Community Anchor Institutions

Block Island, located just 12 miles south of mainland Rhode Island, has launched a municipal broadband network in partnership with Sertex Broadband Solutions. Dubbed BroadbandBI, the gigabit fiber network will power the town of New Shoreham, which has a population of roughly 1,000 people. New Shoreham initially struck a partnership with Sertex in 2017 to build a municipal broadband network serving community anchor institutions, such as schools, libraries, and hospitals. That network was completed in 2019.

As an aging workforce and a lack of interest among young people threaten to derail nationwide broadband buildout plans, the industry’s stakeholders must come together to tackle what has become a massive fiber workforce shortage, said Deborah Kish, VP of workforce development at the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA). The Government Accountability Office estimated that around 34,000 workers might be needed in 2023 to support the government’s broadband expansion programs, depending on unpredictable project timelines. And the workforce sh

The Federal Communications Commission committed over $15 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) Program, which provides digital services for students in communities across the country.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau, in consultation with the Office of the Managing Director, announces the amount of unused funds for the Rural Health Care (RHC) Program that has been carried forward for funding year 2023.

The Federal Communications Commission committed over $12 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) Program, which provides digital services for students in communities across the country.

When scanning the Federal Communications Commission’s latest broadband maps for funding opportunities, city staff in Mesa, Arizona, struggled to find places that still needed access. Mesa’s diverse geography includes older neighborhoods that lacked modern internet services as well as new developments with high-speed fiber.

AT&T and the Public Library Association (PLA) have launched a free self-paced online course to educate parents, caregivers and families about the federal broadband benefits available to qualifying households for discounted internet service from participating providers.

The Federal Communications Commission granted, in part, a Request for Waiver filed by the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN).

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau and Office of the Managing Director (OMD) offer guidance to participants in the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) Program on the expiration of the COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11, 2023 and announce June 30, 2024 as the sunset date for the ECF Program. As part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Act), Congress appropriated $7.171 billion and directed the FCC to promulgate rules to distribute funding from the ECF to eligible schools and libraries for the purchase during the COVID-19 emergency period of eligibl

Recently we launched the Benton Institute’s Affordable Connectivity Program Enrollment Performance Tool, a free resource that helps communities answer the question: “How are ACP sign-ups going?” Using the tool to search 5-digit zip codes delivers two important numbers:  1) how many households have signed up for ACP and 2) the expected number of households enrolled. Comparing expected enrollment to actual enrollment is a measure of performance.