May 2024

A director at the US National Science Foundation has harsh words for the country’s telecommunications companies: We’ve lost the 5G race. But the Next-G game is just getting started, and US companies can win by playing to American strengths, said Sudharman Jayaweera, a program director at the National Science Foundation. In addition to telephone companies lagging, no US vendor has significant market share in the 5G infrastructure equipment market, which is dominated by Huawei, ZTE and other companies, Jayaweera said. The US lags in both research and true 5G networks.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has said 2024 will be “the year of execution” for Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD). But the agency still has a ways to go in approving initial proposals for each state and territory. Louisiana was the first to get its plan approved in December.

Digital Inclusion Coalitions have long been critical to creating robust and sustainable digital equity ecosystems. They collaborate to pool together resources and capacity to make things happen that one individual or organization alone could not do. Coalitions exemplify the spirit of our digital inclusion community because they represent the unique values and perspectives of the residents of their hometowns, regions, and states. But the efforts and outputs of Digital Inclusion Coalitions may not be known outside of their direct impact locally, let alone outside of the digital equity space.