UNDER A RECENTLY passed Texas law, private citizens can sue anyone involved in helping a person receive an abortion in the state after the sixth week of pregnancy. In response, an anti-abortion group called Texas Right to Life set up a website designed to collect anonymous information about any alleged infractions. Or, at least, it tried to. So far, no company has been willing to host it.

The Federal Communications Commission has launched a new map designed to show consumers what kind of cellular coverage they can expect in a given area from AT&T, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Verizon. It’s been a long time coming, and it doesn’t address home internet availability, but it looks like an improvement over the agency’s woefully inadequate and inaccurate past attempts to show gaps in the nation’s broadband coverage.

We’ve been hearing about the advantages of 5G’s high speed wireless data connections for years now, but if you have a 5G capable phone, you probably rarely see significant speed boosts and you may not even know why you would want higher bandwidth. Now AT&T has some new use-case scenarios that will give you a better idea of what 5G will be useful for in the future.

Congress is about to make critical decisions about the future of internet access and speed in the United States. It has a potentially once-in-a-lifetime amount of funding to spend on broadband infrastructure, and at the heart of this debate is the minimum speed requirement for taxpayer-funded internet.

Chattanooga's broadband, the best in the US, is city-owned, making it a shining case study for Biden's push to have municipal bodies provide internet.

As low-orbit satellite internet providers, such as Elon Musk’s Starlink, begin testing their services, security analysts recognize the potential disruption these systems could cause to authoritarian regimes as people start accessing an open and uncensored internet. In countries like Russia, China, and North Korea, where information dominance and control are essential to the regime’s survival, low-orbit internet satellites could pose a significant challenge.

Elon Musk said Friday that Starlink users should be able to move their satellite internet hardware between addresses by the end of the year.

The Federal Communications Commission levied a record fine of $225 million on two Texas-based telemarketing companies for ‘spoofed’ robocalls, the agency said Wednesday. Rising Eagle and JSquared Telecom were slapped with the fine after placing close to one billion robocalls in 2019 to falsely sell short-term health insurance plans.

It looks like T-Mobile has quietly raised the prices of its Home Internet service this week to new customers. Prior to this discovery, the monthly flat rate of the service was at $50 per month. But now, T-Mo is charging $60 per month for new customers to enjoy fast internet speeds over T-Mo’s 4G and 5G networks. The price continues to include equipment, taxes and fees. But you will need to set up automatic payments to enjoy the service.

You’ll need a "premium" unlimited plan to get better 5G speeds with C-band frequencies

A new bill to bring back net neutrality is on its way, supported by one of the open internet’s most fervent advocates. At an advocacy event last month, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) announced that he would be introducing a measure in the next few “weeks” that would engrave the no throttling, block, or paid fast lanes rules into law.

Large numbers of US Internet subscribers are using over 1TB a month for the first time as the pandemic continues to boost home-Internet usage, according to research released today by the vendor OpenVault.

Users of Comcast’s Internet Essentials plan will be getting a significant speed increase on March 1st. The service, which currently runs at 25Mbps, will be automatically upgraded to 50Mbps without requiring additional fees or action from customers. Upload speeds are also being increased from 3Mbps to 5Mbps. Faster access for the same price should be a relief for many families struggling to adapt to having work, school, and entertainment largely shifted to the internet during the pandemic.

Comcast recently expanded the company’s hugely unpopular broadband caps into all company markets, falsely claiming such restrictions are about “fairness.” But lawmakers in Massachusetts say the restrictions are arbitrary, technically unnecessary, and unfairly harm vulnerable populations during an historic economic and health crisis.

US lawmakers are set to approve $1.9 billion aimed to fund a program to remove telecom network equipment manufactured in China, which the U.S. government says poses national security risks. The fund is expected to be drawn from the $900 billion COVID-19 relief aid.

IBM Corp has agreed to pay $24.25 million to resolve a pair of investigations by the Federal Communications Commission(FCC) over subsidies awarded to connect schools and libraries to broadband. IBM’s payment will resolve two FCC investigations that have spanned nearly 15 years over its alleged violations of “E-Rate” program rules in connection with New York City and El Paso school districts.

The internet should be treated like water, power, and phone lines: an essential utility

Is your internet service provider charging you every month for the cable modem or router that you purchased with your own money? Or, perhaps, have you never bothered to buy those items because you couldn’t escape the fee? That fee will be illegal starting Sunday, December 20th, and you should tell your ISP that you’ll no longer tolerate it.

You can expect most of his more controversial decisions, like the repeal of net neutrality, to be reversed.

Let’s state the obvious: Internet in the U.S. sucks. Unless you already have fiber, you’re probably stuck with cable, DSL, or no internet at all because no ISP wants to expand into your area. If you live in a rural area and are lucky to get some form of broadband, you’re probably paying an exorbitant amount for slower than molasses speeds. And most people, about 83.3 million according to a recent report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), can only access broadband through a single provider.