Federal Communications Commission

The lack of broadband in many rural and Tribal communities in the U.S. is widely recognized, but there are also claims of a lack of broadband availability in predominantly minority and urban communities, sometimes labeled digital redlining or digital discrimination. Motivated by such claims, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 includes a provision addressing digital discrimination and directing the Federal Communications Commission to write rules implementing the statutory provision.

Blair Levin, non-resident senior fellow with The Brookings Institution, has some opinions about the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. He thinks it’s being run a lot better than the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). Levin recently testified at a House subcommittee hearing where Republican Congresspeople tried to slam the BEAD program. He contrasted BEAD with the RDOF program, which set up a reverse auction to award broadband grants under the former Republican Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai.

The Federal Communications Commission announced a $13 million settlement with AT&T to resolve an Enforcement Bureau investigation into the company’s supply chain integrity and whether it failed to protect the information of AT&T customers in connection with a data breach of a vendor’s cloud environment. AT&T used the vendor to generate and host personalized video content, including billing and marketing videos, for AT&T customers.

The Federal Communications Commission announced the opening of the application window for the Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program. During the 45-day application filing window, which will run from September 17, 2024 to November 1, 2024, eligible schools and libraries can apply to participate in the three-year, $200 million pilot program.

Per the most recent American Community Survey data, among cities with 100,000 or more households, the two worst-connected cities, Detroit (MI) and Cleveland (OH), have also had the biggest percentage reductions in households without wireline broadband connections since 2019. Detroit added more than 41,000 households with cable, fiber or DSL subscriptions between 2019 and 2023, even while its total household count shrank by about 12,000; this took the city’s percentage of households without wireline from 46.3% down to 32.2%.

In May 2022, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published an oft-quoted report that described federal funding for broadband as a “fragmented, overlapping patchwork.” Despite more than 100 broadband-related programs investing millions of dollars into deployment, affordability, planning, digital skills, and connective devices, GAO found that “millions of Americans still lack broadband, and communities with limited resources may be most affected by fragmentation.” GAO asked the National Telecommunications and Information Administra

A long-running issue resurfaced recently asking if light poles should be made available for telecommunications.

Federal Communications Commissioner Nathan Simington replied to letters from Sens Ed Markey (D-MA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) calling on all Commissioners to act objectively, in accordance with the Communications Act and the First Amendment, in license grants, renewals, and transfers. Commissioner Simington replied: “I am pleased to commit to making license determinations objectively and fairly, in compliance with the Communications Act and in a manner that upholds the First Amendment.

Federal Communications Commissioner Nathan Simington released a statement regarding the ongoing negotiation between Disney and DirecTV. He touched on three concerns about the media marketplace. "One: about a third of linear network content distributed in the United States is now delivered by over the top, streaming platforms. Two: there is zero harmonization, whether in our rules or in industry practice, between network video content distribution over traditional linear MVPDs versus over the top, streaming MVPDs.

Internet service providers including Charter, Verizon and Comcast are shifting customers away from the Affordable Connectivity Program, an expired federal internet subsidy that helped low-income households pay for broadband. The $14.2 billion program, which went into effect in December 2021, served roughly