North Dakota Information Technology (NDIT) has completed the Capital Project Fund (CPF) grant program award process, resulting in eleven grants to seven service providers totaling more than $37 million. Once completed, the projects will provide more than 2,100 homes and businesses with Fiber to the Premise (FTTP). The infrastructure will deliver service that reliably meets or exceeds symmetrical speeds of 100Mbps. Grants awarded and coverage area include: 

• Griggs County Telephone Company – Steele County, Cass County;
• Halstad Telephone Company – Cass-Grand Forks-Traill County;
• Nemont Telephone Cooperative – East Westby-Divide County, Williston-Williams County;
• Northwest Communications Cooperative – Burke County;
• Polar Communications – Walsh County, Grand Forks County, Traill-Steele County;
• Red River Communications – Rural Wahpeton;
• West River Telecom – Grant County.

A Republican, a Libertarian, and a Democrat meet over a beer in the small town of Liberty, Maine. Bob Kurek, Joe Meadows, and Phil Bloomstein, each a selectman from their respective towns, may disagree on many issues, but they unanimously agree when it comes to broadband funding: Public funds should support publicly owned fiber-optic networks. Kurek, Meadows, and Bloomstein are three of Waldo Broadband Corporation’s (WBC) five volunteer directors. A not-for-profit Broadband Utility District 30 miles east of Augusta (ME), WBC’s member towns have a population averaging 31 residents per square mile, the lowest town densities in the state. Now planning its second attempt to receive federal funding earmarked to expand broadband service, the WBC believes Maine’s current funding requirements unfairly favor large incumbent providers. Meadows added, “When [the Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA)] gives money to big [broadband providers] like Spectrum to help them build out within a certain town, that frees up money within those companies. They can then go into towns where they’re not applying for a grant to partially extend their network into the more populated areas of communities. They go right down the middle of population-dense areas, taking the low-hanging fruit in that town. We call it hollowing out.” According to Meadows, once this hollowing out happens, the probability of residents living along miles of dirt roads getting service goes to near-zero. Meadows asserted, “MCA, the legislators, and Maine’s governor need to consider these 'big picture' scenarios to a much greater degree if they want every Maine resident to have access to affordable, reliable broadband.” As the next round of funding approaches, broadband advocates watch closely to see what role, if any, the state will take to help hard-to-reach, less affluent towns provide universal coverage at affordable rates.

May 26 was an historic day for Bountiful City. The City Council voted unanimously, 5-0, to provide its residents with lightning fast, universal and affordable fiber broadband service by partnering with UTOPIA Fiber, the same company that provides fiber-to-the-home service in 20 cities across Utah. Prior to the vote, the city underwent a very thorough, transparent process and opened the opportunity to provide broadband to the city’s residents to everyone, including the state’s largest cable and broadband companies. This process included surveys, a feasibility study and an invitation to all providers to submit a proposal. Only after this years-long process did the city sign a contract with UTOPIA Fiber. UTOPIA Fiber was on track to start construction this summer until a dark money organization called the Utah Taxpayers Association (UTA) hired a group called Gather Utah to obtain signatures for a petition that would stop the city from building the broadband network it chose to provide to its residents. UTA is a “dark money” organization because it doesn’t currently publish a list of its dues paying members or its Board of Directors, so a Bountiful resident would have no idea who is behind this effort to take away this public benefit. Similarly, Gather Utah has no website, no listed phone number and no list of board members, staff or funding sources. Here is what we do know.

