November 16, 2015
In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission’s Chairman Thomas Wheeler, Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison urged the FCC to work with Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon to prevent the shutdown of broadband access to 300,000 Americans, including 11,000 individuals in Rep. Ellison’s 5th Congressional District of Minnesota.
“All Americans deserve equal Internet access and are more likely to succeed if they are connected and engaged,” Rep. Ellison’s letter stated.
Sprint has appealed a court’s preliminary injunction that stopped it from shutting down its WiMax network, a move that would disconnect Internet to 429 schools, 61 libraries and 1,820 nonprofits across the country. However, thousands of adults and children in the Twin Cities — along with hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Americans — stand to lose access if Sprint does not work with Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon on a plan to migrate them effectively to the new LTE network.