Zoë Walker

On March 19, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, with support from AARP, hosted a webinar titled Understanding Internet Access and Use Among Older Adults. Revati Prasad, PhD, Vice President of Programs at the Benton Institute, previewed the new report, Older Adults Online: Measuring Internet Access and Use, and moderated a panel of experts who discussed the needs of older adult populations.

Over Valentine's Day weekend 2025, parts of Appalachia, many still recovering from the impacts of Hurricane Helene just 5 months earlier, were battered by another round of heavy rain and flooding.

In the final days of the 118th Congress, two new broadband bills were passed and eventually signed into law by then-President Joe Biden. Here's a quick look at the E-BRIDGE Act and the EXPLORE Act. The new laws demonstrate how Congress understands how important broadband is to economic development and that broadband is needed everywhere—even the places we go to 'get away from it all.' 

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the key Members of Congress who will driving policy for electronic communications—including voice, video, audio and data; emergency and public safety communications; cybersecurity, privacy, and data security; the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

Energy and Commerce is the oldest standing legislative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. House Commerce is vested with the broadest jurisdiction of any congressional authorizing committee.

The Senate Commerce Committee is back at work, considering key presidential nominations, and marking up legislation.

Digital skills and access to educational materials at home are critical for preparing students for the future. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic put into sharp focus the divide between students with and without consistent, reliable broadband and device access.

As the Senate Commerce Committee is set to convene for the first time in the 119th Congress, we look at the membership of the panel and their priorities when it comes to broadband policy. Previously, we looked at the priorities of Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), who sits on the Commerce Committee as well. The committee includes 15 Republicans and 13 Democrats. 

On January 2, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) published the Final Bead Alternative Broadband Technology Policy Notice to provide additional guidance to states and territories regarding the use of non-fiber technologies to serve unserved and underserved locations through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. The BEAD Program is designed to deploy broadband service to all unserved and underserved locations

In 2022, President Joe Biden (D-DE) signed the Data Mapping to Save Moms' Lives Act, which directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “incorporate publicly available data on maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity into the agency’s Mapping Broadband Health in America platform, in consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” The bipartisan bill was introduced in 2021 by Sens.