telecompetitor

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has rescinded a memorandum that would have put a pause on all federal grant funds, creating significant confusion.

Joshua Breitbart, Senior Vice President of New York’s Empire State Development, has spent most of his career working on broadband projects of one kind or another. In early 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) announced the formation of the Empire State Development ConnectALL initiative in her “State of the State” address.

Illinois is the next state to release its Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program application guidelines. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration awarded Illinois $1.04 billion in federal BEAD Program funds to expand high-speed internet access to all homes and businesses. Connect Illinois Round 4 will use these funds to provide broadband to unserved and underserved locations and eligible community anchor institutions.

Two more states — Michigan and Maine — are now accepting applications for funding in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband program. In addition, Colorado plans to begin accepting applications for the state’s second round of BEAD funding on January 27. Providers have until April 9 to apply for funding in Michigan, which has a total budget of over $1.5 billion in BEAD funding. The deadline to apply for funding in Maine, which has $272 million to award, is February 28. The deadline in Colorado’s second round is February 28.

A cache of statistics about Americans’ usage of the internet and their thoughts about its value are highlighted in a new report titled “Internet Statistics in 2025” from HighSpeedInternet.com. The statistics cover internet access, speed, cost, reliability, connections, and more, based on data gathered in 2024. Nearly ubiquitous, 333.1 million people (97 percent of Americans) said they use the internet. This number has increased by 51 million in roughly 10 years. Almost 25 percent of internet users said the longest they can go without needing internet access is four hours.

BJ Tanksley has been the director of Missouri’s broadband office since 2022 and has lived and breathed rural broadband for even longer. Previously, Tanksley was director of state and local legislative affairs for the Missouri Farm Bureau, where he served on a committee that developed a proposal for a program that would cover some of the costs of deploying high-speed broadband in rural areas where it wasn’t available.

Arizona has set January 6 to February 5 as the Round 1 application window in their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program deployment process. The state has been allotted $993.1 million in the program. Arizona’s BEAD Program will be administered by the Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA).

Several of Charter Communications’ website advertising claims of its Spectrum Mobile “Unlimited” and “Unlimited Plus” wireless data plans are being supported by BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division (NAD). NAD’s finding, which was announced today, came after an initial challenge of those claims by Verizon.

Brightspeed says that it has received $238 million in local, state, and federal grants and funds. The money, the company says, will expand the number of addresses passed by planned projects by 121,000 in 14 states. Brightspeed, which is based in North Carolina, says that it will continue to pursue state and federal grants. The funding:

It is not controversial to say that the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Universal Service Fund (USF) program is unsustainable. Something must change. Universal Service Fund programs cover the cost of maintaining telephone service in high-cost areas, wiring rural schools, libraries, and healthcare facilities for the internet, and providing devices and services at discounted rates to low-income households.