By Tracy Rosenberg

In the wake of the COVID pandemic revealing the cracks in the digital divide, the State of California made a historic investment in Internet infrastructure with the construction of a middle mile connection to enable high-speed Internet delivery all over the State. The program that encompasses the statewide middle mile network and provides grants for service branching off that network is optimistically titled “Broadband For All”.

But is it really “broadband for all” if California’s tenants and the problems they have accessing Internet service is left out of the conversation?

Media Alliance, along with the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society (https://www.benton.org/) were intervenors in the federal court case against the FCC’s latest attempt to establish nation-wide net neutrality for the Internet.  Today we found out that the Sixth Circuit used the recent Supreme Court decision in Loper that weakened the Chevron Doctrine, to overturn net neutrality rules. This is the second time in the last eight years that nation-wide net neutrality rules have been overturned.

Here in the state of California, we are lucky because Senator Scott Weiner introduced and Gov Gavin Newsom signed, California net neutrality laws that were already sustained in federal court in the Mozilla decision. We have net neutrality protections, but because of today’s terrible decision, most of the rest of the country will not.

This matters because an Internet that isn’t neutral allows providers to block, throttle and deprioritize online speech and content based on who pays more and who pays less creating “slow lanes” that can isolate small businesses, creative works or unpopular news and information. The entire value of the Internet to ordinary people is its openness and its ability to facilitate connections that otherwise would never happen. While we feel lucky to live in California, which did the right thing, it is deeply disappointing that the courts failed to protect the open Internet and that Congress has not made network neutrality the law of the land. We call on the rest of the states to follow the lead of California, Oregon, Washington and Vermont and immediately pass state-level net neutrality laws to protect the open Internet.

Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director, Media Alliance

Media Alliance joined an amici (friend of the court brief) filed in the case of Open Technology Foundation vs David Pack (and the Trump Administration). Trump appointee Pack disbanded the entire board of OTF which creates and maintains encrypted software tools like Signal and Lets Encrypt, an open source website security protocol.

In an early win, the board was recently temporarily reinstated, overturning an earlier decision on appeal, but the lawsuit is still winding its way through the courts for a final determination.

218 groups, including industry, local governments, and human rights nonprofits, have written to Congress to insist that access to affordable broadband must be a part of upcoming stimulus packages.

The letter states:

Broadband enables people to work remotely, access medical care, and apply for governmental benefits. As all levels of education transition to online for the forseeable future, reliable Internet access is necessary for students to be successful. Like food, water and electricity, everyone needs broadband during this unprecedented crisis.

A massive coalition of justice and equity groups has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to expand the Lifeline program to meet the challenges of the COVOD-19 epidemic.

The group made three demands.

1. To immediately prohibit the disconnection of Lifeline (subsidized) connections
2. To require Lifeline providers to unlimited voice and texting services within one week.
3. To create an emergency Lifeline Broadband program within 21 days.

You can read the letter below.