A year ago, I urged us all to look beyond the $65 billion the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act sets aside for broadband and realize the importance of Congress’ recognition that access to affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband is essential to full participation in modern life in the United States. I still find this renewed and updated Congressional commitment to universal service to be astounding. We should continue to celebrate it—and continue the work that ensures this commitment becomes a reality. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed in all-too-stark terms what is at stake if we do not close the digital divide and extend digital opportunity to everyone in the U.S. Although our “Broadband Moment” may have been born to address the unmistakable gaps laid bare during the pandemic, the roots of this commitment go as far back at least to 1996 when Congress instructed the Federal Communications Commission to encourage the timely deployment of broadband. Our choice has always been either to allow the divide to persist, holding back individuals, families, communities, and our nation—or to ensure everyone can use broadband fit for the changing world. With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, America chooses the latter. We will all be better for it.

On November 10, the Federal Communications Commission released a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), a formal announcement of the availability of grant funds to develop innovative outreach strategies to reach historically underserved and unserved communities, raise awareness of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), and help eligible individuals enroll in the program. Here are highlights of the NOFO for organizations that are already doing ACP outreach or for those who may be considering it.

The Virginia Funders Network (VFN) is a prominent membership organization with more than 100 philanthropic organizations from every corner of Virginia. VFN convened a small group of member foundations that were interested in or already supporting broadband initiatives. Based on input from this small group, VFN quickly came to understand the critical connection between affordable, reliable broadband access and VFN members achieving their missions. As a result, VFN ramped up its efforts to inform and engage its membership through webinars, a conference presentation, and coordination of meetings with state and national experts. VFN served as a facilitator connecting place-based foundations with one of the state’s broadband authorities and the main broadband infrastructure program, the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative (VATI).

A partnership led by the Maine Connectivity Authority is seeking to build a 530-million "middle-mile" fiber broadband network that would serve tens of thousands of residents and businesses across the state. Middle-mile infrastructure is the regional fiber optic infrastructure made up of high-capacity fiber that carries large amounts of data at high speeds over long distances and between various elements of telecommunications infrastructure. The network would encompass 131 communities, representing over 11,000 unserved residents and local businesses. It will reach more than 200 community anchor institutions, including schools, hospitals, libraries, local government buildings, and civic centers. Maine’s application proposes $53 million to construct the Maine Online Optical Statewide Enabling Network ("MOOSE Net"). The proposal aims to fill in the so-called "middle mile" of connectivity in Maine, to replace the current patchwork of individual private networks with infrastructure that connects homes, businesses, and other users at the local level. MOOSE Net’s expansion would deploy open-access fiber "highways" that provide an essential backbone network to enable last-mile providers to increase their coverage, help fortify digital infrastructure to prevent outages, and advance the competitiveness of rural communities.

I’m taken aback when I see fiber-based broadband providers offering what can best be described as stingy speeds. The other day, I ran across a broadband provider that offers a range of speeds between 25/3 Mbps and 100/20 Mbps on fiber. Earlier I ran across a provider that has fiber products as tiny as symmetrical 10 Mbps. This frankly mystifies me, and I always wonder why somebody with fiber would offer broadband products that are similar to their competitors. I figure that part of the reason is what I would call old thinking. Somebody offering that kind of speed is likely a small telephone company that used to offer DSL or a small rural cable company that didn’t have fast speeds. DSL products were set at a range of speeds up to 25/3 Mbps because that’s what the technology would allow. I can’t imagine the thought process that says the slow speeds are adequate. According to OpenVault, 75% of US households are currently subscribing to download speeds of 200 Mbps or faster. That includes over 14% of homes nationwide that are subscribing to a gigabit product. It’s clear that people want faster broadband. I think another part of the reason that a provider would set low speeds is a fundamental belief that customers that buy faster speeds will somehow cost the provider a lot more money. But after having seen the impact of hundreds of providers that have upgraded to faster speeds, I know this is not true. Another reason behind offering slow speeds probably goes back to the day when buying Internet backbone connections was extremely expensive, and operators feared that a burst in usage would cost a lot. That’s also not true anymore in most places. Wholesale broadband prices have tumbled over the last decade. I know providers that are buying eight or ten times more bandwidth than a decade ago, at basically the same cost.  I can’t understand providers that have these stingy pricing plans when their peers a town away have normal broadband pricing.

In 2012 the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was asked to write a report on how it envisioned the allocation of wireless spectrum in the future. Taking the position that clearing spectrum for unencumbered use was too difficult in some cases, the report called for sharing spectrum between incumbent federal, state and local users and commercial users. Licenses should be small, reused, and relicensed and would thereby increase the capacity by a factor of 1,000. The Federal Communications Commission formalized this approach with the creation of the Citizen’s Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) out of 150 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum in the 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) band. Today, a decade after this approach was proposed, a review of the current CBRS marketplace reveals a gap between the promise of this type of sharing and its reality. Key points include:

• Real-world studies indicate low utilization of CBRS spectrum, while there is no way to measure whether CBRS spectrum is being used at greater levels of efficiency
• The most prevalent use cases are traditional wireless deployments
• The supply of sharing services is declining, particularly those supplied by non-traditional providers, driven by low demand for these services

This situation can be explained by the following factors: Federal preemption of commercial spectrum rights are a barrier to applications that require guaranteed levels of service; Low power levels and small license sizes limit the ability to provide coverage and increase cost; This sharing has proven to be more complex than anticipated.

Google agreed to a record $391.5 million privacy settlement with a 40-state coalition of attorneys general for charges that it misled users into thinking they had turned off location tracking in their account settings even as the company continued collecting that information. Under the settlement, Google will also make its location tracking disclosures clearer starting in 2023. The attorneys general said that the agreement was the biggest internet privacy settlement by US states. It capped a four-year investigation into the internet search giant’s practices from 2014-2020, which the attorneys general said violated the state's consumer protection laws. Google said it had already corrected some of the practices mentioned in the settlement. States have taken an increasingly central role in reining in the power and business models of Silicon Valley corporations, amid a vacuum of action from federal lawmakers. The attorneys general of Oregon and Nebraska led the settlement negotiations, assisted by Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. The final settlement was also joined by Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.