Community Anchor Institutions

When severe weather prevented Bullitt County (KY) students from attending school full time, a crucial library hotspot lending program kept 30 percent of them connected to their studies. These students would otherwise have had no access to virtual learning from their homes. This same program helps local farmers ensure the wellbeing of their livestock.

Federal law seeks to make communications technology like telephones and the internet, in the words of one older statute, “available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States.” A longstanding federal program that seeks to implement this goal is now before the Supreme Court, in a case known as FCC v. Consumers’ Research, and the stakes could be enormous.

The New Mexico state Senate passed SB 401, the Broadband for Education bill, by a vote of 23 to 6. The Broadband for Education bill would transfer the Statewide Education Network (SEN) from the Public School Facilities Authority to the Office of Broadband Access and Expansion. The legislation would move all SEN staff, funds, projects and operations to the state’s broadband office.

The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition commends the Federal Communications Commission for granting a 60-day extension of the Funding Year 2025 Rural Health Care Program application filing window, moving the deadline from April 1, 2025, to June 2, 2025.

The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Managing Director (OMD) announces that the proposed universal service contribution factor for the second quarter of 2025 will be 0.366 or 36.6 percent. Contributions to the federal universal service support mechanisms are determined using a quarterly contribution factor calculated by the FCC. The FCC calculates the quarterly contribution factor based on the ratio of total projected quarterly costs of the universal service support mechanisms to contributors’ total projected collected end-user interstate and international telecommunications re

The Consortium for School Networking is alarmed by the Administration’s decision to eliminate the staff of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology and significantly reduce cybersecurity services that protect K-12 schools. These actions threaten the progress of digital learning, widen inequities in student access to technology and expose school districts to increased cybersecurity risks. Educators across the country rely on the federal government’s technical assistance and guidance to navigate the opportunities and challenges of educational technology.

Patients across the rural South, Appalachia, and remote West are most often unable to make a video call to their doctor or log into their patient portals. Both are essential ways to participate in the U.S. medical system. In 2025, more than $42 billion allocated in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is expected to begin flowing to states as part of a national “Internet for All” initiative launched by the Biden administration.

The Idaho Commission for Libraries, public libraries and partners, and the people of Idaho are once again caught in the culture war’s crosshairs. There’s been a last-minute effort by some members of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee to eliminate the $6.3 million that has been appropriated by Congress to implement the Digital Access for All Idahoans Plan.

Under the Biden Administration, the Federal Communications Commission expanded the E-Rate broadband subsidy program to provide free Wi-Fi on school buses and Wi-Fi hotspot devices for off-campus use by school-age children, despite lacking congressional authorization. This expansion wastes taxpayer money and encroaches on parental authority over children’s screen use and should be ended.

Reps Randy Feenstra (R-IA) and Chris Pappas (D-NH) introduced the Audio-Only Telehealth Access Act, which would make Medicare’s coverage of audio-only telehealth services permanent. The current waiver—which is set to expire on March 31, 2025—allows the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to reimburse healthcare providers for patient evaluation, patient management, and behavioral health services over the phone.