Wednesday, July 10, 2024
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Power of Partnership: State Strategies for Digital and Educational Equity
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Biden-Harris Administration Approves Indiana’s “Internet for All” Initial Proposal
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Broadband Funding
On July 9, the House Commerce Committee's Communications and Technology Subcommittee held a hearing on the fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget for the Federal Communications Commission. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel testified before the subcommittee along with fellow commissioners Brendan Carr, Geoffrey Starks, Nathan Simington, and Anna Gomez.
Congress last reauthorized the FCC in 2018, authorizing $333 million for FY2019 and $339 million for FY2020. The FCC currently employs approximately 1,600 full-time equivalents (FTE) and was permitted to collect $390,192,000 in offsetting regulatory fees for FY2024. For FY2025, the FCC is requesting $448,075,000 in budget authority from regulatory fee offsetting collections, representing a 14.8 percent increase from FY2024 funding levels. The House Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government passed an appropriations bill for FY2025 that would permit the FCC to collect $416,112,000 in offsetting collections, representing an increase of $25.92 million.
The subcommittee is chaired by Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH). He set the tone of the hearing by launching an attack on what he calls the "Biden Broadband Takeover." He criticized the FCC's adoption of net neutrality rules and classifying broadband internet access service as a telecommunications service. "This action expands the FCC’s authority over broadband, allowing the agency to impose burdensome regulations that will make it harder for providers to deploy broadband," Chairman Latta said.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the chair of the full House Commerce Committee, echoed Mr. Latta. "The Commission’s recent action to reclassify broadband Internet access as a public utility under Title II of the Communications Act, as well as the agency’s broad rules on digital discrimination, have undermined our efforts to ensure every American has access to broadband," she said. "It’s a century old framework designed to address telephone monopolies, whereas today’s broadband marketplace is incredibly competitive."
The end of the Affordable Care Program (ACP) in May left a significant number of people at risk of losing access to broadband. Empowerus is trying to help soften the blow with a unique set of benefits that they believe constitute a replacement for the ACP. Empowerus and the Secure Card Association of America (SCAA) are partnering to provide a bundle of benefits to eligible households. Empowerus participants can opt for several benefits, including:
- A mobile phone replacement with a $25 deductible.
- A discount pharmacy program with savings of up to 70% to 80%.
- A guaranteed $10,000 life insurance policy.
Empowerus is billing itself as an answer to the loss of ACP benefits. While it’s not immediately obvious why Empowerus is an ACP replacement, their delivery mechanism provides the answer: Details of Empowerus’ benefits will be pushed out via an app embedded on existing ACP tablets, so people eligible for the ACP will be aware of these new benefits.
An online presence is crucial for agritourism operators to connect with consumers. In this study, we use count data regression models to examine the correlation between average broadband speed adopted and the number of agritourism operations. We found that adoption of fast broadband in 2012 was associated with a significantly higher number of agritourism operations nationally in 2017, underscoring the role of broadband connectivity in facilitating interactions between farmers and consumers, as well as in promoting agritourism. However, only a weak association exists in rural counties, indicating that the broadband–agritourism relationship does not extend to less populated areas.
The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved Indiana’s Initial Proposals for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris Administration’s “Internet for All” initiative. This approval enables Indiana to request access to funding and begin implementation of the BEAD program—a major step towards closing the digital divide and meeting the President’s goal of connecting everyone in America with affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet service. Indiana was allocated over $868 million to deploy or upgrade high-speed Internet networks to ensure that everyone has access to reliable, affordable, high-speed Internet service.
Nevada's universal access mandate can only be achieved when the internet services offered to consumers are affordable and desirable, and when offering those services makes business sense for a provider. Affordability is a central tenant of the Nevada Governor’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology's (OSIT) broadband deployment and digital adoption goals and strategies. If Nevadans cannot afford the monthly recurring costs of internet service, building new last-mile infrastructure is of little effect. The high cost of broadband service is a major adoption barrier for many Nevada residents, particularly members of covered populations. Low-income residents, who make up over 20 percent of Nevada households, are less likely than the general population to subscribe to a home broadband service. Last-mile internet service providers in Nevada told OSIT that the lack of available backhaul in many unserved and underserved markets and the high cost of backhaul where it is available were the largest impediments to offering and expanding affordable, reliable, scalable internet last-mile service to unserved and underserved regions of the state.
Nineteen More Counties to Receive Expanded Internet Access through NCDIT’s Completing Access to Broadband Program
The N.C. Department of Information Technology’s (NCDIT) Division of Broadband and Digital Equity announced an additional $112 million in Completing Access to Broadband (CAB) program projects to connect 25,903 households and businesses in 19 counties to high-speed internet. These projects will be funded by more than $61 million from the federal American Rescue Plan awarded by NCDIT, more than $25 million from counties and nearly $26 million from selected broadband providers. The CAB program’s procurement process creates a partnership between counties and NCDIT to identify areas that need access, solicit proposals from prequalified internet service providers and quickly make awards. Awardees must agree to provide high-speed service that reliably meets or exceeds speeds of 100 Mbps download and 100 Mbps upload.
Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA) President Andrew Butcher isn’t hyper-focused on the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program and the $272 million that Maine will be receiving. “Unfortunately, I think it’s a common misnomer that, once you deploy BEAD, the problem is solved,” Butcher said. The MCA was founded and structured largely based on lessons from Maine’s successful 2020 state bond campaign and 2021 bid for $28 million from National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Broadband Infrastructure Program to support six community-driven, regional-scale, public-private partnerships. Today, the MCA has 23 employees throughout the state. It actively manages a grant portfolio of more than 65 projects that incorporate funding from seven different sources. While MCA is a large office and Maine is a small state, Butcher describes it as embodying “the Maine Way” of being resourceful while stretching every dollar as far as possible.
There was strong 5G wireless growth during first quarter of 2024, with 185 million additions pushing global connections to almost the 2 billion level, according to data from 5G Americas telecommunications trade organization and Omdia, an analyst and advisory company. North America is a big part of the positive momentum. The researchers reported that 32% of all cellular connections were 5G, which is double the global average. The overall growth rate was 11%, which equates to 22 million new connections. North America now has 220 million 5G connections. The firms predict that 5G connections globally will reach 7.7 billion by 2028. At that point, they expect there to be 700 million 5G connections in North America.
A team of researchers in Japan and the United Kingdom have smashed the world record for fiber optic communications through commercial-grade fiber. By broadening fiber’s communication bandwidth, the team has produced data rates four times as fast as existing commercial systems—and 33 percent better than the previous world record. The researchers’ success derives in part from their innovative use of optical amplifiers to boost signals across communications bands that conventional fiber optics technology today less-frequently uses. The researchers have built their communications hardware stack from optical amplifiers and other equipment developed, in part, by Nokia Bell Labs and the Hong Kong-based company Amonics. The assembled tech comprises six separate optical amplifiers that can squeeze optical signals through C-band wavelengths—the standard, workhorse communications band today—plus the less-popular L-, S-, and E-bands. All together, the combination of E, S, C, and L bands enables the new technology to push a staggering 402 terabits per second (Tbps) through the kinds of fiber optic cables that are already in the ground and underneath the oceans.
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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