Jed Pressgrove

Although satellite Internet technology has advanced far beyond its initial capabilities, some experts have advised that the emerging broadband solution still has limitations that local and state stakeholders should consider. Carl Russo, CEO of telecommunications company Calix, said for “very rural” places that have no access to other solutions, satellite Internet makes sense.

COVID-19 forced government to leave behind its offices, schools to close their doors and citizens to isolate themselves at home. In doing so, the insidious disease more than underlined the digital haves and have-nots, as a large segment of the American population has had to grapple with the demands of telework, distance learning and accessing online services. State leaders, no matter their political affiliation, acknowledged the digital divide more than ever before in 2020, as evidenced by the sheer number of governors who talked about Internet access in their State of the State addresses.

Broadband companies can improve regional economic development, though positive effects vary depending on local and state contexts, said experts during a National Telecommunications and Information Administration webinar. Lauren Mathena, director of economic development and community engagement with the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation (MBC), spoke on how MBC allows Internet service providers to connect to its 1,900-mile fiber network in southern Virginia.

Recently the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t have to delay opening up the 6 Gigahertz spectrum band for unlicensed Wi-Fi. The court’s decision was in response to a request from public safety and utility organizations, as well as other groups such as AT&T, to grant a stay to the FCC order to open up the 6GHz band.

With its mountainous topography and sparsely populated areas, West Virginia understands this un-ideal reality as well as any state, so it created what some might call a Band-Aid solution: the Kids Connect Initiative, a unified education network with hundreds of Wi-Fi access points. The project started in early Aug, leaving little time for implementation before Sept 8, the first day of school in West Virginia. The concept was to allow any K-12 or college student the ability to use Wi-Fi from any access point within a network spread over the entire state.

Farms could contribute billions more dollars to the US economy with the help of precision agriculture technology, but this can’t happen without more broadband, said experts during a National Telecommunications and Information Administration webinar. Titled “Smart Agriculture: Driving Innovation in Rural America,” the webinar featured, among other speakers, Megan Nelson, an economic analyst with the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Commercial satellite Internet has only been around for about 20 years, and it was highly limited at first. Despite the technology’s weaknesses, such as low speeds and data limits, satellite offered a path to improved connectivity for rural markets that had no other options. The capacity of satellite Internet will significantly increase when HughesNet and Viasat launch new satellites in 2021.

Three states have recently kickstarted their own broadband surveys — Washington, North Carolina and Alabama.

Broadband connectivity alone doesn’t make a postsecondary institution inclusive or competitive, said tech leaders from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) during a National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) webinar. The main point at the webinar was that HBCUs and TCUs must view cyberinfrastructure from a broad lens in order to better serve students and capitalize on research opportunities that can bring dollars to educational organizations.

Does the federal definition of broadband reflect what Americans need today? The current definition, 25 Mbps download speed/3 Mbps upload speed, was set by the Federal Communications Commission, led by former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, in 2015.