Reporting

Governor Greg Abbott last week signed bills HB 5 and SB 507, along with several other broadband-related measures, to establish new approaches to expanding broadband access, adoption and use across Texas. Under current law, telecommunications utilities are able to access rights-of-way through the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).

The platform ID.me is run by a software company in Virginia, and it’s now a required part of more than 20 states’ unemployment programs. For many people, the ID.me process is simple: they use their smartphones to scan their faces and upload pictures of their government-issued identity cards. The images are checked by a facial recognition system. ID.me is meant to block scammers who are using fake or stolen identities to claim unemployment benefits, but the process is also cutting off an unknown number of people who don’t have the right technology or the right identification.

As broad swaths of Montana still have substandard high-speed Internet or cell-phone service–or, none at all–the Gianforte administration is launching a federally funded $275 million-plus effort to improve that picture. The money is from the American Rescue Plan Act, passed by Congress this March, without a single Republican vote. But Republican leaders in Montana, with bipartisan support, have set up the nine-member Communications Advisory Commission that could start approving projects later this year.

In response to the lack of adequate broadband in parts of the Minnesota, especially rural areas, legislators agreed to spend $70 million on a state grant program that aims to build high-speed internet infrastructure across the state.

Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the creation of a new public authority to coordinate investing tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for broadband infrastructure in Maine. Both houses of the Legislature passed L.D. 1484, establishing the Maine Connectivity Authority with a mandate to expand universal high-speed internet access and telecommunications infrastructure across the state.

State lawmakers are prioritizing expanding broadband in rural parts of Oklahoma. As part of a larger push to increase broadband access, the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year includes $42 million in tax rebates for companies to expand broadband in unserved or underserved rural areas.

Colorado's official broadband map does not paint an accurate picture of internet access for Tribal communities according to leaders.

Dish Network has its sights set on the 12 GHz band for 5G, and it isn’t backing down, even in the face of some pretty stiff competition. Dish—which is in the process of building out a cloud-native, open RAN-based 5G network—itself uses the 12 GHz band for direct broadcast satellite (DBS). Yet it says sharing with 5G in the band is feasible, and while it still wants to support the diminishing TV satellite business (DBS) business, it’s confident that sharing isn’t going to hurt those customers.

A large coalition of industry groups and public interest lobbyists are pushing Congress to invest in “future-proof” high-speed fiber networks in a battle over how to divvy up the $65 billion proposed to expand broadband internet service. The spending is included in an infrastructure package tentatively agreed to by a bipartisan group of senators and President Joe Biden.

Louisiana intends to spend $180 million over three years on grants to telecommunication firms that construct broadband internet infrastructure in underserved communities, hoping to lessen a technology gap exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Louisiana lawmakers earmarked millions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief aid to try to address the state's digital divide by subsidizing broadband projects. Gov.