The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved Massachusetts' 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 Massachusetts to request access to funding and begin implementation of the BEAD program. The BEAD program is a $42.45 billion state grant program authorized by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Massachusetts was allocated over $147 million to deploy or upgrade high-speed Internet networks to ensure that everyone has access to reliable, affordable, high-speed Internet service.  

For as long as the internet has existed, there’s been a gap between those who have access to it—and the means to afford it—and those who don’t. The vast majority of federal broadband spending over the past two decades has gone toward expanding internet access to rural areas. Only $14.2 billion went to making the internet more affordable through the Affordable Connectivity Program. Some 13% of ACP subscribers, or roughly 3 million households, said that after the program ended they planned to cancel service, according to a Benton Institute for Broadband & Society survey conducted as the ACP expired. Most people who used the ACP won’t cut their internet subscriptions—they’ll just feel their already-strained budgets stretched a little thinner. In Benton’s survey, 56% of low-income households said a monthly bill up to $75 was too expensive; the average monthly internet bill they reported was $66.53. In other words, there’s very little wiggle room for these households before internet costs become unaffordable. “The ACP helped close the digital divide, but it also addressed this issue of subscription vulnerability,” said John Horrigan, senior fellow at the Benton Institute. “I think it's sometimes underappreciated how the ACP has helped with maintaining connectivity among low-income households, lessening this falling off the network from time to time due to economic issues.”

Although the urban–rural digital divide is a globally common phenomenon, less is known about the social determinants of the digital divide within rural and urban areas. Understanding this relationship is important for assessing the equity implications of telecommunication policy given the ongoing and significant public investment into high speed broadband infrastructure. This paper contributes to this discussion by connecting high speed broadband maps in Ireland to measures of social deprivation constructed from detailed population-wide Irish census data collected in 2022. Linking to newly available maps of urban boundaries, the results show that the availability of commercially provided high speed broadband is highly divided; urban areas have near complete coverage, whereas rural areas have little to no coverage. Exploring determinants of coverage in rural areas, we observe that coverage increases with affluence. This suggests that rural areas, which are relatively socially deprived, are being further disadvantaged through inequalities in the availability of high speed broadband.

To hear well-known Wall Street analyst Craig Moffett tell it, Verizon spent a mind-boggling $52 billion on C-band spectrum which “isn’t very good” and fixing its 5G coverage problem is going to require even more money—“lots of money.” That was one of the hottest and most publicized take-aways from Verizon’s Q2 earnings call. While Moffett described Verizon’s overall wireless Q2 results as “fair,” the gist of his report focused on “Verizon’s C-band problem,” one that he said will take a whole lot of densification to rectify. And densification, for the record, isn’t cheap. Verizon’s C-band challenges returned to the limelight when Opensignal released its most recent Network Experience report, which reported that Verizon customers are in range and connected just 7.7% of the time.

Rep Katie Porter (D-CA) introduced legislation to protect social media users from hate speech and increase transparency from tech companies. In 2023, more than half of adults and teens reported being harassed online, up 12% from 2022, but experts lack data to evaluate how well social media companies are protecting users from hate speech. The Digital Social Platform Transparency Act would require social media companies to provide clear and accessible Terms of Service to users and report on internal content regulation processes. Under this bill, data collected about content violations, which include metrics on hate speech, racism, extremism, misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference, would be available to the public. Additionally, companies must disclose their terms of service agreements, which must contain information on moderation practices and prohibited content, so that users can better understand how to safeguard their online communities.