The US Federal Communcations Comission (FCC) will soon vote on a plan that gives $9.25 a month to low-income Americans, so they can afford Internet access. The proposal is an update for the Lifeline program, which since 1985 has offered subsidized phone service to Americans living at or near the poverty line.
The FCC is arguing that Internet access isn’t a luxury in 2016: it’s essential for everything from finding employment to finishing homework assignments. This leaves 64.5 million Americans, who can’t afford broadband, at a disadvantage.
“Internet access has become a prerequisite for full participation in our economy and our society, but nearly one in five Americans is still not benefiting from the opportunities made possible by the most powerful and pervasive platform in history,” wrote FCC chairman Tom Wheeler in a blog post.
The Lifeline program is funded by surcharges on phone lines, and currently provides subsidized landlines and mobile phone service. 39.7 million households qualify for Lifeline, meaning not all of the 64.5 million Americans without broadband access would qualify for the program.
Whatever the numbers, Wheeler says that access to broadband is as essential to living now as phone service was in the 1980s.
“We must never lose sight of the fact that what we’re really talking about is people,” wrote Wheeler. “Unemployed workers who miss out on jobs that are only listed online, students who go to fast-food restaurants to use the Wi-Fi hotspots to do homework, veterans who are unable to apply for their hard-earned benefits, seniors who can’t look up health information when they get sick.”
The $9.25 offered by the program would be almost enough to pay for discount Internet access provided by some companies. For example, Comcast offers the 10Mbps Internet Essentials program to qualifying people for $9.95 a month, just a little more than the $9.25 subsidy.
On March 31, the FCC voted in favor of the plan, which will thereby increase spending on Lifelife from $1.5 billion a year to $2.25 billion, adjusted for inflation. The vote resulted in a 3-2 outcome, with Democrats sanctioning the plan and Republicans objecting. Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai claimed that a 5-0 vote would have occurred had Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn not withdrawn.
Consumer advocates and trade groups representing ISPs commended the commission’s decision, with USTelecom stating that the Lifeline plan “will help to bring the transformative benefits of the Internet to millions of low-income Americans.” Meanwhile, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association claimed that the vote “takes important steps to help even more Americans adopt broadband at home.”
The broadband subsidy proposal was only half the news from today, though. A second proposal was also approved, allowing Internet users to untick some of that pesky monitoring and web usage monetization Internet providers are notorious for. ISPs are obviously unhappy with this arrangement.
Updated on 03-31-2016 by Gabe Carey: Amended to reflect voting outcomes and resulting government insights.
Article originally published on 03-08-2016.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.