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The House Energy and Commerce Committee Communications Subcommittee gave a big thumbs up to extending the Federal Communications Commission's ability to raise tens of billions of dollars through the treasury with spectrum auctions, not to mention freeing up spectrum in the process for Wi-Fi. The subcommittee voted unanimously to favorably report the Extending America’s Spectrum Auction Leadership Act of 2022, which would extend the FCC's spectrum auction authority, which otherwise would expire September 30 of this year, to March 21, 2024. Also favorably reported were:

Charter Communications said that it will commit an additional $1 million to its 2022 Spectrum Digital Education grant initiative, boosting the total amount invested in the six-year program to $8 million. Charter launched Spectrum Digital Education in 2017, and through February 2022 the company said grants and in-kind contributions have helped 99 nonprofit organizations and more than 95,000 people in 22 states and Washington (DC).

Americans are paying almost as much for connected living room services as they are for electricity, natural gas and water, according to TiVo's Q4 Video Trends Report. TiVo's latest survey said that US consumers who still take traditional bundled video are spending, on average, $124.40 a month for pay TV and broadband, up 11 percent in the six months from when TiVo conducted its Q2 report in 2021. Add to that a bill Netflix and other subscription streaming services, and pay TV consumers are forking out an average of $203.60 a month for internet and video entertainment.

Some former Democratic members of Congress have joined what is increasingly a concerted effort to block the nomination of Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow & Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society], President Joe Biden‘s nominee to the open Democratic seat on the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC presently stands at a 2-2 political tie, as it has been since before Biden took office.

Alan Davidson, head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, said his agency is taking a customer service approach to overseeing the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) initiative going to the states for broadband buildout. Each state will have a point person at NTIA to make sure stakeholders know how to apply for the money, Davidson said.