telecompetitor

President Donald Trump’s address about economic issues facing rural America at the American Farm Bureau Federation convention touched on Trump rural broadband initiatives. But although President Trump talked about the importance of broadband to the rural economy and signed two executive orders aimed at facilitating rural broadband deployment, I came away asking ‘where the beef’ was.

The Federal Communications Commission could vote as soon as Feb or earlier to reduce the speed required for an internet connection to be considered broadband for purposes of the FCC’s annual broadband progress report. If the FCC opts to change the definition of broadband in response to the Notice of Inquiry, it’s important to note that the changes should only impact the annual progress report and not the CAF program. 

Letters from rural carriers have been pouring into the Federal Communications Commission to urge the commission to close the broadband Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) funding gap before the end of 2017. It was just about a year ago that more carriers than expected chose to participate in the A-CAM broadband program, which will pay part of a carrier’s costs to bring broadband to unserved areas based on a cost model.

Michael Powell, president of NCTA – The Internet & Television Association; Meredith Attwell Baker, president of CTIA; and Jonathan Spalter, president, USTelecom, all members of the Broadband for America coalition, pledged, once again, not to block or throttle content.

Telecommunications and electric cooperatives are playing an important role in bringing high-speed broadband to rural America, according to a new report from the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). Using FCC data, researchers identified 87 cooperative gigabit deployments as of December 2016. The majority of the nation’s 260 telecom cooperatives have deployed fiber-to-the-home.  About 60 of the nation’s 900 electric cooperatives have deployed fiber, and that number is growing fast.