The Biden Administration’s broadband policies are failing. The costs for building out Internet infrastructure in this country have skyrocketed thanks to inflationary policies under their watch. The Federal Communications Commission is sitting on spectrum that could connect millions of Americans to new, high-speed services. The Administration has needlessly blocked and delayed new broadband infrastructure builds. Fiber and cell site components are laying fallow in warehouses across the country due to the government’s failure to remove regulatory red tape. Permitting reform has gone nowhere. They are preparing to waste billions of taxpayer dollars by spending it without a national coordinating strategy. The list goes on. Now, the Biden Administration has announced that it will blame the private sector for the outcomes of these failed government policies. Instead, the Administration should reverse course and unleash America’s private sector to build, connect, and invest.

The Federal Communications Commission currently regulates broadband internet access service (BIAS, if you will) as an "information service" under Title I of the Communications Act. As the FCC contemplates reclassifying BIAS as a telecommunications service under Title II's common-carrier framework, the question is whether the FCC has authority to do so. Federal appeals courts have upheld previous FCC decisions on whether to apply common carrier rules to broadband. But some legal commentators claim the FCC is doomed to fail this time because of the Supreme Court's evolving approach on whether federal agencies can decide "major questions" without explicit instructions from Congress. Pantelis Michalopoulos, a Steptoe & Johnson partner who represented tech companies in the defense of net neutrality rules, said a recent Supreme Court decision "teaches us that the major questions doctrine is not some new chimera, some new animal dreamt up by the court, but rather the crystallization of existing law." Michalopoulos said that one relevant case for the FCC is the 2000 Supreme Court decision in FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, which held that the Food and Drug Administration didn't have authority to regulate tobacco products as drugs or devices. He pointed out that the FCC already survived scrutiny under the FDA precedent in two cases decided at the DC Circuit appeals court—Verizon v. FCC in 2014 and USTelecom et al v. FCC in 2016. The USTelecom v. FCC ruling that upheld Title II regulation of broadband cited the Supreme Court's FDA decision. It also cited the Supreme Court's 2005 ruling in National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, which upheld the FCC's authority to decide that cable broadband should be regulated as an information service instead of a telecommunications service. One of the biggest unknowns is whether the Supreme Court will take up Title II regulation of broadband at all. Benton Institute for Broadband & Society Senior Counselor Andrew Jay Schwartzman said, "In the parlance of Supreme Court practitioners, it is not a 'good vehicle' for the Court. In the Brand X case, the question was whether the FCC interpreted the statute correctly in deciding whether to put BIAS into Title I, Title II, or Title V. No one on the Court expressed any question that the FCC would have no authority at all over [broadband service]. That would likely require overruling Brand X. While Justice [Clarence] Thomas has now said he regrets his vote in Brand X, that was in the context of Chevron deference, not the major question doctrine." While broadband's regulatory classification is important, Schwartzman added that "overruling a precedent uses a good bit of judicial political capital" and that he suspects most of the justices "want to avoid that in a case that is surely important but doesn't rise to the level of abortion or the Second Amendment. There are plenty of other cases for the Supreme Court to expand on the [major questions doctrine] where the issues have not been before the court and don't carry as much baggage as net neutrality."

The Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program's Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) directs States and Territories to include in their Initial Proposals “a middle-class affordability plan to ensure that all consumers have access to affordable high-speed internet.” ACA Connects believes each State and Territory should provide a rational basis for its plan and justify its methodology.  For instance, States and Territories could produce evidence on middle-class income levels and the amount or percentage of income that existing subscribers are spending on broadband service.  A State or Territory could then confirm whether its proposed affordability plan is reasonable by examining prices, terms, and conditions for broadband service in areas that are competitively served. Another, somewhat related, approach would be for States and Territories to require subgrantees to offer the same pricing and service packages in BEAD-funded areas that they offer in competitive areas in the same State or Territory.

The Michigan High-Speed Internet Office (MIHI) is now accepting public comment on Volume 1 of Michigan’s Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Initial Proposal. Public comments will be used to help draft MIHI’s proposal for how Michigan will use the historic $1.559 billion funding allocation from the BEAD Act to expand access to high-speed internet service to more homes, businesses and community anchor institutions in the state. As of 2023, close to 500,000 Michigan households are unserved or underserved by high-speed internet infrastructure and another 730,000 households face barriers related to a combination of affordability, adoption, device access and digital literacy. This means approximately 30% of Michigan households do not have an affordable, reliable high-speed internet connection that meets their needs. The BEAD funding will be used to close the digital divide. Volume 1 of the Initial Proposal outlines the process that MIHI will implement to identify every home, business and institution in the state that is eligible to be connected to the internet through the BEAD Program. To ensure no locations across the state are missed, the process will allow local units of government, non-profit organizations and internet service providers to supply evidence to MIHI if locations are unserved, underserved or served by high-speed internet. Public comment on Volume 1 of the BEAD Initial Proposal is open now through 11:59 p.m. on October 31, 2023. Comments may be submitted through a webform or MIHI will also accept comments by postal mail.  

This paper investigates the association between relative mobile broadband penetration (i.e. mobile broadband connections in total mobile connections) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions globally. The study is based on 181 countries for the period 2002–2020. The results indicate an initial increase in CO₂ emissions for a country at an average emission level once mobile broadband is introduced. Possible explanations might be initial investment in network infrastructure and increased consumption of electricity. However, on average for the period 2002–2020 the continuous relationship between mobile broadband (defined as speeds of at least 256 kb/s) and CO₂ is significantly negative in a statistical sense, i.e. emissions at a country level significantly reduce as mobile broadband penetration increase. Based on a two-stage model and controlling for additional independent variables (i.e. GDP per capita, population density, the share of electricity consumption that comes from fossil fuel, industry as a share of GDP, a regulation index, fixed broadband penetration, working age population as a share of total population and a human capital index), we conclude that on average a 10 percentage points increase in relative mobile broadband penetration causes a 7 percent reduction of CO₂ emissions per capita (given that the instrumental variable strategy, as assumed, identifies causal effects). Thus, the results shows that investments in mobile infrastructure over longer periods of time can contribute to mitigating climate change. However, the relationship is only significant for high-income countries (i.e. countries with a GNI of $4096 or above). The results remain significant when mobile broadband is defined as mobile broadband connections per 100 inhabitants.

Rather than focusing exclusively on speed, we've expanded our ranking methodology and data sources to include a broader range of qualitative measurements, including the internet service providers' (ISPs) coverage area, prices, and customer satisfaction ratings. By combining all these data points, we're able to objectively pinpoint the Best ISPs in the US—not just the fastest ones. And we've broken down the winners into three separate categories: the Best Major ISPs, the Best All-Around ISPs, and the Best ISPs by Region of the US. For each of these categories, we clearly lay out the best providers and provide helpful context to tell the parts of the story that numbers alone cannot. Starlink, Fios, Spectrum, and MetroNet were leaders in the Major ISPs category. Starlink, Google Fiber, Armstrong, and Sonic won in Overall.