senators wrote. Thirty-seven senators are now asking Rosenworcel to interpret E-Rate to include homes where students are doing remote learning, which would make them eligible to receive its benefits immediately, assuming Congress passes necessary legislation to make enough funds available to cover the increased cost. Rosenworcel, on the other hand, is a vocal proponent of E-Rate expansion, so it’s no surprise that she’s moving quickly here. Then, Pai had to hope that the companies would say yes to these suggestions. Instead, he asked companies not to cut Americans off from the internet if they couldn’t pay their bills, waive any late fees, make their wifi hotspots free, and consider adopting programs for low-income people. In other words, broadband internet access enables all of the administration’s top priorities.”īut previous FCC Chair Ajit Pai repeatedly denied calls to consider the expansion. “It’s a social justice issue, it’s an economic issue, it’s a health care issue, it’s an education issue, it’s a democracy issue. “It’s clear that a priority for the Biden-Harris administration and its FCC is going to be getting robust broadband to every household in the US,” Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology & Law Policy, told Recode. So discounted home internet services could help quite a bit. Millions of students don’t have adequate internet in their homes, forcing them to use mobile phone data and even internet from nearby fast food restaurants. With the Covid-19 pandemic forcing many students to do their schooling from home, Democrats have called for expanding the E-Rate program to cover residential connections as well, reasoning that homes have become classrooms and are therefore eligible. On Monday, the FCC announced it was seeking comment on requests to expand E-Rate, which offers schools and libraries discounts on equipment and services needed to access the internet. And at least one company, possibly hoping to get into the new FCC’s good graces, has voluntarily doubled the internet speeds on its package for low-income people. This couldn’t come fast enough for at least 36 Senate Democrats (and one independent), who on Thursday asked Rosenworcel to use the FCC’s emergency authority to provide that discounted access now. Under acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC is moving to expand a broadband services discount program to cover remote schooling. President Joe Biden’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) isn’t wasting any time trying to get low-income families online.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |