The Affordability Connectivity Program, a federal program that helped lower-income households pay their Internet bills and connect to the Internet, fully expires at the end of May, but Rep Kathy Manning (D-NC) is calling for it to continue. Rep Manning enlisted Guilford County and Rockingham County schools superintendents and State Senator Michael Garrett (D-27), to help make the case. Rockingham County Superintendent John Stover said the school district invested effort and dollars, alongside other partners, toward expanding infrastructure for families to access the Internet in the county. "I really hope that the Affordable Connectivity Program is not one of those programs that gets cut off at the knees, and I'm really worried about it," he said. "The worst thing we could do is have all that infrastructure in place and then, at the most crucial time, cut it for our families."

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) provides $42.45 billion in grant funding to states via the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program (BEAD). IIJA also underscores that any state receiving these funds may not exclude local governments from applying to use these funds to build their own broadband networks. Yet, 17 states have laws that do exactly this. With tens of billions of dollars about to be disbursed, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)—the government agency tasked with overseeing BEAD—continues to ignore a looming legal quandary that could mire the program in lawsuits. This legal paradox is not subtle. The IIJA is quite explicit: states may not exclude local governments from eligibility for BEAD funding. NTIA has ignored this looming problem for more than two years but is now out of time. And if NTIA does not reconcile this grant eligibility issue, it will be guilty of allocating billions of dollars in federal funding in violation of federal statute.

[Christopher Ali is the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications and Professor of Telecommunications in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University. David Elliot Berman is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Media, Inequality & Change Center at the University of Pennsylvania studying media policy and journalism. Sydney L. Forde is a PhD candidate in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University. Her work focuses on the political economy of communications and media industries, media policy, and critical theory.  Sascha Meinrath is the Palmer Chair in Telecommunications in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University and the director of X-Lab. Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy and Co-Director of the Media, Inequality & Change Center at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.]

Digital equity cannot be fully realized without the participation of educational institutions, including K-12 public schools, community colleges, historically black and other minority serving colleges and universities, and extension programs. Many state digital equity plans embrace education and potential collaborations with educational institutions. All states acknowledge that digital equity is critical to education. All learners need access to connected devices, software, and the internet—as well as to trained educators to help them navigate those tools. But some states go further than others in efforts to collaborate and partner with educational institutions. States’ approaches to the role of educational institutions in digital inclusion work generally fall into three categories:

1. The state acknowledges that a lack of digital equity impedes educational quality and attainment.
2. The state plans to collaborate with educational institutions, primarily for device distribution.
3. The state plans to partner with educational institutions in order to achieve digital equity, both in terms of access/affordability and in terms of teaching digital skills.