Federal Communications Commission

States and territories were required to inform the National Telecommunications and Information Administration by July 18 if they intended to participate in the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. After NTIA approves a state’s anticipated planning process (due August 15), BEAD unlocks $5 million to each participating state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico ($1.25 million for the four smaller territories) for initial planning.

In April 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to free up 1,200 megahertz of spectrum in the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use, earning cheers from Wi-Fi and fixed wireless groups. But more than two years on, scuffles between industry associations representing cable, broadcasting, utility and public safety interests have left the future of the 6 GHz band in limbo. The spectrum is extremely important to cable operators and operators in general because it enables cable companies to offer the fastest service not only to your home but within your home via Wi-Fi technology.

The “future of spectrum is sharing.” Basically, the airwaves are now so crowded that the old model of “clear and auction” federal spectrum is unsustainable for a society as connected as ours. With Wi-Fi 7 coming up, we will need channel sizes of 320 MHz of contiguous spectrum to get the benefits. Despite doomsday predictions from incumbents that any change in existing spectrum rules would cause massive destructive interference with valuable existing services, the Federal Communication Commission's engineers successfully evaluated the evidence and created rules that brought us new wireless s

The Federal Communications Commission committed nearly $42 million in two new funding rounds through the Emergency Connectivity Program (ECP), which provides digital services for students in communities across the country.

I was surprised to find out by an FCC press release that agency leadership had suddenly reversed course on an $885 million infrastructure award that Elon Musk’s Starlink won in 2020 to provide high-speed Internet service to unconnected Americans.

The NCTA—The Internet and Television Association, an industry trade and lobbying association for large cable companies, recently touted big increases in broadband speeds since the start of the pandemic. Specifically, NCTA states that the average U.S. download speed has grown from 138 Mbps in March 2020, the first month of the pandemic, to 226 Mbps in June 2022. Obviously, the cable companies are taking credit for much of the speed increase, and to some extent, that’s true.

New Street Research believes that, as the economy takes a turn for the worse, postpaid cellphone plans are a better value than prepaid phone plans. New Street named T-Mobile and cable companies as the main beneficiaries of this trend – at the expense of AT&T and Verizon. “Competition has driven down the price of postpaid plans, while eliminating barriers to adoption (contracts; credit thresholds),” wrote New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin and Philip Burnett.

Over the past two years, school districts have sent kids home with laptops and tablets in unprecedented numbers. Thousands of these devices and the internet connections that power them have been purchased through two federal subsidy programs overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) known as E-Rate and the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF).  Giving students these devices has led to a dramatic increase in screen time and made it more difficult for parents to protect their children from exposure to objectively harmful online content.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau seeks nominations for six Board member positions on the Board of Directors of the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) for a three-year term. The FCC is persuaded that having Board members with substantive areas of expertise relevant to running a large and complex organization with such skills as accounting, finance, auditing, procurement, data management and information technology will improve the management, administration and oversight of USAC.

Conexon Partner and former Federal Communications Commission planner Jonathan Chambers warned that the FCC’s broadband mapping effort is headed for disaster—flagging potential issues with state-level mapping efforts which he said could slow or bias the funding allocation process for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program support. There are two primary problems at the federal level. The first is the method Congress has chosen for calculating the ratio of BEAD funding given to each state on top of the baseline $100 million allocation that has been granted across the board. Un