Patrick Redmond, Nebraska’s interim broadband director, described his workspace as “an office of one.” Given the Nebraska Broadband Office was just created in January 2023, he said “there’s a big learning curve” in tackling the broadband landscape. One order of business is to get the state’s broadband maps up and running. Redmond said Nebraska has been working with a vendor since February 2023 to develop a map prototype. Nebraska aims to create a map that will “overlay every single funding source that targets broadband here in the state.” But tracking the map’s progress is tricky, as Redmond pointed out the Nebraska Public Service Commission – not the state broadband office – is in charge of creating and maintaining the map. However, the state legislation introduced in January 2023 aims to shift mapping responsibilities to Redmond’s office. Once passed, the bill will also allow the state broadband office to leverage funds from the $42.5 billion Broadband, Access, Equity, and Deployment (BEAD) program. But Redmond noted the structure of Nebraska’s legislature has slowed down the process of getting the legislation across the finish line. It isn’t Nebraska’s only legislative roadblock for broadband. State law currently prohibits municipal entities from providing broadband. Nebraska’s legislature, in January 2023, introduced a bill that would alleviate those restrictions, but no action has been taken on it thus far.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the Junk Fee Prevention Act  (S.916), which takes aim at eliminating fees that are not advertised for a product but that get added on after a customer buys a product or service. These fees were attacked this year by President Biden in the State of the Union Address. Telecommunications companies, particularly cable companies, are among the worst in having hidden junk fees that are not included in advertising but are added to a customer’s first bill. But telecom companies aren’t the only industry, and the bill is aimed at airlines, online ticket companies, and other industries that routinely advertise prices that are lower than what a consumer is ultimately charged. It’s clear why companies use junk fees since the practice gives them the ability to advertise super-low rates to attract customers. Consumers hate hidden fees. Anybody who has signed with one of the giant cable companies got a big surprise when they opened their first bill. But by then, most people are locked into a contract that came along with getting the low advertised rates. Deceptively low special rates make it unfairly hard to compete against a cable company. A competitor could have prices that are lower than the cable company, but hidden fees let the cable company advertise an untruthfully lower price. 

MTN Group, Africa’s biggest mobile-phone operator, plans to build a $320 million inland fiber cable to connect ten countries, as telecommunications companies push to expand service to the continent’s growing population. The Johannesburg-based firm, through its MTN GlobalConnect unit and the Africa50 infrastructure investment agency, will start building the East2West link in the fourth quarter of 2023, MTN said. The project will add about 20,000 kilometers (12,400 miles) of new cable and interconnect over 100,000 kilometers of fiber. Wireless carriers in Africa are increasingly investing in infrastructure as they seek to make money from services offered on their networks. Africa needs at least 500,000 more kilometers of fiber optic cables, according to MTN. Wireless carriers and US tech giants including Alphabet’s Google and Meta’s Facebook are also heavily investing in efforts to provide better connections to the continent’s young, fast-growing and tech-savvy population.