Broadband Opportunity Council Agencies' Progress Report

Agencies have made great strides toward meeting the goals set forth in d the Presidential Memorandum on “Expanding Broadband Deployment and Adoption by Addressing Regulatory Barriers and Encouraging Investment and Training” by fulfilling, and even exceeding, the initial commitments outlined in the Broadband Opportunity Council’s report.

To date, agencies have completed more than one-third of the action items and have made great progress on the remaining action items. The Council has fostered increased collaboration among agencies, identified additional opportunities to improve broadband access, and elevated the importance of broadband as a crosscutting policy objective across the federal government. However, agencies recognize that their work is not complete and will require sustained engagement and interagency coordination for many years to come. Going forward, career-level agency staff will finalize the implementation of the action items and collaborate to fulfill the Council’s mission.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) datasets clearly demonstrate these significant gaps in access to broadband infrastructure:

• 10 percent of all Americans (34 million people) lack access to fixed broadband as currently defined by the FCC (25 Mbps downstream/3 mbps upstream).
• 39 percent of rural Americans (23 million people) lack access to fixed broadband.
• 41 percent of Americans living on tribal lands (1.6 million people) lack access to fixed broadband.
• In 2015, 33 million households (27 percent of all U.S. households) did not use the Internet at home, where families can more easily share Internet access and conduct sensitive online transactions privately.
• 26 million households—one-fifth of all households—were entirely offline.