The purpose of this toolkit is to provide consumer advocates with resources to help educate consumers about the Lifeline program and how to apply. To encourage and assist consumer outreach, USAC has created resources in this toolkit that organizations can use instead of creating outreach from scratch. Consumer advocacy groups, social service agencies, and other organizations that support low-income consumers are welcome to print and distribute any or all of the toolkit’s resources in their communities. We encourage any necessary translation of these resources in order to share them beyond English-speaking communities. A primary goal of consumer outreach should be to direct potential participants to the Lifeline program’s consumer information website: LifelineSupport.org. We encourage consumer advocates to utilize the content referenced below for any Lifeline-related outreach. If advocates would prefer to create their own materials, they should include a link to LifelineSupport.org

In 2021, twenty-five community leaders from across Baltimore came together with national experts in areas related to network engineering, federal policymaking, community broadband networking, and grassroots organizing for a five-week online program, called “The Digital Equity Leadership Lab (DELL).” DELL was created by Robert W Deutsch Foundation staff as a response to other digital inclusion programs across the US that have failed to consider the technical aspects of the internet and social inequalities alongside broader internet policy and advocacy goal. Through interviews with fifteen of the twenty-five participants, plus national experts and Foundation staff, the case study sought to answer the question: How might DELL serve as a community-based leadership training model to develop the next wave of digital equity leaders? The case study is significant because it addresses a lack of understanding in both the scholarly literature and in practice about the role of community-based leadership development to promote digital equity and justice. The following three key findings emerged from the analysis: (1) Bringing national policymakers and advocates together with community leaders is powerful and transformative; (2) digital inequality is a social not a technological problem; and (3) community leaders need access to a shared platform and each other to create change.

[Colin Rhinesmith is a Faculty Associate and Director of the Community Informatics Lab at the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry and a Senior Fellow with the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.]

Gov Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and Lt Gov Garlin Gilchrist II (D-MI) announced that the state of Michigan has partnered with Connected Nation Michigan to lead the Broadband Infrastructure Audit and Validation project over the next six months. The Michigan Strategic Fund approved up to $5.2 million from federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) funds to Connected Nation Michigan for the Broadband Infrastructure Audit and Validation project. The funds were allocated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with the specific purpose of assisting with COVID-19 pandemic response and recovery. In addition, CDBG CARES funding should be used to fund eligible activities related to drive longer-term recovery and revitalization for low- and moderate-income individuals. This effort will help identify and map the precise location of existing high-speed internet assets in the state and the areas where access to high-speed internet is absent along more than 65,000 miles of public right-of-way. Understanding where high-speed internet access and assets exist, and where there are gaps, will be critical in both securing and prioritizing the $100 million in federal funding that is anticipated to be coming to Michigan for high-speed internet infrastructure buildout.

Comcast announced that it has increased speeds for its most popular Xfinity Internet tiers, providing an extra boost for millions of residential customers across 14 northeastern states from Maine through Virginia and Washington (DC). The speed increases follow on the heels of Comcast’s 2021 WiFi Trends Report, published in February 2022, which shared key findings detailing why WiFi is integral to Americans, with the number of devices connected to WiFi skyrocketing by 12X since 2018 as Xfinity households connected nearly 1 billion devices in 2021. Xfinity Internet service is delivered using Comcast’s existing network architecture and the connections that are already in most customers’ homes – no digging up streets, sidewalks or yards required. Over the last decade, Comcast has invested nearly $30 billion to build an expansive, fiber-dense network comprised of 191,000 route miles that carries an immense amount of traffic throughout the pandemic. The company has doubled its network capacity every 2.5 years to stay well ahead of demand.

The internet promised a world in which no government could fully hide the truth from its people. Russia's free-speech crackdown following its invasion of Ukraine is testing that premise as never before. How everyday Russians view the conflict is likely to determine their willingness to support Vladimir Putin and his war. Russia has succeeded in driving out or shutting down some of the most popular internet services while also squelching the remnants of Russia's own independent news operations. That means Russians who want information beyond what the state-sanctioned news outlets provide will have to rely on private or encrypted messaging services, virtual private networks or other technical workarounds. Russia has also applied varying restrictions on a number of social media platforms; the Kremlin's social media crackdown is paired with new limits on media coverage that could be wielded against anyone sharing information online. A law passed Friday in Russia threatens to imprison journalists and individuals for up to 15 years if they publish what Moscow deems to be "fake" information about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Growing Russian domestic protest against the Ukraine war would be the most telling sign that Putin's effort to block reliable information from the Russian populace has failed. The absence of such a movement would show that he has succeeded, but it's going to be hard for the rest of the world to have a clear view of the true extent of demonstrations and discontent within Russia.