As we reach the first anniversary of President Biden signing the American Rescue Plan into law, the obvious questions include: How did it help? Where or whom did it help the most? And most importantly, did the $1.9 trillion bill do what Congress and the president intended? Did it help Americans get back to work and rebuild communities with an eye towards reducing the inequities that were magnified during the COVID-19 pandemic? The one-year progress report shows the remarkable short-term results it achieved, and sets the stage for positive long-term impacts. Cities are using Rescue Plan funds to address the digital divide. Before the pandemic, 79 percent of white adults had home broadband access compared to 66 percent of Black adults and 61 percent of Hispanic adults. After COVID caused schools to close and a transition to working from home, a study from Rice University found 1 in 10 white parents reported challenges with internet and/or digital access compared to 1 in 3 Black families and 1 in 4 Hispanic families. And even pre-COVID, an NTIA survey indicated AAPI families were 4 percent less likely to go online compared to their white non-Hispanic peers. As we look to the long-term potential of the Rescue Plan, we can turn to Brownsville, Texas, where Mayor Trey Mendez took office in one of America’s most poorly connected cities in 2019. The city chose to use these funds to build out 95 miles of infrastructure and bring broadband to some of the most underserved communities in the area. The American Rescue Plan worked. We are already seeing how investments over just the past year are building a brighter future for all Americans.

[Rep Marilyn Strickland represents Washington's 10th District and is an honorary co-chair of NewDEAL. Debbie Cox Bultan is CEO of NewDEAL.]

The city of Houston (TX) has started the deployment of digitally interactive kiosks, which will offer wayfinding information and act as Wi-Fi hot spots. In the two years since the COVID-19 pandemic shifted schools and government alike to operate virtually, digital equity has become a top priority for cities. Local governments have taken a number of routes to establish more public Wi-Fi hot spots, deploying them at libraries and even in smart streetlights. For the city of Houston, the project — led by the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development with support from the Mayor’s Office of Innovation (MOI) — has been part of the mayor’s vision to be a smart city and provide residents with digital amenities, explained Director of Innovation Jesse Bounds. The city released an RFP in March 2020 and selected IKE Smart City as the vendor a year later, which was followed by the City Council’s May 2021 approval. In early February, the city unveiled its first kiosk. Notably, each kiosk will act as a free Wi-Fi hot spot that can support connectivity up to 75 feet away. This Internet access is throttled and restricted with time limits, Bounds said. This is an important component of the project as it will create “pockets of digital connectivity” for city residents, as Bounds explained. The devices can also be used to communicate with city residents. For example, the city can use the kiosks to push out information on topics like services or COVID-19 testing sites.

House Republican Leaders sent a letter to US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy regarding the Biden Administration's approach to COVID-19 related misinformation on tech platforms. "We write with significant concerns that the Biden Administration continues to undermine the First Amendment by pressuring technology companies to censor specific users and certain speech," reads the letter sent by Reps Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Steve Scalise (R-LA) and James Comer (R-KY). "The First Amendment prohibits the government from directly censoring speech it finds objectionable. To bypass that prohibition, Biden Administration officials continue to pressure private companies to do what it cannot." The lawmakers detail the surgeon general's public statements on health misinformation online and claim the Administration's stance on this content is unconstitutional. "As defenders of free speech," they said, "we are deeply troubled by the Biden Administration's efforts to silence Americans and your specific role in chilling free speech and expression under the guise of 'public health.'" The representative request that Murthy respond to a variety of questions about his communications to other Biden officials and to tech companies about COVID-19 misinformation by March 25, 2022.

The race to 5G is forcing the world's biggest telecom giants to consolidate. 5G is all about scale; when companies combine, they have more resources and capital to bid on spectrum and build out tools to get ahead. Orange and Masmovil announced they entered exclusive talks to merge their operations in Spain at a valuation of €19.6 billion ($21.7 billion). The companies said the merger helps them "gain the necessary scale and efficiency to undertake an ambitious and sustainable expansion of its FTTH [fiber to the home] and 5G networks." In the US, T-Mobile got ahead in the 5G race by acquiring Sprint in 2020. "We win in this business because of the capacity that we can generate on this network," said Neville Ray, president of technology of T-Mobile US. Ray said the capacity T-Mobile could build over a five-year period is 14 times what it would be without Sprint — a statistic he has previously touted.
“In 5G, it is T-Mobile that looks poised to lead," MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett said, citing T-Mobile’s mid-band spectrum scale, which came as a result of the merger.