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  2. March 2022

March 2022

Charter CEO: Focus on symmetrical speeds due to marketing, not need

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge isn’t sold on the idea that consumers need symmetrical broadband speeds, but says it has a roadmap to offer them using DOCSIS 3.1 technology to keep up with competition from fiber players. Rutledge said, “It’s a marketing claim. It’s a claim without much reality from a [data] use perspective…Even one gig down is to some extent a marketing claim from a reality perspective.” However, to the extent that it needs to keep up with such claims from competitors, Rutledge said it can.

House of Representatives Passes Government Funding Legislation

The House of Representatives passed H.R. 2471, an omnibus spending bill consisting of all 12 fiscal year 2022 appropriations bills and supplemental funding to support Ukraine. H.R. 2471 provides $1.5 trillion in discretionary resources across the 12 fiscal year 2022 appropriations bills. In total, the regular 12 appropriations bills include $730 billion in non-defense funding, a $46 billion increase over fiscal year 2021.

Tennessee uses $400 million of federal funds to boost broadband

Tennessee’s broadband deployment is getting a leg up with expanded funding from the American Rescue Plan (ARP). The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (ECD) will award up to $400 million to service providers for broadband infrastructure projects. All entities authorized to provide broadband in the state are eligible to receive funding, said Taylre Beaty, state broadband director for the Tennessee ECD. The entities can be solely broadband providers to Tennessee, or they can include nationwide coverage.

The Great Reckoning: Lessons from 1940's media policy battles

The early broadcast era and our current platform era bear some striking resemblances, but one parallel looms large: In the 1940s, we lost a key battle to build a potentially liberating and wondrous medium—and we are on the cusp of doing so again. Then as now, commercial operators defined the terms by which we could use our core communication and information infrastructures. Democratic oversight, public alternatives, and social responsibilities were kept to a minimum. Democratic societies must now fight to prevent this from happening again.

FCC Releases Data on Internet Access Services as of June 30, 2019

This report summarizes information about Internet access connections in the United States as of June 30, 2019 as collected by Federal Communications Commission Form 477. For purposes of this report, Internet access connections are those in service, over 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction, and reported to the FCC through Form 477. Total Internet connections increased by about 4.7% between June 2018 and June 2019 to 449 million.

FCC Announces Over $640 Million for Rural Broadband in 26 States

The Federal Communications Commission announced that it is ready to authorize more than $640 million through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to fund new broadband deployments in 26 states bringing service to nearly 250,000 locations. To date, the program has provided $4.7 billion in funding to nearly 300 carriers for new deployments in 47 states to bring broadband to almost 2.7 million locations.

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