Monday, May 20, 2024
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FCC Announces Tentative Agenda for June Open Commission Meeting
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State/Local
Governor Moore Announces $19.6 Million in Broadband Awards to Provide Internet Access to 2,400 Maryland Households
Governor Moore (D-MD) announced $19.6 million in Fiscal Year 2024 awards through a new Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development program to help more Marylanders access high-speed, affordable internet. Home Stretch for Difficult to Serve Properties, administered by the department’s Office of Statewide Broadband, will provide internet access to approximately 2,400 unserved Maryland households in its first round. Home Stretch for Difficult to Serve Properties is part of the department’s new initiative to serve remaining Maryland households without internet access. As of April 2024, 21,000 Maryland households are unserved. Awards for the second program under the initiative, Home Stretch for Public Housing, will be announced in the coming weeks. Funded through the Treasury’s American Rescue Plan Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund, both programs are the newest additions to the Office of Statewide Broadband’s Connect Maryland initiative, which provides financial assistance to local jurisdictions to advance the state’s digital access efforts.
Forty-four addresses in two rural areas of York County (SC) have gained access to Comporium’s fiber-based multi-gigabit internet service. Over the past few months, Comporium placed two miles of fiber-optic network to reach addresses off Hands Mill Highway and Kingsburry Road. This project, extending the company’s fiber-optic network, provides customers the ability to access internet speeds of up to five Gigabits per second. Comporium continues to work with state and federal agencies to find ways to upgrade service to more rural customers. Recent upgrades were the result of American Rescue Plan Act and Rural Broadband grants. These were made possible through funding from the South Carolina Department of Commerce and administered by the South Carolina Broadband Office within the Office of Regulatory Staff.
FOCUS Broadband Brings High-Speed Internet to Areas of New Hope in Perquimans County, North Carolina
FOCUS Broadband is accepting orders for high-speed internet service in the first phases of their Perquimans County (NC) broadband project. In 2022, FOCUS Broadband partnered with Perquimans County government to apply for a grant through the North Carolina Department of Information Technology’s (NCDIT) Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) Grant Program. The partnership was awarded a $4 million GREAT Grant with matching contributions from both FOCUS Broadband and Perquimans County government to complete the project. In 2023, FOCUS Broadband was awarded a second $4 million grant through the NCDIT’s GREAT Grant Program to extend fiber optic internet service to an additional 988 homes and businesses in Perquimans County. Once both grants are completed, reliable high-speed internet service will be available to 2,600 addresses in Perquimans County.
FCC Agenda
Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel Testimony Before the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government
On May 16, 2024, Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel appeared before the House of Representatives Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee to review the Federal Communications Commission’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request. The Chairwoman highlighted some of the FCC's critical work, including the National Broadband Map and efforts to stop robocalls. She also emphasized the need for the FCC's spectrum auction authority to be reinstated, and spoke about the impending end of the Affordable Connectivity Program. "Those are some of the things the FCC is doing to bring high-speed connectivity to everyone, everywhere that is secure, resilient, and ready for the future," said Rosenworcel. "I hope to work with you in the coming months as you develop the Fiscal Year 2025 bill to ensure that the Commission is properly funded to accomplish its core mission goals."
Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the June Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, June 6, 2024:
- Reporting on Border Gateway Protocol Risk Mitigation Progress: The FCC will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to increase the security of the information routed across the internet and promote national security by requiring broadband providers to report on their progress in addressing vulnerabilities in the Border Gateway Protocol.
- Establishing a Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program: The FCC will consider a Report and Order that would establish the Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program and provide up to $200 million in Universal Service Fund (USF) support available to eligible schools and libraries, over a three-year period, to defray the costs of eligible cybersecurity services and equipment and help the Commission evaluate the use of the USF to support these services and equipment.
- Letters of Credit for Recipients of High-Cost Competitive Bidding Support: The FCC will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would seek comment on changes to the rules for letters of credit required for recipients of high-cost support authorized through a competitive process.
- Amendment of the Commission’s Rules to Advance the Low Power Television, TV Translator and Class A Television Service: The FCC will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding updates and amendments to the Commission’s rules to address advances in the LPTV Service.
Broadband providers’ upstream capacity continues to be subject to ongoing increases in consumption that are putting more pressure on the most capacity-constrained parts of the network—a key takeaway from this first quarter 2024 edition of the OpenVault Broadband Insights (OVBI) report. While the overall upward rise in downstream usage includes seasonal spikes and dips, the trend in upstream consumption is more consistently upward. This 1Q24 edition of the OVBI also continues tracking the new category of extreme power users who consume 5 TB or more of data per month, and their massive impact on upstream usage. Extreme power users consume almost 1 TB of upstream capacity per month, on average, meaning that their impact on the network is magnified.
Big internet service providers (ISPs) have been using the same arguments against being regulated for the last decade. These arguments were used to justify killing Title II regulation under the Ajit Pai FCC and have been resurrected today to try to get Congress to override the FCC’s decision to reimpose broadband regulation. From my perspective, their arguments have gotten stale and out of touch with the way the market really operates. The big ISP trade associations have been telling the public for years that broadband prices have been falling in ‘real terms’. But anybody buying broadband from a cable company over the last decade knows otherwise. Big cable companies have raised prices year after year at a rate faster than inflation. The ISP argument rests on slight of hand that measures broadband price per megabit of speed. By that logic, when the cable companies unilaterally increased download speeds a few years ago from 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps, customers saw an instant 50% rate reduction. In ‘real terms’, that customer undoubtedly got another rate increase that same year and paid more for the faster speed.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org), Grace Tepper (grace AT benton DOT org), and Zoe Walker (zwalker AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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