The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) announced an update to the Interim Eligible Locations list for use in the Enhanced Alternative Connect America Model (Enhanced ACAM) mechanism.  Pursuant to the Enhanced A-CAM Order, the Bureau must provide a final report on the Enhanced A-CAM obligations and support amounts no later than December 31, 2025.  The Interim Eligible Locations file is intended to update to Enhanced A-CAM carriers and other stakeholders regarding the status of locations in Enhanced A-CAM service areas based on currently available data. This list is updated to use location data from the December 2023 Broadband Serviceable Location (BSL) Fabric (Fabric) and availability data as of June 2023, as well as correcting minor errors, such as incorrect study area boundaries, that were identified since the release of the January 2024 list.  This Interim Eligible Locations file does not include several factors that must be considered before it may be finalized, but for which supporting data is not currently available.  Specifically, it does not show the effect of:

• Federal enforceable commitments to deploy 100/20 Mbps or faster broadband that were made by August 30, 2023, but have not yet been entered into the Broadband Funding Map;
• State enforceable commitments to deploy 100/20 Mbps or faster broadband that were made by August 30, 2023;
• Successful challenges to the Fabric that would add or remove locations from the December 2023 version;
• Successful challenges to the June 2023 availability data (or later availability data, as applicable to locations for which there is no June 2023 availability data) that were not resolved in time for inclusion in the May 2024 National Broadband Map; or
• Tribal locations removed from Enhanced A-CAM by mutual agreement of the Tribal entity and the Enhanced A-CAM recipient.

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved Rhode Island’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 Rhode Island to request access to funding and begin implementation of the BEAD program. Rhode Island was allocated over $108 million to deploy or upgrade high-speed Internet networks to ensure that everyone has access to reliable, affordable, high-speed Internet service.  

One in three Americans doesn’t have internet at speeds fast enough to use Zoom. Despite being an essential utility, building out the nation’s internet infrastructure has been largely left to market forces with highly uneven results: 40 million Americans are still waiting to be connected. Large traditional internet service providers have not and will not invest in communities where the economics don’t fit their business models. And sparse, rural populations and low-income areas rarely provide the profit margins they demand. It’s time to shift the way broadband is built in America. We can close the digital divide while building local power, wealth, and opportunity. Social investors have an opportunity to drive this change, catalyzing billions in public and private capital for communities long ignored. There’s no time to waste.

[Jochai Ben-Avie is the Co-Founder and CEO of Connect Humanity. He also serves as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Truman National Security Fellow, and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper.]

As society continues to expand our digital universe, the development of broadband infrastructure has never been more vital. The permitting processes required by federal, state, and local agencies play a crucial role in ensuring that broadband projects meet regulatory standards and serve the public interest. While these processes can be complex and involve coordination among numerous agencies, they are essential for the successful deployment of broadband infrastructure. Rather than viewing regulatory requirements as obstacles, operators can approach them as opportunities for partnership and collaboration in order to set themselves up for success. This paper outlines four essential steps to navigate the permitting landscape efficiently, fostering smoother project implementation and ensuring that broadband services reach those who need them most. 

I read an interesting article in The Lever titled, Everybody Has a Price – And Corporations Know Yours. The article discusses how the massive data collection of our personal shopping and browsing habits, along with machine learning algorithms, has allowed marketing firms to paint an individual profile of everybody. The article conjectures that this might lead to personalized pricing where we are each offered prices for products and services based on what the algorithms think we are willing to pay. This is something that economists study in school as a thought experiment because individual pricing is the way for companies to extract the most revenue from the public. There is evidence that this has been tried in broadband. In 2022, the California Community Foundation conducted research that looked at the online prices offered by Charter in various neighborhoods in Los Angeles. They were surprised to find widespread price discrimination where people on streets with higher incomes were offered lower prices than people only a block or two away where housing prices and incomes were lower.

Meta and the Center for Open Science (COS) opened a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a new pilot program, designed to support the study of topics related to social media use and well-being. This pilot program addresses calls for more research on the impact of social media on well-being, including from the National Academies of Sciences Study Consensus Report on Social Media and Adolescent Health. This program will provide privacy-preserving access to data from Instagram users in a new model for industry-academic collaboration. This program presents a model for industry-academia partnerships on this important issue, using a process popularized in the open science movement, called a Registered Report, which requires preregistration of hypotheses and early peer review of research designs.

Donald Trump’s allies are drafting a sweeping AI executive order that would launch a series of “Manhattan Projects” to develop military technology and immediately review “unnecessary and burdensome regulations”—signaling how a potential second Trump administration may pursue AI policies favorable to Silicon Valley investors and companies. The framework would also create “industry-led” agencies to evaluate AI models and secure systems from foreign adversaries. The framework—which includes a section titled “Make America First in AI”—presents a markedly different strategy for the booming sector than that of the Biden administration, which last year issued a sweeping executive order that leverages emergency powers to subject the next generation of AI systems to safety testing.