Monday, July 24, 2023
Headlines Daily Digest
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Time Is Ticking on the Affordable Connectivity Program
How is the Affordable Connectivity Program Performing?
Land O’Lakes wants to make rural America the land o’ broadband
Broadband Funding
State/Local Initiatives
AI/Platforms/Social Media
Industry/Company News
Policymakers
Broadband Funding
As an end of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) funding looms, a congressional briefing was held to discuss what an end to the program could mean and its importance for achieving digital equity. Estimates from the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation predict that ACP funding will run out in 2024 if action is not taken to re-fund the program. If it does, many people will no longer be able to afford the Internet service they likely have come to rely on. Doug McCollough, Chief Information Officer for the city of Dublin (OH) underlined that while there are aspects of the program that could be improved upon, its impact cannot be ignored. The ACP allows governments to pursue other grant opportunities that supplement this program, funding which would not be obtainable in the program’s absence, he said. Further, McCollough explained that the program depends on building trust and credibility with constituents participating in it. The populations who could benefit most from a federal subsidy program like this may initially be suspicious of government programs, and as such, government agencies have worked diligently with trusted community organizations to increase awareness and enrollment. Trust building has been one of the slower pieces of enacting the program, but it is one in which agencies have invested significant time and energy. Agencies and organizations that have been encouraging households to enroll will put their credibility on the line, he said. Some challenges with the program that were brought up during the event included the limited capacity of small Internet service providers in meeting the federal reporting requirements, as well as the risk of fraudulent actors sharing misleading ACP enrollment information. However, all the speakers agreed that it is currently a critical piece of serving some of their most vulnerable constituents.
The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society hosted an "Ask Me Anything" webinar on our Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) Enrollment Performance Tool. During the webinar, Revati Prasad, Benton Institute Director of Research and Fellowships, John Horrigan, Benton Senior Fellow and developer of the ACP Tool, and Elena Saltzman, Civic Nation's Director of Campaigns, talked about program performance, how to best focus ACP outreach and enrollment efforts, and fielded questions by those in the virtual room. Essentially, the tool is a resource for any community that wants to answer the question: “How are ACP sign-ups going?” In case you missed it, here are the highlights of the event.
The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced it has awarded eight grants totaling $3,998,000 to eight Tribes as part of the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP). This funding from will help Tribes reduce monthly Internet service costs, plan for future Internet infrastructure investments, upgrade network equipment, and purchase devices. The winning Tribes are as follows:
- Table Mountain Rancheria, CA;
- Nez Perce Tribe, ID;
- Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, KS, NE;
- Osni Ponca, LLC, NE;
- Pueblo of Jemez, NM;
- Pueblo of Nambe, NM;
- Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, WA;
- Makah Indian Tribe, WA.
State/Local
Michigan Releases its Draft Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program Five-Year Action Plan
Michigan received a $1.55 billion allocation through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program to be used to ensure the universal availability of high-speed internet throughout the state and support digital inclusion efforts. There are many activities that need to happen before the BEAD funds can be put to work. The first step, is the creation of the BEAD Five-Year Action Plan. The Michigan High-Speed Internet (MIHI) Office has engaged with and listened to hundreds of stakeholders from every corner of the state to draft its five-year action plan. The BEAD Five-Year Action Plan will set the priorities, strategies and activities through which MIHI will implement the BEAD program. Michigan invites feedback on the draft by August 4, 2023. Based on the feedback received, MIHI will then revise the draft and create the final BEAD Five-Year Action Plan. Feedback can be submitted here.
Residents of St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, had no internet for 5 days as rural broadband disparity lingers
Residents of a St. Landry Parish (LA) town say they were recently left without internet for five days while getting no answers from the service provider after a line was inadvertently cut. On July 11, some Sunset residents noticed they weren't receiving emails and web pages refused to load. Residents took to Facebook to find out that all Brightspeed customers in their community were without internet. Customers were not notified about the outage, several residents said, and calls to Brightspeed’s customer service yielded little in the way of information. The company insisted that the internet would be restored the following day. It wasn’t until Sunday evening that customers could connect. Even the public library could not connect to the web. The situation in Sunset illustrates a larger problem in rural areas throughout Louisiana, where smaller communities are left with few options for service providers. Through federal and state grants, Louisiana is working with internet service providers to expand into rural communities throughout the state. The digging that took out Brightspeed’s line was part of those programs to bring fiber-optic internet to Sunset. However, the rollout of faster internet in rural areas is still far away.
