Fiber Broadband Association

Eric Frederick joined the state of Michigan to lead the Michigan High-Speed Internet Office in July 2022 after spending 12 years at a non-profit that was trying to expand broadband across the country. Since then, the office has expanded and now has two verticals—the digital equity team and the infrastructure data team.

In this week’s episode of Fiber for Breakfast, Gary was joined by Eric Bathras, the Chief Technology Officer for Infrastructure at the Maryland Department of Information Technology (DoIT).

Fiber broadband is recognized as the fifth necessary utility for 21st century life, on par with water, sewer, electricity, and paved roads that households and businesses need for education, entertainment, health care, commerce, employment, the delivery of essential government services, and so much more. The COVID pandemic underlined the need for reliable, high-speed, low-latency broadband for everyone, regardless of geographic location. But what tangible economic benefits does fiber deliver to homes, businesses, and communities?

The Fiber Broadband Association announced the results of the Fiber Deployment survey by RVA LLC Market Research & Consulting (RVA). The survey concludes fiber broadband deployments reached a new annual record of 10.3 million U.S. homes passed in 2024. Including homes with more than one passing, there are now a total 88.1 million homes passed with fiber in the U.S.

Virginia has made significant progress in providing high-speed connectivity to all its households and businesses over the past decade and anticipates using $1.43 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding to reach 100 percent connectivity to all addresses in the next few years.

The next four years of telecommunications policy will be unlike anything Wall Street and other stakeholders have ever seen, according to one long-time analyst and former Federal Communications Commission staff member who has seen his share of changes and administrations over the past three decades. “The questions for investors are, what does the President want to have happen, and then how does that get implemented? How do the governors react to that?” said Blair Levin, U.S. Policy and Regulatory Advisor, New Street Research.

Not only does fiber increase the power and capability of the home, but it also adds to the overall value of the real estate and its ability to be sold more quickly as buyers look for reliable high-speed broadband for work-from-home, telehealth, gaming, streaming, and smart home devices such as security cameras and personal assistance. According to Adtran, consumer needs for more broadband are growing every year. U.S.

As states gear up to allocate Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) money, the challenges of permitting are top-of-mind for all parties involved in the process. To ensure that local governments and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can reduce broadband network construction challenges, The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, in partnership with the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, the American Association for Public Broadband, Fiber Broadband Association, Brightspeed, and GFiber, held a summit earlier to discuss the issues and recommend solutions