Universal Broadband

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau, in conjunction with the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force and the Office of Economics and Analytics, authorized Rural Digital Opportunity Fund support for 466 identified winning bids. The FCC will also soon post a state-level summary on the Auction 904 webpage.

New York State has made great progress building broadband infrastructure and ranks second in the country for the share of population with access to basic broadband speeds. However, there are still over 250,000 New Yorkers for whom broadband service is unavailable in their neighborhood, and even more for whom broadband is unavailable in their home or place of business.

Frontier CFO Scott Beasely said there’s no denying the company’s copper business is “in a state of long-term decline” but it believes rapid growth in its fiber business will more than make up for that slide soon enough. The operator recently announced it is aiming to hit a total of 4 million locations served by end-2021 and build to an additional 1 million locations in 2022.

Since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, a racial reckoning has taken place in our country that has forced public and private institutions — including the media — to acknowledge their histories of racism. Reps.

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Universal Service Fund (USF or Fund) has been one of the nation’s most important tools for connecting our nation, including rural communities, low-income families, schools, libraries, and rural health care facilities. However, the funding mechanism that supports the Fund is under significant duress. The “contribution base” – the revenues used to calculate USF contributions – has declined 63% in the last two decades, from $79.9 billion in 2001 to $29.6 billion in 2021.

Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Rosenworcel sent a letter to Sen Joe Manchin (D-WV) on August 30, 2021 to respond to his letters on the collection of broadband deployment data.

Pew Research Center released a sweeping report looking at how Americans have used the internet in the pandemic, how reliant they were on digital tools, and some of the struggles they have had as they tried to conduct many of the work-related, educational, social and community activities of their lives online. The headlines from the survey included:

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is seeking public comment on a direct final rule to help expand access to capital to deploy broadband infrastructure in rural areas. The changes apply to USDA’s Telecommunications Infrastructure Loans and Loan Guarantees program and are in accordance with the provisions of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the Farm Bill). The Telecommunications Infrastructure Loans and Loan Guarantees program provides investment capital to eligible entities to help deploy telecommunications infrastructure, including broadband facilities in rural areas.

Only an estimated one in seven eligible households have enrolled in the Federal Communications Commission's Emergency Broadband Benefit Program so far. The majority of those who have received the benefit were grandfathered in through Lifeline, an existing federal subsidy program aimed primarily at telephone users.

The study examines the dangers of government-owned broadband networks and warns that increasing the number of government-operated networks (GONs) would do little to lower their costs or increase broadband subscribership. Specifically, the study highlights the significant historical failures of GONs, and how they have left taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in government debt and forced consumers to pay higher prices for other municipal utility services to make up for operational losses. Key findings: