The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) awarded more than $175 million to 61 colleges and universities as part of the Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program (CMC). These new awards cover colleges and universities in 29 states and four territories. With these grants, all funding from this Internet for All grant program has been awarded to 93 universities. Including 43 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 24 Hispanic Serving Institutions, 21 Minority Serving Institutions, and five Tribal Colleges and Universities. These grants will help expand community technology hubs, upgrade classroom technology, and increase digital literacy skills at their minority-serving colleges and universities. A list of all CMC Pilot Program awardees can be found here. 

In the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Congress recognized that digital discrimination is a real and present problem for many people and charged the Federal Communications Commission with developing rules to prevent and eliminate it. NDIA and Common Sense Media submitted comments in response to the FCC’s recent Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the forthcoming digital discrimination rules. Examples of discriminatory practices to look out for: Pricing, Performance, Customer service, Network maintenance, Contract terms and conditions, and Marketing. We urged the FCC to develop comprehensive rules to capture all forms of digital discrimination that deny a person equal access to broadband service and to prioritize the following in its rules:

• Digital Discrimination can be intentional or unintentional. A service provider’s unintentional practices can leave individuals and communities without equal broadband access need to find evidence that a service provider intended to discriminate to take action to stop it. 
• Consumers and their lived experiences should be what drive the rulemaking process. The FCC should consistently consult with consumers and those who serve them, like digital inclusion practitioners and digital navigators, to fully understand their experiences and how the rules and processes developed can best serve them. 
• The FCC should revise the consumer complaint system. The FCC should make this process easier for individuals to navigate, and organizations should be able to easily submit complaints on behalf of communities impacted by digital discrimination and should also proactively analyze the data they collect through the complaint system to look for patterns of discrimination. This information should also be available to the public.
• The FCC should leverage data to uncover patterns of digital discrimination. The FCC should evaluate data from the Broadband Data Collection (BDC), the Broadband Data Act mapping process, along with data from other sources, (e.g., the Census Bureau) to look for patterns of digital discrimination.
• The FCC should conduct outreach to ensure the public understands their rights. Once the digital discrimination rules are adopted, the Commission should conduct outreach, awareness, and education campaigns across the country to ensure communities, digital inclusion practitioners, advocates, and consumers fully understand the rules, their importance, and how to navigate the complaint process. The FCC Commission should create a “Consumer Bill of Rights,” stating the rules in plain language and launch a “Know Your Rights” campaign complete with marketing and user-friendly educational materials. 

The Arkansas Department of Commerce announced on Feb. 22 that more than $53 million will be awarded to 10 internet service providers in Arkansas to extend high-speed internet in eight underserved counties throughout the state. The $53 million investment, combined with $18.8 million in provider matching funds, will result in nearly 5,800 homes and businesses being connected to fast, reliable internet in Ashley, Baxter, Chicot, Clark, Columbia, Hot Spring, Logan, and Lonoke counties. The Arkansas Rural Connect grant program has awarded nearly $550 million to connect more than 129,000 unserved and underserved locations throughout Arkansas; the latest awards complete the sixth award phase for the program. Awardees and counties that will benefit from this phase of the program include:

• CableSouth Media LLC (Ashley County) – $7.921 million
• NEXT, Powered by NAEC (Baxter County) – $2.151 million
• Ashley-Chicot Electric Cooperative Inc (Chicot County) – $6.621 million
• South Central Connect LLC (Clark County) – $1.677 million
• Four States Fiber (Columbia County) – $5.207 million
• South Central Connect LLC/Central Arkansas Telephone Cooperative Inc. (Hot Spring County) – $4.579 million
• Wave Rural Connect LLC/Cox Communications LLC (Logan County) – $14.252 million
• Connect2First Internet (Lonoke County) – $10.947 million

The Alaskan landscape is rife with broadband accessibility and deployment challenges, which GCI is all too familiar with. The operator recently reached a milestone with its AU-Aleutians fiber project, turning up 2-gig service in the city of Unalaska in December 2022. Billy Wailand, SVP of GCI Corporate Development, and GCI Chief Communications Officer Heather Handyside delved into the geographical and logistical constraints that came with undertaking the roughly $60 million project. Though Unalaska is an active fishing port, it’s also one of the most remote communities in the US, said Handyside. Flights to the region are unreliable and it’s inaccessible by road from the Alaskan mainland. GCI kicked off the AU-Aleutians project back in 2020, aiming to bring high-speed internet to a dozen Aleutian, Alaska Peninsula, and Kodiak Island communities. These communities vary in size, with Wailand noting some have fewer than 100 year-round residents, though the Aleutian areas will typically receive an influx of people during the fishing season. The AU-Aleutians project is partially funded by a $25 million US Department of Agriculture (USDA) ReConnect grant, with GCI covering the rest of the cost with its own capital. For the project in Port Lions, the operator obtained nearly $30 million from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Tribal Broadband Connectivity program (TBCP). Federal funding – particularly from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) – really got the ball rolling for building out to remote communities, as Wailand noted it’s generally difficult to make a business case for investing millions of dollars to service 500 and 600-person villages. Another project GCI is undertaking is with Bethel Native Corporation to bring 2-gig fiber to 10 communities in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The operator is leveraging a $42 million grant from the NTIA and $31 million from ReConnect to construct the 405-mile Airraq fiber network.

With the rapid rise of wireless technology, the demand for access to the spectrum has increased in recent years. However, there are critical and interrelated gaps and failures in the process and policies used for efficiently allocating the spectrum in the US. Key takeaways from an analysis on this issue include the following:

• Spectrum allocation takes place within an established process defined by international standards, legislation, regulations, and norms. 
• There are gaps in this process, such as insufficient information gathering and sharing early in the process, lack of rigorous technical standards and analysis, and inadequate adherence to the process. 
• To prevent future breakdowns, spectrum users and regulators should improve their understanding of spectrum-using devices’ performance and take steps to enhance it with assistance from auction revenues.
• US government personnel should establish strong working relationships between agencies to better understand and resolve potential interference disputes collaboratively and at a technical, rather than political, level.
• Congress should ensure agencies have sufficient resources to conduct necessary technical analysis, and regulators should apply that analysis to impartially balance competing interests.
• All participants in the spectrum allocation process should adhere to the established interagency process, and the White House should vigorously support jurisdictional boundaries.