Reporting

Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program money may be enough to connect most folks to 100/20 Mbps, but those speeds likely won’t cut it by the end of the decade, said Connect Humanity’s Brian Vo. We’ve heard from the White House that the BEAD Program will help connect everyone in the country to reliable and affordable high-speed internet by 2030.

Almost all internet traffic—including Zoom calls, movie streams, emails and social media feeds—reach us via high speed fibre optics laid on the ocean floor.

In 2021 when the pandemic was raging, President Joe Biden led a bipartisan effort to pass the Affordable Connectivity Program as part of the Infrastructure Act so low-income families would have subsidized internet service. It was especially important to get low-income families hooked up since their children would need to do their schoolwork from home.

Library Wi-Fi hotspot lending programs (via the Federal Communications Commission’s E-rate program) are a complement to broadband providers and permanent connections at home—not a replacement for those connections, said Larra Clark, Deputy Director of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Public Policy and Advocacy Office and Deputy Director of the Public Library Association.

Money is beginning to really flow into the U.S. fiber ecosystem, but the dollars are coming from a somewhat unexpected source—middle-mile and long-haul fiber projects.

Kendall County (IL) wanted to deliver a better broadband experience to its residents. So, it reached out to the local incumbent providers which reacted with smugness and arrogance. The county was so put off by the incumbents that it instead pursued a public-private broadband partnership. Many of the county’s residents have been dissatisfied with their selection of broadband providers, which include AT&T, Comcast and Metronet. So, the county decided to put out a request for proposal (RFP) for a private company to bring some broadband competition to the area.

At the Mountain Connect conference, one of Elon Musk’s top lieutenants—Gwynne Shotwell, president and COO of SpaceX—regaled the audience with exciting stories about rocket launches, and she also touted SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service as a great way to close the digital divide in hard-to-reach rural locations. Shotwell also revealed SpaceX was working with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on some “structural elements” to determine if SpaceX will bid for Broadband Equity Access and D

AST SpaceMobile, which is preparing to offer low earth orbit (LEO)-based cellular broadband network services, says that it has gotten an initial license from the Federal Communications Commission for space-based operations in the United States. Initially, AST SpaceMobile’s services will include a cellphone-to-satellite offering.

Like a phoenix, Starry is on the rise again. The fixed wireless internet service provider (ISP) took the world by storm a few short years ago before declaring bankruptcy in 2023. Besides climbing out of bankruptcy, much of the past year has been focused on upgrading its hardware and software to offer gigabit speeds (1,000 Mbps).

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA), the Democratic nominee for president, has chosen Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate, elevating a former football coach whose rural roots, liberal policies, and buzzy takedowns of former President Donald Trump have recently put him on the map. Gov Walz emerged from a field of candidates who had better name recognition and more politically advantageous home states.