The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania strives to achieve universal and equitable connectivity to support the state's social, economic, and quality of life outcomes. The Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (PBDA) has released Connected and Empowered: A Digital Equity Plan for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to work towards digital inclusion for every resident of the Commonwealth. PBDA's draft plan is available for public comment until January 8, 2024.

Cities are looking to leverage streetlights and even electric transformers to give them deeper insights into what’s happening on the ground. These technology developments come as public leaders also work to ensure individual privacy is not trampled on the road to a smart city. Many of the questions from city leaders involve how data is transported and stored, said Mike Grigsby, director of business development at Ubicquia, a smart city technology company. “The data is owned by the city,” Grigsby said. “We don’t hold that data." UbiHub, a smart city technology produced by Ubicquia, connects to basic infrastructure like streetlights, making it easy to deploy technology like Wi-Fi, cameras, sensors, license plate readers and other data-collecting technologies. That data informs city officials about what’s happening on a given block or section of town. But it’s not just a deeper understanding of what’s happening on city streets that has officials turning to urban tech. Utilities — whether operated by private companies or municipalities — are looking to smart city technologies for a deeper understanding of power needs and the condition of the equipment that provides that power. “You’re creating a better response, a more intelligent response,” said Grigsby.

While there was a huge amount of fiber built in the US in 2023, the largest providers almost universally cut back their plans during the year. There are a lot of reasons for the fiber construction slowdown. The high cost of borrowing put a crimp in a lot of service provider plans, and slowed new home startups, which are part of any plans for fiber expansion. Inflation played a role in the slowdown, too: it cost at least 20% more to build a fiber network by the end of 2023 than just a few years earlier. What are the consequences of a fiber construction slowdown? The biggest immediate impact is for fiber vendors, and seeing sales dip of millions of expected passings has to be extremely disappointing for the industry. Another immediate impact was on fiber contractors. A drop of over 3 million passings translates into a huge number of construction crews that didn’t get hired during the year. That goes a long way toward explaining why the forecasted shortage of technicians didn’t materialize as expected. Perhaps the biggest consequence is that 3 million fewer homes were passed by fiber. The big question, which nobody can likely answer, is if this slowdown is temporary and if the big internet service providers will eventually still reach their overall target number of fiber households. Or will the 2023 slowdown mean fewer homes will ever get fiber – at least from the giant providers?

Vexus Fiber kicked off the new year by launching service to its first customers in Huntsville (TX) after beginning construction in late 2023. Nearly 500 Huntsville homes and businesses are now connected to Vexus Fiber, with first active service areas located south and southwest of Interstate 45. Construction is expected to be complete by early 2025. Cameron Miller, Vexus VP of East Texas and Louisiana, said the Huntsville launch “represents a major milestone in our commitment to infrastructure and economic development in Texas.” Vexus merged with regional operator MetroNet in June 2022, though the companies have kept their separate brands and serve different footprints. Aside from Huntsville, Vexus operates fiber networks in nine other Texas markets, five Louisiana markets, and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I often describe NTIA as a ‘small but mighty’ agency. We lived up to that moniker in 2023, making considerable progress in our work to close the digital divide, build a better Internet at home and abroad, and support U.S. wireless innovation and leadership. NTIA hit major milestones in 2023, including:

• Announcing allocations at the White House for the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program to 56 states and territories.
• Awarding $980 million in grants across 40 states and territories from our Middle Mile program, which invests in projects building regional networks that support last-mile networks connecting homes and businesses.
• Making more than $1.86 billion in awards to support network deployment as well as devices and digital skills training for 226 Tribal entities through our Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program.
• We launched an inquiry into AI Accountability Policy and kicked off public engagement with this work at an event in December
• Finally, NTIA made huge strides in spurring U.S. wireless innovation and leadership with the White House release of our National Spectrum Strategy in November