Universal Broadband

The House passed HR 4502, a package of seven fiscal year 2022 appropriations bills, including the 2022 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies funding bill. The bill, among other things, provides $907 million for the expansion of broadband service, including $800 million for the ReConnect program.

The infrastructure bill moving through Congress requires internet service providers to offer a low-cost option, sparking opposition from Senate Commerce Committee Minority Leader Roger Wicker (R-MS) who said the mandate may lead to broadband rate regulation. The measure will require funding recipients to offer a low-cost plan.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman David Scott (D-GA) and Minority Leader G.T. Thompson (R-PA) pressed House leadership for a floor vote on the panel’s $43.2 billion rural broadband bill, H.R. 4374, which was unanimously approved by the committee earlier in July.

This is a historic time for broadband investment. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the high costs of being offline. In response, Congress, over the past year, passed two laws—the Consolidated Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan—with an unprecedented amount of funding devoted to promoting digital equity. Communities should be engaged now to help craft long-term connectivity goals and ensure that diverse voices are part of the discussion—and that’s our job.

The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure approved the E-BRIDGE Act (H.R. 3193). Introduced by Ranking Member Sam Graves (R-MO) and Rep. Michael Guest (R-MS), the bill amends the Public Works and Economic Development Act of 1965 (P.L. 89−136) to create a high-speed broadband initiative and authorizes the Economic Development Administration to award grants for public-private partnerships and consortiums to carry out broadband projects.

Windstream CEO Tony Thomas revealed he’s no fan of the Federal Communications Commission's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program implementation and he is among many now calling for USF reform. “It was a mess, why was it a mess?” said Thomas. “There’s lessons hear that we should learn.” Thomas says the auction didn’t properly vet bidders at the beginning of the process, as the FCC does with wireless spectrum auctions.

The Biden Administration and the U.S. Congress are contemplating spending tens of billions of dollars on policy interventions to increase the deployment of broadband networks with the objective of increasing broadband adoption.

Washington seems poised, yet again, to try to address broadband infrastructure by throwing billions of dollars at it to be managed at the national level, and already there is a chorus of voices demanding that access to broadband be “free.” All this will ensure the effort fails. What’s needed is a recognition that the only approach that can succeed is a novel combination of public-private partnerships at the local level. The important recognition is that cities are not monolithic. Broadband is a neighborhood issue, driven by different socioeconomic factors that must be addressed.

President Joe Biden and the bipartisan group of lawmakers announced agreement on the details of a once-in-a-generation investment in US infrastructure, which will be taken up in the Senate for consideration. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal includes a total $550 billion in new federal infrastructure investment.

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Supporting Foundation and David and Inez Myers Foundation are donating $20 million to DigitalC, a non-profit internet service provider (ISP) focused on bridging the digital divide in Cleveland, Ohio. The foundations feel that DigitalC provides the best avenue toward connecting Cleveland, according to Jim Kenny, spokesperson for the nonprofit ISP; DigitalC also says the foundations’ money serves as a challenge to organizations in the private sector and government to also contribute.