Thursday, July 11, 2024
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Biden-Harris Administration Approves Maryland’s “Internet for All” Initial Proposal
5G Fund: How many locations will be eligible for this $9 billion program for rural 5G?
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Digital Equity
Leveraging Digital Skills: Immigrant-Origin High School Graduates Offer a Pool of Talent for U.S. Employers
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Ninety-two percent of jobs across all U.S. industries require some level of digital skills, the National Skills Coalition estimated in a 2023 study. While IT or IT-related jobs have always relied on workers’ ability to use computers and digital technologies, across industries today’s workers may be asked to use and interact with a broad range of digital technology tools. While demand for technologically savvy students and workers is growing, about one in four U.S. adults ages 16-65 lack digital skills, according to the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), the international benchmark of adult skills that was last carried out in 2017. The PIAAC analysis shows that young adults are less likely to lack digital skills than U.S. adults overall, although skills vary by immigrant generation. Only 7-8 percent of second and third-and-higher-generation young adults lacked basic digital skills, while 17 percent of first-generation immigrant young adults scored low on the digital skills test.
Broadband Funding
5G Fund: How many locations will be eligible for this $9 billion program for rural 5G?
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As all of us have focused on the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program to bring fixed broadband to rural areas, the Federal Communications Commission has quietly moved another program forward: the proposed “5G Fund for Rural America”, a program that could be as large as $9 billion. As of March 2024, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel circulated to colleagues a draft order that would restart the 5G Fund. (INCOMPAS, out of concern for high USF funding, has proposed postponing the program by several years.) This would be a reverse auction (similar to the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund) where carriers would bid against each other in successive rounds, with the FCC trying to find the carrier willing to provide 5G at the lowest cost. One of the biggest issues in the docket was clearly the definition of eligible areas. The FCC appears to want to define eligible areas as only those without any coverage, while other stakeholder pushed for eligible areas to be anything without 5G coverage.
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The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved Maryland’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 Maryland 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. NTIA will continue to announce approval of Initial Proposals on a rolling basis.
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People with disabilities regularly face accessibility challenges while using government websites. Solving these challenges has become more urgent, for two reasons. First, COVID-19 pushed more of life online, and it is often easier now to do business digitally than in person. Second, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a new final rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act in April 2024. This requires all state and local governments to make digital services “readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities.” This one-two punch means there is now more momentum than ever before to make government digital services accessible. Total digital accessibility can be an intimidating goal to work toward. It can be tough for government to even know where to start. The new final rule from the federal government provides a set of standards that can be used as guidance, but there are still lots of questions.
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North Carolina has about 400,000 homes and businesses either not served by high-speed Internet or with woefully inadequate service. North Carolina, like every state and U.S. territory, is in the throes of getting a clearer understanding—than perhaps ever before—of just how wide their digital divides are. They have organized state broadband offices, generally within technology agencies, to count, quantify and analyze the depth of the problem. States have drafted broadband equity strategies that take into consideration that not everyone’s challenges to having high-speed Internet in their home are the same, and therefore the state’s approach to expanding this public utility will require a range of ideas. This national effort to expand broadband access is part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act thats being used to jump-start a national network of high-speed electric vehicle charging, modernize fleets of trains and buses, and invest some $65 billion into broadband.
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Online classes for older adults are increasingly helping the New York State Office for the Aging (NYSOFA) not only raise digital skill levels—but more efficiently implement other technology to serve clients, including artificial intelligence. NYSOFA has been instrumental in several major state initiatives to help seniors be more connected. The agency began its first tech-focused project in 2018, and now has 21 public-private partnerships with technology companies, Greg Olsen, NYSOFA acting director, said. Because the agency works closely with those it serves, Olsen said its existing relationships and digital literacy enable a more seamless implementation of unfamiliar technology tools—and ultimately, these implementations can build on the agency’s work to bridge the digital divide. NYSOFA is not trying to replace human beings with technology, Olsen said, but rather, to use technology to enhance the work that is already being done, to better serve residents.
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Whitfield County (GA) Board of Commissioners Chairman Jevin Jensen said no resident within the county should be “left behind” concerning broadband internet access. Speaking at a community listening session, Jensen and county consultant Jake Bearden heard from members of the public about internet access and broadband projects. Whitfield County was awarded $30,000 in grant funding in March from Connect Humanity’s Appalachian Digital Accelerator initiative. Bearden said the meeting was the “first step in making sure that all of Whitfield County has equal access to (broadband).” Jensen said the listening session was the “first step in the journey” to help build on the broadband grant and win additional grants.
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There’s a lot of government funding going around for rural broadband, but it won’t mean much if those last mile networks aren’t connected to the rest of the network, says Bill Long, chief product and strategy officer at Zayo Group. Zayo is a seasoned player in the long-haul networking space. It’s also one of the operators that’s building out Nevada’s open access middle mile network. Building rural broadband networks is important, but if those networks aren’t connected to a middle mile, “it’s like building a suburb that’s not connected to any other roads,” said Long. The same thing goes for data centers, which are popping up like weeds. As a result, the company wants to make it “economically viable” to build last mile “off-ramps.” For starters, it’s increasing rural access points to reduce the amount of fiber construction required to connect to Zayo’s middle mile network—via “incremental breakouts.”
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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