According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, Black and Hispanic adults in the United States remain less likely than White adults to say they own a traditional computer or have high-speed internet at home. Eighty percent of White adults report owning a desktop or laptop computer, compared with 69 percent of Black adults and 67 percent of Hispanic adults. Eighty percent of White adults also report having a broadband connection at home, while smaller shares of Black and Hispanic adults say the same—71 percent and 65 percent, respectively. When it comes to accessing the internet, mobile devices play a larger role for Hispanic adults compared with White adults. A quarter of Hispanics are “smartphone-only” internet users—meaning they own a smartphone but lack traditional home broadband services. By comparison, 12 percent of White adults and 17 percent of Black adults fall into this category. Bias by internet service providers further exacerbates the impact of poverty: Internet providers prefer to serve areas that have higher incomes, so lower-income neighborhoods are often at a disadvantage in terms of accessing internet services even if individuals can afford them. Research has even shown that communities of color are more likely to pay higher rates for the same level of internet access in the same city, often only blocks away from where lower rates are charged. A 2022 investigation by The Markup found that AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink disproportionately offered slow internet service to lower-income and least-White neighborhoods for the same price they offered speedier connections in other parts of town.

The Department of the Treasury approved $158 million in federal funds for broadband infrastructure and multi-purpose community facility projects in Puerto Rico under the American Rescue Plan Act's (ARPA) Capital Projects Fund (CPF). Puerto Rico is approved to receive $85.7 million to improve the resiliency, reliability, and speed of the island’s high-speed internet access. This funding will specifically promote the Puerto Rico Submarine Cable Resiliency (PRSCR) Program, which will construct a new submarine fiber route to the island of Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic and the US Virgin Islands and create three new cable landing stations on the island’s coastlines. Puerto Rico will invest an additional $64.7 million of CPF funding in the Puerto Rico Multi-Purpose Community Technology Center Program, which seeks to create multi-purpose community technology centers / “Centros Tecnológicos” in areas across Puerto Rico where the public can access high-speed internet, use on-site devices, borrow devices for at-home use, have access to educational opportunities in technology, digital learning, work remotely, and access healthcare services. Together with their administrative funding, these projects represent 100 percent of the territory's total allocation under the CPF program. The remainder of the funds (approximately $8 million) will be used by Puerto Rico to administer the programs.

The Federal Communications Commission committed nearly $7 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) Program, which provides digital tools and services to support students in communities across the country. The funding commitment supports applications from the third application window, benefitting approximately 50,000 students nationwide, including students in California, Colorado, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Twenty-five years ago, when I headed up the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), my colleagues and I identified what has come to be known as the digital divide while researching the growing gap between the haves and have-nots of internet access. Back then, we never dreamed that the US government would one day commit $42 billion dollars in the form of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program to close the divide. Yet, the Biden administration and Congress have provided the focus and the funds we need to get every American online. Despite this, we are at risk of squandering this once-in-a-generation opportunity. The requirements for a BEAD grant include something called a letter of credit. The current rules say any broadband service provider applying for a grant to connect underserved communities must deposit 25% of the award amount with a bank. That deposit will remain untouchable until well after the build is complete. This is in addition to a separate minimum 25% match requirement. Together, these two rules mean grantees will have to front millions of dollars before they receive a dime from Uncle Sam. Without a course correction to the BEAD program, this record investment could be an opportunity wasted. Large companies and populous communities are capable of bearing these costs; but these rules will exclude many of the providers most capable of assisting in the effort to close the digital divide, slowing broadband expansion and keeping America’s most marginalized communities out of the digital revolution for another generation.

[Larry Irving was the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information (NTIA) during the Clinton Administration. He is president of the Irving Group and is the outgoing Board Chair at Connect Humanity.]

The Washington State Broadband Office (WSBO) developed a vision for digital equity in Washington state: Everyone in Washington has affordable broadband internet technology as well as the tools and skills needed to participate in our digital society before 2028. The WSBO has established three goals designed to achieve the stated vision:

• Eliminating barriers: Provide Washington state residents with infrastructure, devices, and tools, to maintain reliable, affordable, high-speed broadband service to bridge the digital divide.
• Empowering residents: Provide Washington state residents the information, support, and skills to obtain and cultivate digital knowledge and skills to improve access and reap the benefits of digital inclusion.
• Ensuring sustainability: Establish and build partnerships across Washington state needed to deliver and sustain broadband service and support programs for learning and engaging in civil society.

The Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) Project Office unveils the ARA, a new testbed in Central Iowa dedicated to research on rural wireless systems and applications. The ARA combines both commercial and programmable network systems. The multi-modal platform is based on the Iowa State University (ISU) campus with coverage extending to local crop and livestock farms and parts of the City of Ames (IA). The ARA platform uniquely combines several types of technologies in both the backhaul and radio access portions of the network from Aviat, Skylark Wireless, NI, and Ericsson. For backhaul connectivity, ARA uses Aviat radios operating in the 11 GHz and 80 GHz bands. The testbed also maintains fiber connections as a backup. In the radio access network, the ARA team has partnered with Skylark Wireless in developing and deploying production-grade, many-antenna MIMO systems with research APIs for communications using TV White Space (TVWS) spectrum, and it has deployed software-defined radios from NI using mid-band connectivity.

The newly released Virginia proposed Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant rules highlight an issue that was included in the original grant rules. The BEAD program gives significant power to local governments through local letters of support. Internet service providers (ISP) have always asked for letters of support for broadband grants, and most communities have handed them out like Halloween candy. The Virginia BEAD grants rules and I think most other states as well are going to award a significant amount of grant scoring points for an ISP that gets a local letter of support. In the Virginia grant scoring, a letter of support represents 10% of the total points needed for an ISP trying to win a grant. Since most BEAD grants are going to be awarded in rural areas, county governments are the local government entities that will matter the most for BEAD. A county needs to carefully think about the ISPs it wants to support if the county provides a local support letter for only one ISP, that ISP has an instant advantage over others in the grant scoring.

Vodafone’s announcement that it has formed a partnership with Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite (LEO) communications initiative, joins a growing list of operator tie-ups with satellite service providers to solve backhaul and rural connectivity challenges. Vodafone and its African Vodacom group plan to use Project Kuiper’s network to extend the reach of 4G and 5G services to more of their customers in Europe and Africa, serving areas that “may otherwise be challenging and prohibitively expensive to serve via traditional fiber or microwave solutions.” Amazon has yet to launch any satellites, so delivering access for Vodafone on the ground is still some way off.

Following nearly a year of sustained pressure on brands from the #StopToxicTwitter coalition, showing the dangers of advertising on Twitter (now “X”), Elon Musk is now singling out coalition members to blame for the company’s extensive revenue losses. Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for these losses, continuing his penchant for using lawyers to silence his critics. Musk’s acknowledgment of these significant losses comes as X is also claiming — without evidence — that many major brands have returned to advertise on the platform. #StopToxicTwitter member ADL is among Musk’s chief critics, repeatedly calling out his amplification of antisemitic voices and memes. 

Comcast has continued to shed broadband subscribers, despite domestic broadband revenue being a bright spot in its second quarter (Q2) earnings. CEO Brain Roberts noted average revenue per user (ARPU) for broadband grew “four and a half percent” in the first half of 2023. As to what’s driving Comcast’s broadband growth, Roberts pointed to an influx of broadband usage, which “almost doubled” in the last couple of years. The average non-linear video customer uses 700 gigabits of data per month, he said. And in the last four years, the company has seen "13 times more attached devices to Wi-Fi than we did in 2018…and we’ve got a billion devices attached in our homes.”