The Federal Communications Commission adopted rules to bring relief to incarcerated people with communication disabilities by easing the obstacles they face in communicating with family, loved ones, and other sources of support. The FCC will now require inmate calling services providers to provide access to all relay services eligible for Telecommunications Relay Services fund support in any correctional facility that is located where broadband is available and is part of a correctional system with 50 or more incarcerated people. This includes the ability to place point-to-point video calls using American Sign Language (ASL). The rule also restricts provider charges for relay services and point-to-point video calls. More generally, the rules will reduce certain charges and curtail abusive practices related to inmate calling services to ease the financial burdens on all incarcerated people and their families. To ensure that the rates, terms, and practices related to interstate and international inmate calling services are just and reasonable, the new rules will prohibit providers from taking control of funds in inactive calling accounts until at least 180 calendar days of continuous inactivity has passed, after which providers would be required to refund the balance or dispose of the funds in accordance with applicable state law. The Order also lowers the current ancillary fee caps on charges for single call services, and lowers the cap on provider charges for processing credit card, debit card, and other payments to calling services accounts. A Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeks comment on other action to make telephone service for all incarcerated individuals more equitable and affordable.

For states, broadband mapping is the hot topic in the quest to identify unserved and underserved areas. Collecting accurate, detailed information on who has, and more importantly, who doesn’t have a broadband connection will be essential in securing the maximum amount of Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding. North Carolina and Georgia have been proactive in collecting broadband coverage data and making it available to the public but have taken different approaches on how they have built their maps. North Carolina’s broadband mapping efforts have been fostered through North Carolina State University’s Friday Institute as a part of a larger effort to make sure K-12 students have access to the internet. Georgia used a different approach, collecting performance data from each internet service provider based on a fabric of specific locations. Researchers from both states believe the Federal Communications Commission 477 census maps significantly underestimated the number of unserved households in their respective states. Detailed state mapping efforts provide data necessary to challenge FCC and NTIA estimates, which are likely to be below the actual population of unserved households within a state.

Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Jerry Moran (R-KS)—joined by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Rev. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)—introduced the Broadband Grant Tax Treatment Act (BGTTA). The legislation would amend the Internal Revenue Code to ensure that funding directed for the implementation of broadband from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the American Rescue Plan (ARPA) will not be considered taxable income. Grants awarded to industry for the purposes of broadband deployment are currently factored into a company’s income and will soon be subjected to additional taxes due to scheduled changes to the corporate tax code that kick in beginning 2023—unless Congress acts now to address the problem. Full text of the bill is available here. 

In August 2022, the Federal Communications Commission denied the SpaceX (Starlink) bid to receive $885 million over ten years through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). The FCC went on to say in the order that there were several technical reasons for the Starlink rejection. Starlink appealed the FCC ruling. Current federal grant rules don’t allow federal subsidies to be given to any area that is slated to get another federal broadband subsidy. This has meant that the RDOF areas have been off-limits to other federal grants since the end of 2020. This has included National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) grants, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) ReConnect grants, and others. Federal grant applicants for the last few years have had to carefully avoid the RDOF areas for Starlink and any other unresolved RDOF award areas. The big question now is what happens with the Starlink areas during an appeal. It seems likely that these areas will go back into the holding tank and remain off-limits to other federal grants. 

This study examines the relationship between broadband adoption and county-level educational achievement in the US in which a novel measure of home broadband subscriptions to explore longitudinal community impacts of broadband adoption on aggregated standardized test scores in math and reading/language arts for students enrolled in 3rd-8th grades. A panel was created of US counties and measured the effect of broadband adoption on student educational achievement by estimating a fixed effect estimator. Key highlights from the research showed the following:

• Broadband adoption is related to higher test scores at the county level.
• The effect is greatest for Black, Latino, and low-income students.
• Results have implications for policies supporting broadband adoption.

Ultimately, Black and Latino (and lower-income students) earn higher educational achievement gains than their white (and higher-income) counterparts. Additionally, the findings highlight the potential role community broadband adoption can have in promoting student educational achievement and reducing disparities within the education system.

Tarana is expected to supply gigabit fixed wireless for at least one or two of the biggest winning Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) bidders; one of which is Nextlink. Tarana's new hardware will be able to use spectrum in the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands, as well as new software that supports what the company calls G1x2 mode. That mode enables the new hardware or the previous version of the hardware to use up to 160 MHz of spectrum. The previous version of Tarana’s offering worked only in the 5 GHz band and could use only 80 MHz of spectrum. Spectrum in both the 5 GHz band and 6 GHz band is available on an unlicensed basis. Nextlink plans to use fixed wireless, along with fiber broadband, to support service at speeds of 1 Gbps downstream and 500 Mbps upstream. Nextlink won $429 million in the RDOF auction and recently had funding authorized by the Federal Communication Commission. Another one of the top 10 winning RDOF bidders – Resound Networks – has not yet had its funding authorized, but also plans to use a combination of fixed wireless and fiber broadband to support gigabit speeds. Resound has touted the ability of Tarana equipment, as well as equipment from at least two other manufacturers, to support the speeds required for RDOF builds.

California's unprecedented new law to bolster protections for abortion-related personal information held by tech companies marks a new phase in the deepening legal fight between red and blue states over digital regulations. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed into law an abortion rights bill with a provision that protects reproductive digital information housed by companies headquartered or incorporated in the state. With Congress deadlocked over national laws to govern online privacy and free speech, states are stepping into conflicts over abortion rights and censorship and setting their own, sometimes contradictory rules. Broadly speaking, California's move follows conflicts in Texas and Florida over laws intended to prevent tech platforms from discriminating against "points of view." However, as the partisan divide between Democratic-led and Republican-dominated states grows, states are increasingly passing laws governing the digital realm that put them at direct odds with one another. Ultimately, Attorney General Rob Bonta (D-CA) points to the experimentality of American democracy, as the States, "... are laboratories of innovation that provide approaches no one thought of that are new, different, cutting-edge."