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FCC Should not Reward RDOF Failure
By James Erwin The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) is not quite a punchline among broadband advocates, but its shortcomings have long been apparent. Deadlines are often blown, tax dollars routinely wasted, and consumers largely left unsatisfied. Of the $9.2 billion awarded through RDOF over 10 years, over $2.8 billion…
FCC’s Enhanced Competition Incentive Program Uses Better Incentives, But It’s Still A Band-Aid
By Jason Lee Last week the FCC launched the Enhanced Competition Incentive Program , which the commission voted to establish in July 2022. The program seeks to incentivize spectrum license holders to provide unused radiofrequency spectrum to small carriers, tribal nations, and…
How Federal AI Adoption Can Benefit Taxpayers
By Jason Lee Artificial Intelligence coming of age is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for taxpayers. A month ago, following a report from Chief Justice John Roberts on AI use in the judiciary, the House Committee on Administration held a hearing on Artificial Intelligence Innovation within the Legislative…
Who Benefits from Title II Internet?
By James Erwin I am not a lawyer and have never been to law school, but most recovering law students I know tell me one of the most important questions to ask in each case is sui generis – Latin for “who benefits?” Today, the Federal Communications Commission…
Should Bureaucrats Police Social Media?
This Fourth of July, while fireworks illuminated the night sky above the Washington Monument in celebration of the cherished freedoms guaranteed to us as Americans, the judicial system bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers was considering novel threats to those very freedoms. Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary…
Americans for Tax Reform & Digital Liberty File Comments to FCC on Best Practices for Preventing and Eliminating Digital Discrimination
Americans for Tax Reform and Digital Liberty jointly filed comments on February 21st with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding the agency’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Digital Discrimination. These comments explore the pitfalls that would result from the agency’s adoption of a disparate impact standard to measure digital discrimination, as opposed to a…
Waste Watch: The Dystopian Realities of the UTOPIA Project
Waste Watch dives into some of the most egregious, examples of government waste that politicians are leaving for future generations of American taxpayers to clean up. The topic of the First Edition of Digital Liberty’s Waste Watch is the disastrous UTOPIA, or the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency. Photo Credit: Brfootball, CC BY-SA 4.0…
Senators Introduce Legislation to Prevent Taxation of Broadband Grants
Senators Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) recently introduced legislation to exempt federal broadband grants from consideration as taxable income for private ISPs who received them. This would be a sensible move to prevent waste in new federal broadband programs. These grants are currently considered part of a firm’s gross…
U.S. is Behind on Spectrum Allocation for 5G, Reports Find
A pair of recently-released reports highlight how the United States is falling behind in the race to 5G and trailing other nations in mid-band spectrum allocation. As industry has repeatedly made clear, more mid-band spectrum is needed to meet demand and facilitate 5G deployment; U.S. networks current support more…
Digital Liberty Op-Ed in The Hill: “The FCC is working just fine without Gigi Sohn”
On September 15, The Hill published an op-ed by Digital Liberty Executive Director James Erwin, refuting the argument that the Senate must rush to confirm flawed nominee Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) because the FCC cannot function properly without all five commissioners. As the op-ed…