The National Association of Counties' Broadband Task Force was chartered with the premise that "if you can't connect… you can't compete." It is the equity issue of our hour. After months of study and dialogue, our Task Force concluded that a comprehensive, coordinated approach is needed to pursue new broadband infrastructure investment, public policies, and user skills. This report details our findings, best practices and policy recommendations for equitable broadband access. Our findings show that:

• County officials play a crucial role as policymakers, funders, data aggregators, conveners, and partners in pursuing sustainable solutions to broadband access, affordability, and reliability. Therefore county officials require the knowledge, policy tools, funding resources, and support necessary to meet community broadband needs.
• Federally supported, locally collected, and verified data is imperative to understand America's true state of connectivity.
• Eliminating our nation's digital divide and ensuring universal, reliable, affordable broadband access will require multiple technological solutions (with redundancy and scale), including fiber, satellite, cellular, fixed wireless, cable, and future innovations.
• Open "middle mile" systems can increase competition and result in improved affordability and access.
• Federal resources used to eliminate the digital divide should incentivize future-proofed systems (i.e., symmetrical 1gbps network) and require coordination between local governments and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to ensure community needs are met within acceptable timeframes.
• Ultimately, broadband should be regulated as a utility to eliminate the digital divide effectively and comprehensively.

Sens Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced the Assisting Broadband Connectivity Act. This bipartisan bill will streamline the funding process and remove barriers for broadband connectivity in hard-to-serve rural areas. The Assisting Broadband Connectivity Act will make changes to the rural broadband programs at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), so areas aren’t automatically ineligible for federal funding because the project previously received state funding. This change will ease administrative burdens for those applying to provide broadband to rural America. However, this won’t change the requirements or due diligence for USDA Rural Utilities Service when they administer these programs. This legislation will also provide more flexibility with funding and resources; states will be able to use federal funds, such as COVID aid for broadband, fulfilling their requirement in most applications to match federal dollars. This update will help rural America move forward by providing more coordination and funding availability for broadband projects.

AT&T now covers more than 250 million people across the US with its flavor of 5G, which includes low-band spectrum in large parts of the country. It reached that goal a full six months earlier than originally planned. The company uses dynamic spectrum sharing, which allowed it to speed its 5G deployment by putting it on top of its LTE network. Its millimeter wave (mmWave) technology, which it calls 5G Plus, is now in parts of 38 cities and 20 venues, with plans to be in parts of 40 cities and 40 venues by the end of 2021. AT&T has also stated that its 5G Plus will be rolled out in seven US airports this year. But one can argue that its C-band spectrum, of which it obtained 80 MHz at auction earlier this year, is the real star of the show, offering better capacity than low-band and wider coverage than high-band spectrum. Often called the “Goldilocks” of spectrum, the mid-band spectrum offers better propagation characteristics for 5G than other parts of the spectrum range. Both AT&T and Verizon are in a race to get their C-band deployed as “un-carrier” T-Mobile continues to ramp up–and heavily tout–its mid-band spectrum advantage with the 2.5 GHz spectrum it’s been deploying at a frenzied pace.

Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel would not comment on the degree to which the president's failure to name a third Democratic commissioner has prevented it from taking action on some big issues — like restoring network neutrality rules — but she suggested the agency has been hard at work on other things and was still supportive of making net neutrality rules the law of the land. When asked whether the FCC planned to restore the rules barring internet service providers from engaging in blocking, throttling and paid prioritization, she said she had long been a supporter of the rules and objected to the previous FCC's elimination of them. As to whether the FCC could get a Republican commissioner on board with a net neutrality item, Rosenworcel suggested that while she can talk about the issue with the current politically tied FCC, with a “full dias” (a Democratic majority) she might be able to have other options. That “might” should be a “definitely,” since Biden is highly unlikely to name a commissioner who does not support restoration of the rules.

Sen John Kennedy (R-LA) introduced the Don’t Push My Buttons Act (S.2335) in response to social media platforms that track personal data to polarize and provoke online users. The bill would deny legal immunity under the Communications Act of 1934 to platforms that leverage user data to promote divisive content without permission from those users. Many social media platforms collect data to identify their users’ “hot buttons”—divisive issues that create strong emotional responses or reactions. The companies then employ algorithms that intentionally show their users content designed to agitate them. The Don’t Push my Buttons Act would narrow the scope of the liability limitation provided under Section 230 of the Communications Act, denying immunity to platforms that use algorithms to optimize engagement by pushing divisive content into users’ feeds.