Life Wireless, the Lifeline Assistance Program’s provider for Telrite Holdings, has vowed to continue accepting applications for their Lifeline Assistance Program after the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) runs out of funding in May. Life Wireless offers free service, data usage, and smartphones to low-income Americans. Subscribers are eligible for Lifeline Assistance Program help if they receive government assistance or if their income level is at or exceeds 135 percent below the federal poverty level. The program, created in 1985, has a mission of trying “to help ensure universal phone access to all Americans.” Upon approval to the program, eligible users can get “free unlimited talk and text with high-speed data” with a limit of one subscriber per household, according to a summary provided by Life Wireless. Despite efforts to renew funding for the ACP, including a push to approve The Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act of 2024, the Republican led House of Representatives has still failed to approve the measure.

To receive Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding, broadband providers will have to sign a contract with a state broadband office. The grant contract is the most important document in the grant process because it specifically defines what a grant winner must do to fulfill the grant and how they will be reimbursed. The grant contract is going to define a lot of important things:

• This is the document that will define the line of credit that must be provided.
• The contract is going to define the specific environmental studies that are required, along with the timing of the environmental work. 
• The contract is going to define how the broadband office envisions implementing the many issues that were in the grant application. 
• Perhaps the most important part of the contract is that it is going to define how the ISP will get reimbursed for completed work. 
• The contract is likely to have an expected contract completion date. The contract might require an ISP to finish the construction in the time that the ISP proposed in the grant application – while also imposing delays with things like environmental studies, compliance, and reimbursement rules that might make it hard for the ISP to meet that schedule.

The Mississippi broadband office is responding to allegations raised by a legal organization that claims the state is failing to conduct equitable local coordination and outreach with underrepresented communities in preparation of allocating $1.2 billion to expand broadband infrastructure. The Mississippi Center for Justice is alleging that the state office did not include “strategies to address the state’s racial disparities in broadband access” in the state’s initial Volume 1 proposal prepared for the Broadband, Equity Access and Deployment program. The group further contends that the office has not engaged with “diverse stakeholder groups, specifically the incarcerated community,” which represents 1 percent of Mississippi’s population. Sally Doty, the director of Mississippi’s Broadband Expansion and Accessibility ‘BEAM’ office, acknowledges and shares many of the concerns raised by MCJ in its recent filing to the Federal Communications Commission. Doty pointed to the fact that several of the counties mentioned by MCJ have received significant grant awards under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, rendering certain parts of these regions ineligible for BEAD funding. She emphasized the state is actively engaging with RDOF winners to navigate how to best collaborate and work around the other federal programs.

This report quantifies the size of the nation’s wireless infrastructure sector, including purpose-built cellular towers, indoor and outdoor small cells, macrocell sectors, annual infrastructure spending, and the American jobs that sustain this resource. Key statistics include:

• 153,400 purpose-built cellular towers in operation
• 244,800 macrocell sites, excluding small cells
• 805,400 macrocell sectors, excluding small cells
• 202,100 outdoor small cells in operation
• 775,800 indoor small cell nodes in use, encompassing DAS, small cells, private CBRS networks, and licensed frequency bands
• Employment of 387,300 individuals or full-time equivalents dedicated to building, maintaining, and operating cellular networks nationwide, supporting 4G/LTE, 5G, indoor and outdoor networks, and private networks.