September 2022

Valuing Rural Minority Communities: Inclusive Growth, Broadband, and Leadership

Which rural minority communities are growing? What are the strategies behind these growth-oriented communities? Answers to these questions are central to this report; we illuminate inspiring leadership regimes and strategic policy models that are drawing in people and jobs to rural minority communities. We capitalize on a wealth of publicly available administrative data to outline these economies and deconstruct trends in employment, business creation, broadband adoption, and the labor force.

Five Principles for Spectrum Policy: A Primer for Policymakers

Spectrum policy takes engineering and technical realities as inputs to a decision-making process that is driven by normative principles. While many competing principles have had their heyday, these five are enduring guides to making spectrum work in the public interest:

Who benefits from America’s enormously complex broadband infrastructure plans?

The US broadband effort is massive and complex. Much of this confusing intricacy is unavoidable given the Federal structure, size and complexity of the United States and the fact that almost everything in education, health care, farming, transportation, defense, employment, shopping, entertainment, civic affairs, the arts, regulation, banking and much more may now involve broadband.

Chairwoman Rosenworcel Announces Staff Changes

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel added Brad Barry as Senior Advisor to the FCC for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Deena Shetler, as Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration. Barry will coordinate the agency’s anti-digital discrimination efforts, working in partnership with the Task Force to Prevent Digital Discrimination, which is led by D’wana Terry and Sanford Williams, Special Advisors to the Chairwoman, and Alejandro Roark, Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, who oversees engagement with stakeholders to ensure that task force rec

These are the top 5 states with the best--and worst--fixed internet coverage

The Federal Communications Commission is working to release new, better broadband coverage maps later in 2022. But in the interim, it released a fresh batch of data based on Form 477 submissions from operators. Fierce sifted through the data to find the states with the best and worst internet coverage, as measured by the percentage of the population without access to any ADSL, cable, or fiber providers offering speeds of at least 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps up. In Mississippi, nearly 21% of the overall population lacked access to fixed broadband providers.