The deadline for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)'s middle-mile grant program just closed, and the NTIA said that it received 235 applications totaling $5.5 billion in grant requests for a $1 billion grant program. I was surprised when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) legislation allocated only $1 billion to middle-mile fiber. That works out to only $20 million per state. It will be interesting to see how the NTIA spreads the funding. I have to imagine that some of the grant requests are from states or groups of counties asking to build large statewide or regional networks. It’s likely that most of the grant requests hope to build fiber routes that immediately solve existing problems. But unfortunately, more than 80% of the requests are not going to get funded. Maybe the great demand for this grant program will prompt Congress to find more funding for middle-mile. It’s one of the best investments they can make.

Governor Tim Walz appointed Bree Maki to serve as the Director of the Office of Broadband Development. Maki will replace previous director Angie Dickison. Bree Maki is the senior outreach director and state broadband and telecommunications outreach director for Senator Tina Smith (D-MN). Maki previously worked as an office administrator for Winona County Soil and Water Conservation District.  As director of the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development, Maki will provide a key service in the state's efforts to build stronger communities, and helps Minnesotans understand broadband options available and work together to improve the availability and use of high-speed broadband services.

President Biden signed an Executive Order on Enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities (E.O.) directing the steps that the United States will take to implement the US commitments under the European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-US DPF) introduced by President Biden and European Commission President von der Leyen in March of 2022. Transatlantic data flows are critical to enabling the $7.1 trillion EU-US economic relationship. The Executive Order bolsters an already rigorous array of privacy and civil liberties safeguards for U.S. signals intelligence activities. It also creates an independent and binding mechanism enabling individuals in qualifying states and regional economic integration organizations, as designated under the E.O., to seek redress if they believe their personal data was collected through U.S. signals intelligence in a manner that violated applicable U.S. law. Overall, the Executive Order does the following:

• Adds further safeguards for U.S. signals intelligence activities;
• Mandates handling requirements for personal information collected through signals intelligence activities and extends responsibilities by government officials;
• Requires U.S. Intelligence Community elements to update their policies and procedures;
• Creates a multi-layer mechanism for individuals from qualifying states and regional economic integration organizations;
• Calls on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to review Intelligence Community policies and procedures.

For rural operators looking to take advantage of edge computing, partnerships will be key to their success. Taking a “build it and they will come” approach may not be the right strategy. Instead, the opportunity could be in partnering with “hyperscalers” (massive companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon) that are looking to deploy edge computing equipment in rural America but don’t have the local resources/ capabilities to do so. Key information from this report includes: 

• Edge computing is distributed information technology architecture where data is stored and/or processed at locations close to where the applications are being used.
• Edge computing has been on the come for several years, but the growth in machine learning and AI technologies are enabling new applications that depend on edge computing.
• The global edge computing market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 37.3% between 2022 and 2031, according to Transparency Market Research.
• The advantage of edge computing is two-fold: cost and latency. New applications need ultra-low latency network performance to operate properly, and it might be cheaper to store and process data in a more decentralized fashion versus in the cloud.
• For rural telecom operators, edge computing offers some new business opportunities. But partnerships will be key – a “build it and they will come” approach is probably not the right strategy.

Wireless internet service providers (WISPs) have hit a breaking point. With fiber players gaining steam and both public and private funding fueling overbuilds of their territories, the heads of several fixed wireless providers say that they don’t expect WISPs to survive beyond the next five to 10 years—at least not in their current form. WISP executives said they are up against rising construction costs, staffing struggles, spectrum questions, and the impending retirement of long-time CEOs. But all said a tidal wave of private and government broadband funding is the primary factor forcing their hand, pushing many to begin overbuilding their networks with fiber. By and large, officials have zeroed in on fiber as the technology of choice. Beyond the question of what technology is getting funding, there’s also the question of what areas are receiving money. Though WISPs have received federal dollars in the past for broadband buildouts, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recently decided areas covered by WISPs with unlicensed spectrum will count as “unserved” for the purposes of the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. That means competitors are poised to get government money to overbuild territory WISPs made the effort to cover when no one else would. While some WISPs plan to hang on as long as they can with wireless, Most larger WISPs will evolve into fiber-first internet service providers, or FFISPs, over the coming years.