President Biden’s economic agenda—Bidenomics—is growing the American economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down. And if most South Carolina Republican Members of Congress had their way, the state would have lost out on over $2.6 billion in infrastructure funding and nearly $1 billion in funding for high-speed internet for South Carolina. Nearly $1 billion in funds were awarded to South Carolina to deliver affordable, high-speed internet to every South Carolinian under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), using Made in America material. Representative William Timmons (R-NC), who represents Greenville and Spartanburg Counties, where thousands of South Carolinians lack access to high speed internet, voted against the IIJA, said it would do “nothing of the sort” to connect Americans to high-speed internet, and said instead it was a “Socialist spending spree.”

Broadband experts are condemning an amendment to Ohio’s latest budget bill that restricts fixed wireless access (FWA) grants with claims that it could curb the state’s efforts to bridge the digital divide. Governor Mike DeWine (R-OH) signed the bill without vetoing the amendment which means FWA grants from the state will now only be considered in “extremely high-cost” areas of Ohio. Mike Wendy of the Wireless Internet Service Provider Association (WISPA) said Ohio State Senator Rob McColley (R-OH) proposed the amendment to the budget bill, “ostensibly grounded in his belief that only fiber can/should do the job with grants funding.” Wendy said that because the amendment was part of the state’s broader budget initiative, the new FWA restrictions were snuck into the process with “little to no debate.” High-cost threshold locations (EHCTLs), or an "extremely high cost per location threshold area," defines an area in which the cost to build high-speed internet infrastructure exceeds the high cost per location threshold established by Ohio’s broadband expansion program. According to Wendy, these locations only represent “a very small subset of the work needed to get all online.” If the McColley amendment extends to Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants, it could also prevent 5G, CBRS, and other licensed wireless offerings from getting people online unless they live in EHCLTs.

As state and local officials gear up to build fiber networks through Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) and other programs, opportunities abound for leveraging various funding to demonstrate how to get the most economic and societal benefits out of their networks, according to US Ignite Co-founder and CEONick Maynard. “Our mission is to help support underserved communities by helping them with their main challenges, but also through economic development or startup and research commercialization challenges,” said Maynard. Going into its second decade of operation, US Ignite currently works with 50 cities around the country to ensure digital equity alongside broadband access, exploring how to use smart city data responsibly, monitoring environmental conditions to make communities safer and healthier, and driving wireless innovation with other researchers at several startups. The educational non-profit intentionally works with a variety of real-world environments, including urban and rural areas, from smaller communities to large cities. Project OVERCOME is the organization’s effort to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of broadband solutions available to communities wanting to expand internet access to underserved and unserved populations. Fiber plays a key role in enabling connectivity for community centers and to support last mile wireless deployments, creating best practice playbooks for communities to leverage. US Ignite is also taking its work in helping build a broadband investment tool for New York State and expanding it to encompass the nation.

The Media and Democracy Project (MAD) filed a petition to deny the broadcast license renewal application for Fox Corp-owned television station FOX 29 Philadelphia (WTXF-TV). MAD filed the objection before the Federal Communications Commission, alleging that senior management of Fox Corporation (FOX) manipulated its audience by knowingly broadcasting false news about the 2020 election. Its intentional and chronic news distortion further divided the country, sowing discord that was a contributing factor to the attack on our nation's Capitol on January 6, 2021. As an FCC broadcast licensee, WTXF-TV, one of 29 FOX subsidiary broadcast stations, has a basic statutory duty to conduct its operations in the public interest. MAD believes it has not done so, relying on the court decision in Dominion v. FOX, which found that FOX’s broadcasts leading up to January 6 repeatedly were false and held that FOX had defamed the voting machine company. The intentional distortion of news, authorized at the highest levels of FOX's corporate structure, and fabricated by management and on-air personalities, represents a severe breach of the FCC's policy on licensee character qualifications.