Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act)

According to Albert Einstein, insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Congress is taking this to a whole new level with its latest discussions about how to “fix” broadband internet deployment across the United States. The most vociferous criticisms of the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program have centered on how long it has taken to deploy. On its face, that is a fair criticism. Contextualized, however, the criticism does not hold water. No one is asking why it took so long. The simple answer: Maps.

The 2024 Rural Telecommunications Benchmark Study provides data from 147 rural telecommunications companies and provides insight into the financial and operational performance of the telecommunications industry. As of June 2024, participating companies accepted $950 million of federal, state, and local government broadband grants compared to $600 as of 2022. THhis represents a 50 percent increase in broadband grants over the amounts for 2022.

On August 7, 2024, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released the third funding report showing fiscal year (FY) 2022 data reported by 13 agencies across 70 programs making investments in broadband.

This is the third Federal Broadband Funding Report produced by NTIA, showing fiscal year (FY) 2022 data reported by 12 agencies across 70 programs making investments in broadband. This is the first Federal Broadband Funding Report to highlight trends across three fiscal years of data collected. For the first time, this report not only will release a dashboard of major findings but will also include a comprehensive view of broadband investment data reported across the last three data collections—reflecting broadband investments from FY 2020 to 2022.

Tracking broadband funding awards as they happen. In January 2024:

RiverStreet Networks, a sister company of rural provider Wilkes Communications, has received a $191.1 million loan from CoBank that will go, in part, to refinance legacy US Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service financing and, in part, to deploy fiber broadband in rural areas of North Carolina and Virginia.

The City of Cleveland (OH) is moving forward with Mayor Justin Bibb’s $20 million plan to expand broadband throughout the city. The revised plan would allocate $20 million of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars to local nonprofit DigitalC to expand affordable broadband.

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 8.3 million households lack access to high-speed broadband. Providing universal access to communications service—initially voice service and now broadband—has always been a challenge in the United States. Although connecting urban, populated areas is relatively easy, serving sparsely populated rural areas is difficult due to differences in terrain and population density.

In September 2021, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) awarded the Missouri Association of Councils of Government (MACOG) a