May 2022

ACA Connects Chairman Patricia Jo Boyers, Vice Chair Mike Bowker and President and CEO Matthew Polka announced their plan initiated by Polka to make a leadership change in July 2022. The collective’s goal is to prepare and position the organization for success amid rapid technology developments and expansive legislative and policy challenges. “I have been blessed every day to lead ACA Connects, but after 25 years I believe it is time to pass on the privilege of leadership for the healthy growth and future success of the organization,” Polka said.

Municipal-owned City Utilities of Springfield (MO) is more than halfway done with the construction of a more than 1,000-mile fiber network that will cover the entire city, with work expected to wrap in late 2022 around eight to nine months ahead of schedule. Lumen Technologies, which is pursuing a rapid expansion of its residential fiber footprint, is set to serve as an anchor tenant on the network and will deliver symmetric gigabit internet to Springfield’s 180,000 residents and businesses.

The Biden Administration’s newly launched Declaration for the Future of the Internet is too ambitious. There is no need to focus on what are mostly domestic Internet policy issues, where nations are likely to have differing approaches. This includes data privacy—an issue that is best dealt with the national government level, lest the stronger regulator (the European Union) succeed in imposing its innovation-limiting privacy regime on the rest of the free world.