Government Technology

Broadband companies can improve regional economic development, though positive effects vary depending on local and state contexts, said experts during a National Telecommunications and Information Administration webinar. Lauren Mathena, director of economic development and community engagement with the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation (MBC), spoke on how MBC allows Internet service providers to connect to its 1,900-mile fiber network in southern Virginia.

Recently the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t have to delay opening up the 6 Gigahertz spectrum band for unlicensed Wi-Fi. The court’s decision was in response to a request from public safety and utility organizations, as well as other groups such as AT&T, to grant a stay to the FCC order to open up the 6GHz band.

With its mountainous topography and sparsely populated areas, West Virginia understands this un-ideal reality as well as any state, so it created what some might call a Band-Aid solution: the Kids Connect Initiative, a unified education network with hundreds of Wi-Fi access points. The project started in early Aug, leaving little time for implementation before Sept 8, the first day of school in West Virginia. The concept was to allow any K-12 or college student the ability to use Wi-Fi from any access point within a network spread over the entire state.

Farms could contribute billions more dollars to the US economy with the help of precision agriculture technology, but this can’t happen without more broadband, said experts during a National Telecommunications and Information Administration webinar. Titled “Smart Agriculture: Driving Innovation in Rural America,” the webinar featured, among other speakers, Megan Nelson, an economic analyst with the American Farm Bureau Federation.