[Gigi Sohn is the Executive Director of the American Association for Public Broadband]

Charter Communications has prevailed in its appeal of a decision by the BBB National Program’s National Advertising Division (NAD) about speed claims in its broadband advertising. The appeal was upheld by the National Advertising Review Board (NARB), the appellate advertising body of BBB National Programs. The original challenge was brought by Frontier Communications. Examples of the claims that initially were found to be misleading are “Ultra-Fast speeds of 400 Mbps” and “Super-fast reliable speeds of 200 Mbps to power all your devices with no data caps.” NAD had recommended that Charter qualify its speed claims to indicate whether they referred to download or upload speeds and said that data speeds in both directions are material issues for consumers in selecting their broadband providers. NAD also ruled on claims about annual savings (not supported and should be discontinued), unlimited data (improve disclosure recommended), coverage claims (no action needed) and best price/best quality claims (discontinued, hence no action needed).  Charter argued in its appeal that it has been an industry practice for a long time to refer to download speeds as simply “speeds.” The panel accepted this and noted a lack of evidence of consumer confusion and found that the claims do not mislead a reasonable consumer. One panelist dissented and said that the claims were ambiguous and could refer to both upload and download speeds.

The Federal Communications Commission has a specific set of environmental rules that must be followed when building any telecommunications infrastructure. Broadband providers that haven’t built on park lands or were funded by certain federal broadband grants probably never heard of these rules. But the rules apply to all telecommunications construction. The reason providers probably haven’t heard about these specific rules is that the FCC has largely put providers on the honor system to meet these guidelines. The only times that a provider might be required to follow these rules is if they were funded by a federal broadband grant or if they tried to get a permit to build on federal land. Those situations often require some level of environmental review to get the funding or the permit. Many of the broadband providers who will be pursuing the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants will be required to comply with these rules. The obligation for the FCC to enforce environmental rules was put in place in 1969. The agency has rarely taken its environmental obligations seriously and didn’t issue any fines for breaking the rules until the early 2000s. Even now, the FCC only learns about most infractions after infrastructure has been built. The agency only issues fines in about 10% of the cases brought before it by local governments, states, or the public.

Meta’s new microblogging app Threads is emerging as a potential threat to Twitter’s lock on politicians and political observers seeking real-time news and debate.  Most Twitter competitors have struggled to match the size and bipartisanship of its user base, but Threads is garnering significant participation from both parties. With Twitter struggling under the ownership of Elon Musk, lawmakers are eager to find a credible alternative. As of the evening of July 6th, more than a quarter of Congress' 535 House members and senators had made accounts. The White House is staying coy about whether it will jump on the bandwagon, but several top aides — such as Domestic Policy Director Neera Tanden and Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates — have created accounts.

Cox Communications, continuing its investment in network infrastructure providers of the last couple of years, closed its purchase of commercial fiber provider Unite Private Networks (UPN) for an undisclosed price. UPN will be combined with earlier Cox acquisition Segra as a standalone company under CEO Kevin Hart, the former Cox technology chief. Cox has been buying network infrastructure assets—including cloud services providers RapidScale and Logicworks—after parent company Cox Enterprises shifted away from TV and radio station assets, selling majority stakes in the stations to Apollo Management Group in 2019. The UPN acquisition, though, goes back to 2016, when Cox bought a majority interest in partnership with Ridgemont Equity Partners and UPN management. UPN is based in Kansas, City (MO) and is in more than 300 communities across 21 states, with 12,000 fiber route miles and 9,500 end customer sites. It is one of the largest providers of fiber WAN services to K-12 school districts in the US, serving more than 250 school districts, connecting nearly 2 million students, Cox said. Segra and UPN will operate as separate brands for the near future, Cox said.

The number of global internet users and the percentage of internet penetration continued to grow from 2021 to 2022 at 7% and 6% respectively. While this growth indicates that progress has been made in digital access, the fact remains that as of 2022, 2.7 billion people, representing a third of the world, do not have access to the internet and 53% of the world does not have access to high-speed broadband, leading to the risk of compounding negative effects in terms of economic, political, and social inclusion and equality. These trends make it plain that policymakers should care about addressing the global digital divide, and pay attention to the continental differences that exist around technology access and use. There have been and continue to be a wide array of approaches for mitigating and solving the issue of digital divides. Digital divide policy was previously dominated by a focus on increasing access to infrastructure, but recently it has expanded to include building digital skills, closing usage gaps, and strengthening social awareness of the internet. While an abundance of work is being done on the topic, stronger global collaboration remains a key goal to accelerate progress and ensure these various efforts are complementing, rather than undermining, one another.