Return to March 2020. A horrible month for the United States. A great month for broadband. The COVID experience led to provisions—widely praised even by those who didn’t vote for them—in the 2021 Infrastructure Bill, to address the digital divide. Yet the United States may soon take the greatest step backward any country has ever taken to increase its digital divide. Why? The legislation’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which subsidizes broadband for nearly 23 million households, will soon run out of funds. The economic case for the ACP is clear—a recent economics paper estimated that for every dollar spent on the program, the US GDP would increase by $3.89. So is the political case. A conservative think tank recently released a poll showing 79% of voters support continuing the ACP “including 62% of Republicans, 78% of Independents, and 96% of Democrats.” While the Bible doesn't mention broadband, it does mandate the moral sentiment behind most assistive programs: that we have an obligation to help people so that they can live among us in dignity, in health, in prosperity. So, whether one bases one’s policy preferences on economics, politics or theology, the answer is the same. Congress should extend ACP.

[Blair Levin is the Policy Advisor to New Street Research and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Metro​. Prior to joining New Street, Blair served as Chief of Staff to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt (1993-1997), directed the writing of the United States National Broadband Plan (2009-2010), and was a policy analyst for the equity research teams at Legg Mason and Stif Nicolaus. Levin is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.]

In these comments to the Federal Communications Commission, the American Library Association affirms support for including Wi-Fi hotspots and services in the E-rate program, ALA urges the FCC to:

• Balance the program goals, including protections against waste, fraud, and abuse, with the equitable distribution of funds and minimal administrative burden, especially regarding data collection and recordkeeping. Seek alternative data solutions for determining need. Program goals and any metrics developed to assess the impact of Wi-Fi hotspot lending through E-rate must allow for local variation and library patron privacy constraints.
• Establish rules that are not contrary to state or local patron privacy laws and library best practices in safeguarding patron privacy.
• Find that the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) does not apply to the use of off-premises patron-owned devices. Find that CIPA does not apply to library-owned computers when a library receives E-rate only for Wi-Fi hotspots for off-site use and is not receiving any E-rate funds for its in-building internet access or internal connections.
• Give applicants maximum flexibility to determine the most cost-effective and efficient solutions to provide off-site internet connectivity.

The US is at risk of experiencing a new type of rural/urban digital divide, said stakeholders at the RTIME conference. “Latency is becoming the new currency,” said Brent Legg, executive vice president of Connected Nation, a non-profit focused on carrier neutral internet exchange points. The root of the problem is that only 57 US cities have internet exchange points, requiring providers serving customers outside those areas to transport traffic to one of those 57 cities to exchange traffic with the network operator and/or content provider at the opposite end of the connection. This adds latency, which means that internet users outside the 57 cities will have an inferior user experience in comparison with those in the 57 cities. And this issue will become increasingly important as applications that require low latency gain in popularity. “We can’t have one type of experience in urban areas and a different experience in rural areas,” said Legg.

The South Carolina Broadband Office (SCBBO) is pleased to announce the conclusion of its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Capital Projects Fund (CPF) 1.0 Grant Program. In addition to those projects that were announced on December 18, 2023 and January 31, 2024, the SCBBO recently awarded 16 additional projects totaling $71.5 million, which completes the deployment of South Carolina’s CPF allocation of $185,121,662. Taken collectively, the ARPA CPF 1.0 funds were awarded to 15 internet service providers for 34 projects; the funds will positively impact 41 counties and will transform the Main Street communities of Norway and Ridge Spring, SC. The total project cost for this round is estimated to be $290,246,872. This amount reflects an overall match rate of 36 percent non-ARPA funds (other federal and/or private investment), in addition to the ARPA funds provided by the SCBBO.

The FirstNet Authority and its network partner, AT&T announced a major investment in the future of public safety communications. The FirstNet Authority’s 10-year, $8 billion investment initiative will evolve and expand FirstNet—America’s public safety network. The FirstNet Authority plans to invest $6.3 billion through its network contract with AT&T and anticipates an additional $2 billion for ongoing investments in coverage enhancements for public safety, which is currently under discussion by the parties. These strategic investments will expand and evolve FirstNet so public safety stays at the forefront of innovative, lifesaving technologies. As public safety’s partner, AT&T has already grown FirstNet—the only network built with and for America’s first responders and the extended public safety community—to cover more first responders than any network nationwide.

The message that emerged from Comcast Converge was that everything the company does—mobile, video, sports streaming, security and, of course, broadband—relies on the performance of its network infrastructure. By extension (given the fact that no one has plugged anything into a router to connect to the internet in ages), that means Wi-Fi. The way Comcast is thinking about convergence is probably best exemplified with this statistic: The first NFL playoff game which was exclusively streamed on its Peacock service in January accounted for a whopping 30 percent of all US internet traffic. Think about that and what that means as more entertainment shifts to streaming and other internet-based services. Not only do ISP networks have to be up to the task, but the in-home experiences they deliver via Wi-Fi do, too.