StateScoop

School districts that serve vulnerable and disabled students in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and 24 other states will receive free Wi-Fi hotspots from AT&T and Connected Nation, a nonprofit that provides communities with broadband technology and support. Through a portion of a $10 million award from AT&T, Connected Nation will provide 124 school districts and community organizations with hotspots, data subscriptions and content filtering services, potentially providing internet access to at least 35,000 school-age kids who don’t have reliable internet access. 

Roughly 5% of North Carolina households surveyed in 2020 lack access to the internet, according to a pair of new dashboards published by the state’s technology agency. The new dashboards reflect data about broadband adoption, coverage and quality on a county-by-county and address-by-address basis, informed largely by a state broadband survey created last July in partnership with the Friday Institute at North Carolina State University.

Critical to building a “Hawaii 2.0.” economy, as Gov. David Ige (D-HI) termed it in his annual State of the State address, is building out a broadband infrastructure that was not, in officials’ estimation, prepared to support the needs of widespread remote work, telehealth, and virtual learning. “A critical part of re-programming our economy is also the creation of a healthy statewide broadband network,” Gov Ige said.

Voters in several US cities, including Denver and Chicago, approved referendums supporting municipal broadband. 83.5% of Denverites voted to opt out of a Colorado state law that prohibits municipalities from investing in or building their own broadband network, opening the possibility of a city-owned network.

A group of 24 county officials from across the country have formed a broadband task force with the goal of creating a “blueprint” for closing the digital divide. Organized through the National Association of Counties, the task force is co-chaired by J.D. Clark, the county judge of Wise County, Texas, and Craig Rice, a member of the Montgomery County Council in Maryland.

The Federal Communications Commission has promoted several emergency measures to boost broadband connectivity during the coronavirus pandemic, which has required millions of people to rely on inadequate at-home internet connections for work and school. But without an immediate expansion of the agency’s E-Rate program — a K-12 school-based broadband subsidy created in 1996 — students around the country will continually be locked out of their virtual classrooms, said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel.

Efforts from the Federal Communications Commission to expand both fixed-wireless and mobile broadband across rural America will require more granular data to reach their full potential, but deployment efforts shouldn’t be delayed any longer, according to industry stakeholders and legislators testifying at a Senate hearing. The FCC has acknowledged that its data-collection processes are fundamentally flawed as carriers have overstated coverage in their self-reported map data.

Three mid-sized and rural communities are using the internet at faster speeds than ever before, according to smart city nonprofit US Ignite and the National Science Foundation, who shared success stories from the U.S.