In a letter filed today, the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition joined Mobile Beacon, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), the North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation (NACEPF), Public Knowledge and Voqal in asking the Federal Communications Commission to request additional comment on and delay its proceeding to transform the Educational Broadband Service (EBS).
“The EBS proceeding is enormously important to schools, Tribal Nations and the effort to solve the homework gap,” said John Windhausen Jr., executive director of the SHLB Coalition. “Unfortunately, the record lacks key information on many central issues in this proceeding, such as an economic analysis comparing auctions to retaining the preference for educational institutions, the impact of the Sprint-T-Mobile merger on EBS and 5G, and how to modernize the educational use rules. A rush to judgment in favor of auctions could deepen the digital divide, delay rural deployment, and permanently abandon the almost 60-year-old commitment to educational use of this spectrum.”
Read the full article at SHLB.org.
