Before 2020, explaining why the US needed to invest in expanding high-speed internet infrastructure was not always easy. Lawmakers or community leaders often did not understand or could not justify spending money on what can often be an expensive venture. Fast forward to 2021, and the level of broadband-related federal funding is mindboggling – upward of $370 billion. Now that the infrastructure bill passed, that figure rises by billions of dollars more. That’s because with the pandemic came a new understanding of the reasons that investment is necessary, not in a few years but immediately. The pandemic has been brutal for everyone, especially during those first few months of 2020. Millions of US workers suddenly had to telework. Likewise, millions of US children suddenly had to access remote learning to take part in classes. Millions of senior citizens were told to limit exposure to COVID-19 by accessing telehealth instead of going to in-office health care visits. Yet millions of kids, parents, veterans, senior citizens, low-income families and others did not have access to the high-speed internet they needed to do these things. It’s not just about the infrastructure. It's also a matter of digital literacy and affordability.

[Jessica Denson is the communications director at Connected Nation.]

Not long after Beth Ford became CEO of the Land O’Lakes cooperative in 2018, she toured agriculture co-ops and farms across rural America. By early 2019, she was alarmed that many small towns and rural residents lacked high-speed internet service, which she feared would leave them behind in the 21st-century economy. She recognized the technology deficit would greatly reduce access to education and health care and harm job creation. Ford became hell-bent on securing broadband funding at the federal level. Less than three years later, on November 15, she was on the White House lawn to witness President Biden’s signing of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which included $65 billion for broadband. “I couldn’t be happier, “ Ford said, as she ticked off the names of several Land O’Lakes leaders who helped her build a national coalition that was unrelenting in pressing for broadband funding. She recalls telling her core team: “Look what you did. We know this is so important to all of us, and look at how you drove change.” In an interview with Twin Cities Business, Ford described the steps that she and Land O’Lakes took to build national awareness of the technology gap, to create the American Connection Project to leverage political support, and to work with powerful chief executives in the Business Roundtable to elevate the importance of a bipartisan infrastructure package.

Verizon and AT&T are hoping new swaths of C-band cellular radio spectrum will help make the 5G hype closer to reality, but the big mid-band 5G rollout may have a side effect. Airplanes rely on radio altimeters to tell how high they are above the ground to safely land when pilots can’t see, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is now instructing 6,834 of them to not do that at certain airports because of 5G interference. The FAA ruled on December 7 that those thousands of US planes (and some helicopters) won’t be able to use many of the guided and automatic landing systems that are designed to work in poor visibility conditions if they’re landing at an airport where there’s deemed to be enough interference that their altimeters aren’t reliable. “Landings during periods of low visibility could be limited due to concerns that the 5G signal could interfere with the accuracy of an airplane’s radio altimeter, without other mitigations in place,” said an FAA spokesman. That likely means flight delays: “These limitations could prevent dispatch of flights to certain locations with low visibility, and could also result in flight diversions,” reads the FAA’s written statement. “We are engaged with the wireless operators, as well as our interagency partners, to do everything possible to make sure the mitigations are tailored to prevent disruptions,” an FAA spokesman said.

Nonprofit newsrooms like States Newsroom keep close tabs on the state legislatures and regulatory agencies where decisions are being made that affect many aspects of daily life for citizens: taxes, environmental rules, health care policy, school funding, workers rights and much more. With funding from foundations and a variety of donors, States Newsroom formed two years ago to attempt to fill a void in what many government watchdogs and civil-society experts believe is one of the biggest manifestations of the local journalism crisis: the dire shortage of reporters covering state government. States Newsroom will soon announce plans to nearly double its presence, from its current 25 states to about 40 over the next two and a half years. It will open its next five outlets in Nebraska, Alaska, Arkansas, South Carolina and Kentucky. It’s also launching “News from the States,” a new online clearinghouse to showcase all their affiliates’ reporting. Each news bureau is run independently, usually by veteran journalists, with staffs of about four or five journalists. And each allows other news organizations to republish its work free.

Comcast has touted all the network upgrades it is doing as it pushes toward DOCSIS 4.0, but it appears to be planning one more key move: rolling out new Wi-Fi routers that can handle the speeds it’s aiming to deliver. Comcast Cable CEO David Watson said the company views Wi-Fi as a key element of its broadband package. Rather than trying to push out new customer premises equipment all at once when it’s ready to roll out symmetrical and multi-gig speeds, Watson said it’s trying to get ahead of the curve. “We will be delivering early next year a new gateway that is the first tri-band gateway device that includes the 6 GHz band. So, we’ll have 2.4, 5 GHz, 6GHz, plenty of bandwidth. And it really is a terrific way to make sure proactively as we grow and go towards multi-gig symmetrical down the road that we have the right [customer premises equipment].” In September 2021, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts highlighted the company’s strategy of trying to deepen its customer relationships with the right products and services, like Wi-Fi and TV. But Watson said it is also working to grow the sheer number of customers it has in the first place. “We are not standing still,” he said. “We added last year alone over 870,000 new homes passed. So, we also are growing and adding more capability. Our total addressable marketplace will continue to increase.”

Federal Communications Commission nominee Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] could be running into more Republican and industry headwinds in the Biden administration's effort to get a Democratic majority on the agency. Despite a relative lack of contentiousness in Sohn's confirmation hearing and despite Republicans concerned about her past advocacy for fair use carve-outs for copyrighted material and her criticism of Fox News Channel, there are reports that a hold could be put on her nomination by one of those concerned Republicans. A definite potential source of the hold is Sen Thom Tillis (R-NC), ranking member on the Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee. Tillis asked President Joe Biden to withdraw Sohn's nomination, saying he had many concerns but copyright was chief among them. On December 6, his office confirmed he would do whatever he could to stop the nomination, including placing a hold. Another possible hold source is Sen Dan Sullivan (R-AK), arguably her toughest opponent at the nomination hearing, particularly over the issue of her past tweets critical of Fox News. The hold could have backers among both internet service providers and broadcasters, ISPs over that net neutrality stand and broadcasters over signals she’s sent that she could support restoring some broadcast regulation, a group one source characterized as “the coalition of the freaking out.”