Federal Communications Commission

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel will visit Isleta and Laguna Pueblos in northern New Mexico and meet with Tribal library representatives and Tribal leaders from several Pueblos and Navajo Nation, as part of agency efforts to ensure everyone, everywhere has the internet connections they need.

How much broadband will Americans get for the $75 billion that Congress committed in 2021? That’s enough money to equip an additional 17 million households with broadband, taking the US to 99 percent broadband coverage, according to a Federal Communications Commission staff paper and data from the Census Bureau.

A federal effort to map out and better understand who in America has decent internet and who does not is already getting challenged by those in the know, including the Colorado Broadband Office, which has submitted 13,000 challenges of the data. The map is just two weeks old. And the state isn’t done challenging the data collected by the Federal Communications Commission, said Brandy Reitter, executive director of the state’s broadband office. “Thirteen thousand is a lot but likely doesn’t include all missing locations,” Reitter said.

The Federal Communications Commission's recent restrictions on five Chinese telecoms’ technologies — adopted on Nov. 25, 2022 — could impact state and local governments in ways previous bans haven’t. “Up until now … the federal agencies have been prohibited from buying this kind of technology, but it's still been widely available to state and local governments, to private companies, individuals,” said Jack Corrigan, research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET).

The Federal Communications Commission voted recently to implement consumer broadband labels. The pricing information alone must be giving shivers to the marketing folks at the biggest broadband providers. The requirement that I think will be the most controversial is the requirement to disclose the typical broadband speed and latency. Some providers will have a real dilemma with the speed disclosure. Some of the dilemmas include the following:

I added US territories as recipients of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) allocation dollars based on their number of unserved locations in addition to the minimum fixed allocation (see). The upshot is Puerto Rico has 212,70 unserved locations, 18% of its total, and an estimated $874 million allocation, which is significant. The other territories don’t change the numbers materially because we don’t see them as having unserved locations.

A panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit explored what would happen if the Federal Communications Commission's fee collection to support telecommunications subsidies were overturned, as they dissected the legality of giving the Federal Communications Commission and the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) power to levy the fees.

The Federal Communications Commission appointed Burt Cohen, Staff Attorney and Broadband Coordinator for the State of Connecticut, Office of Consumer Counsel, to serve as the State Consumer Advocate representative on the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service. This appointment fills the position recently vacated by the William “Bill” Vallee of the Connecticut State Office of Consumer Counsel. 

With $37 billion of the $42 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program based on the number of locations unserved by broadband, accurately measuring who is unserved is critical — both for the allocation of funds, but, more importantly, so people without access to real broadband can be connected.

The digital divide is narrowing in Manistee County, Michigan, according to internet provider Spectrum — a division of Charter Communications. Spectrum is in the process of expanding its services in rural parts of the state through a combination of public-private partnerships and internal investment. Roughly $10 million is being invested in Manistee County to bring unserved homes and businesses up to speed. Funding is made possible through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), an initiative of the Federal Communications Commission, along with an additional $8.2 million investment by Cha