Land O'Lakes (yes, the butter company) is bridging the digital divide in the rural US. During the height of COVID, Land O’Lakes expedited its budding plans to help close the broadband access gap in rural America, said Vice President of rural services Tina May. As a cooperative owned by around 1,700 farmers, Land O’Lakes is situated in over 10,000 rural communities in the US, touching about half of the harvested acres in the country. In 2020 Land O’Lakes collaborated with local partners in rural, low-access areas to set up free Wi-Fi in parking lots. One of those partners, Tractor Supply Company, still offers Wi-Fi in some of its locations. Soon after the pandemic hit, Land O’Lakes started its American Connection Project (ACP), which advocates for rural broadband investment and includes several projects aimed at expanding access to connectivity. Led in conjunction with Lead for America (LFA), the ACP in April 2021 also set up American Connection Corps, an ACP fellowship connecting locals to their hometown broadband efforts for a two-year paid program. During the program fellows are set up with local offices and taught skills such as grant writing, advocacy and community organizing. The American Connection Corps has paired up with a number of state broadband offices, many of which were set up in preparation for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) allocations. Land O’Lakes will be graduating its first 50 fellows soon, May said, and has a new cohort ready to start in August 2023 – which will include 105 fellows across 34 states.
AI/Platforms
Biden-Harris Administration Secures Voluntary Commitments from Leading Artificial Intelligence Companies to Manage the Risks Posed by AI
Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI are committing to:
- Internal and external security testing of their AI systems before their release. This testing, which will be carried out in part by independent experts, guards against some of the most significant sources of AI risks, such as biosecurity and cybersecurity, as well as its broader societal effects.
- Sharing information across the industry and with governments, civil society, and academia on managing AI risks. This includes best practices for safety, information on attempts to circumvent safeguards, and technical collaboration.
- Investing in cybersecurity and insider threat safeguards to protect proprietary and unreleased model weights. These model weights are the most essential part of an AI system, and the companies agree that it is vital that the model weights be released only when intended and when security risks are considered.
- Facilitating third-party discovery and reporting of vulnerabilities in their AI systems. Some issues may persist even after an AI system is released and a robust reporting mechanism enables them to be found and fixed quickly.
- Developing robust technical mechanisms to ensure that users know when content is AI generated, such as a watermarking system. This action enables creativity with AI to flourish but reduces the dangers of fraud and deception.
- Publicly reporting their AI systems’ capabilities, limitations, and areas of appropriate and inappropriate use. This report will cover both security risks and societal risks, such as the effects on fairness and bias.
- Prioritizing research on the societal risks that AI systems can pose, including on avoiding harmful bias and discrimination, and protecting privacy. The track record of AI shows the insidiousness and prevalence of these dangers, and the companies commit to rolling out AI that mitigates them.
- Develop and deploy advanced AI systems to help address society’s greatest challenges. From cancer prevention to mitigating climate change to so much in between, AI—if properly managed—can contribute enormously to the prosperity, equality, and security of all.
Big telecommunications companies are working to reassure investors about two burdens: toxic lead and heavy debt. Questions about the latter are lingering in the background as AT&T and Verizon use their quarterly earnings reports to address more immediate questions about lead-lined cables. Both companies inherited a web of aging telephone lines from their predecessor companies but reap almost all of their profits from more modern fiber optics and cellphone connections. On paper, wireless companies should be thriving: Americans are glued to their smartphones, federal subsidies are plentiful and the stock market is surging. In the market, companies like AT&T and Verizon look less healthy. The two cellphone carriers were among the worst-performing stocks in the S&P 500 index during the first half of 2023—well before a Wall Street Journal investigation on aging telephone networks rattled already-wary investors. Telecom companies enjoyed a flood of pandemic-era subsidies the federal government issued to keep Americans connected during the crisis, yet that boost faded last year as U.S. officials wound down the programs. Federal officials have since replaced emergency wireless payments with the more permanent Affordable Connectivity Program, a federal voucher that foots up to $30 of a qualifying customer’s monthly phone bill. Analysts say that program, while open to a large pool of Americans, hasn’t driven up subscriber numbers as quickly as the emergency subsidies did.
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 David L. Clay II (dclay AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
© Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 2023. Redistribution of this email publication — both internally and externally — is encouraged if it includes this message. For subscribe/unsubscribe info email: headlines AT benton DOT org
Kevin Taglang
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Benton Institute
for Broadband & Society
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