Light Reading's Nicole Ferraro and Jake Varn, associate manager with Pew's Broadband Access Initiative, discuss how the lapse of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) in May is now impacting states' plans to expand broadband access through federal broadband programs, including the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program and Digital Equity Act. They also talk about various options for addressing affordability without the ACP, and the roadblocks on those paths as well.

More than a week after the remnants of Hurricane Helene unleashed catastrophic flooding in much of western North Carolina, cell service remains spotty—or, in many cases, nonexistent. Not being able to text or call has complicated relief efforts, made previously straightforward daily tasks difficult and even kept people in the dark about whether or not their loved ones perished in the storm. Relief workers said the lack of cell service is making them less efficient. Some described multiple aid groups, unable to coordinate on the go, arriving at the same house one after another. In areas of North Carolina that were affected by the storm, more than 20 percent of cell sites were still down on October 4, according to the Federal Communications Commission. On Sept. 28, a day after the area suffered its worst damage, about 82 percent of Buncombe County’s cell towers were offline, mostly because of power outages and disruptions between the fiber optic lines and cell towers.

A new Pew Research Center analysis of the accounts Americans follow on TikTok highlights the centrality of internet-native content creators, prominent influencers and traditional celebrities on the popular short-form video platform. It also finds that users choose to follow far more accounts that post about pop culture and entertainment than those posting about news or politics. Broadly, they follow lots of creators and influencers who have risen to their current level of prominence via social media, as well as traditional celebrities. Together, these groups are around half of all the accounts followed by U.S. adults on the platform and the vast majority of the 100 accounts followed by the largest share of U.S. adults. But they follow very few politicians, civic actors or traditional media outlets and journalists. Each of these groups makes up less than half of 1% of all the accounts we examined. And the typical U.S. adult on TikTok follows no accounts in each of these categories. Americans on TikTok also follow a large number of accounts that do not fit cleanly in any of these categories. These are largely personal accounts that have relatively few followers and post infrequently, if ever. Some 38% of all accounts followed by U.S. adults on the site fit this description.