The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) granted the US Virgin Islands (USVI) its first “Internet for All” grants for deploying high-speed Internet networks and developing digital skills training programs under the Biden-Harris Administration’s Internet for All initiative. USVI is receiving $1.25 million in funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to plan for the deployment and adoption of affordable, equitable, and reliable high-speed internet service throughout the territory. USVI will receive $1,249,952.00 from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program to fund various activities including:

• Increasing capacity of a broadband office that oversees broadband programs and deployment;  
• Supporting the development of a Five-Year Action plan to close the digital divide and ensure every Virgin Islander can participate in online educational offerings, access telehealth care, and thrive in the digital economy;  
• Research and data collection to identify unserved and underserved locations as well as catalogue broadband adoption, affordability, equity, and access to better understand barriers to adoption;   
• Providing technical assistance to potential subgrantees, including through workshops and events.

USVI will receive $150,000 from the Digital Equity Act to fund various activities to support closing the digital equity gap including: 

• The development of a Territory Digital Equity Plan that will benefit USVI and its principally unserved and underserved covered populations;  
• Conducting data collection and analysis, digital inclusion asset mapping and stakeholder engagement;  
• Staff recruitment and development. 

The latest Customer Satisfaction Index is out from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which measures the public satisfaction of a wide range of US industries and institutions. The survey this year continued to show that the public has a poor opinion of internet service providers (ISP). As a group, ISPs had an average ACSI annual rating of 68. The only industry with a lower rating is gas stations at 65. Subscription TV had an average rating of 69, and the US Post Office had a rating of 70. But there is some interesting good news for some ISPs. Companies serving customers with fiber rated higher with the public than other ISPs, including cable companies using coaxial networks. Consider the following table that shows the 2023 ranking for fiber and non-fiber ISPs. For companies that offer both fiber and another technology, customers served by fiber liked an ISP more than non-fiber customers. Fiber technical performance should be consistent regardless of the ISP, so the difference in rankings between fiber providers has to be related to customer service and the other non-technical aspects of being an ISP.

Governor Brian P. Kemp (R-GA) committed nearly $15 million in preliminary grant awards for broadband internet expansion through the second round of the Capital Projects Fund (CPF) Grant Program. These awards will improve connectivity for communities, households, businesses, and anchor institutions in four Georgia counties. When combined with significant capital matches from the awardees, almost $30 million will be invested to serve over 3,500 locations in areas most in need of high-speed internet access. The county awardees are as follows:

• Calhoun County, Windstream, 1,425 locations, $6,320,693.00;
• Echols County, Windstream, 420 locations, $1,195,703.00;
• Miller County, City of Colquitt, 1,357 locations, $6,281,732.72;
• Webster County, Windstream, 299 locations, $985,147.00.

The European Commission has informed Google of its preliminary view that the company breached EU antitrust rules by distorting competition in the advertising technology industry (‘adtech'). The European Commission takes issue with Google favouring its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers. The European Commission preliminarily finds that, since at least 2014, Google abused its dominant positions by:

• Favouring its own ad exchange AdX in the ad selection auction run by its dominant publisher ad server DFP by, for example, informing AdX in advance of the value of the best bid from competitors which it had to beat to win the auction.
• Favouring its ad exchange AdX in the way its ad buying tools Google Ads and DV360 place bids on ad exchanges. For example, Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX, thus making it the most attractive ad exchange.

The European Commission is concerned that Google's allegedly intentional conducts aimed at giving AdX a competitive advantage and may have foreclosed rival ad exchanges. This would have reinforced Google's AdX central role in the adtech supply chain and Google's ability to charge a high fee for its service. If confirmed, those conducts would infringe Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU') that prohibits the abuse of a dominant market position.