Federal

Since the late 1990s Colorado has tried to expand access to high-speed broadband. It’s been done in starts and stops, and sometimes not at all. Now Colorado is getting a huge amount of federal money, more than $826 million in Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) funding that was part of the 2021 infrastructure law to help expand broadband internet across the state and the country.

Two key Republican lawmakers are opposing a Federal Communications Commission proposal that would expand the E-rate program to allow it to pay for Wi-Fi on school buses and mobile hotspots that schools can loan out to students.

The last time the Federal Communications Commission raised the standard for broadband, the internet was a much different place. Most people were still commuting to work, relying on their employer’s high-speed internet connection.

The Federal Communications Commission committed more than $68 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) Program, which provides digital tools and services to support students in communities across the country. The funding commitment supports applications from the third application window, benefitting approximately 110,000 students nationwide, including students in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Indiana, Washington, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Broadband mergers and acquisitions have increased five-fold over the last 10 years, according to Jeff Brown, segment marketing manager for Calix. And Brian Vu, chief investment officer for Connect Humanity, estimates that there are about 50 investment funds at an average size of $2.5 billion that have invested or could invest in broadband. All that could be good news at a time when some industry observers are questioning w

The CTIA is among wireless industry stakeholders cautioning the Federal Communications Commission against complicating the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system with additions of multimedia content and other requirements, which the CTIA told the FCC remains "fraught with practical and technical challenges." The New York State's Public Service Commission suggested that the FCC's well-meaning language proposal would face implementation hurdles. Instead, the FCC should "require WEAs to be translated to all languages spoken by at least 300,000 people, or 1%, of the United States population over

Cuba City Telephone Exchange Co. and Cal-Ore Communications notified the Federal Communications Commission of their decisions to withdraw from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support program. Cuba City and Cal-Ore’s letters constitute notification to the FCC that these carriers are defaulting on their obligations to meet their service milestones.

AT&T is no stranger to public-private partnerships, with deals in place with municipal entities in Indiana, Kentucky and Texas to name a few.

I am the Secretary of Commerce. And my job is to make sure that America can compete that our businesses and our companies can compete effectively in the world, including our small businesses, our family farms, and Americans, American workers. And I have to tell you, you cannot compete if you don't have the Internet. I just talked to a third-generation family farmer here in Wisconsin who struggles because the Internet is expensive and doesn't have high quality, and you all know it. You all have friends and family who don't have it.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) charged the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) with establishing the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program and ensuring that BEAD-funded broadband infrastructure projects comply with the Buy America Domestic Content Procurement Preference (Buy America Preference) of the Build America, Buy America Act (BABA).