Federal

Following President Biden’s State of the Union Address in January 2023, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced that it would take a strict approach to enforcing Build America, Buy America requirements for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Now we’re ready to provide more specifics.

At the end of July 2023, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a $20 million penalty against Q Link and Hello Mobile for not complying with the Customer Propriety Network Information (CPNI). The FCC concluded that the two companies violated the CPNI rules when they failed to protect confidential user data. The companies both had security flaws in their apps that allowed outside access to customer account information. There are stringent privacy rules in place at the FCC for voice providers, but nothing similar for broadband.

Some states will be filing their initial proposals in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband funding program soon if they haven’t already—and once the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) approves a state’s proposal, the state will be eligible to receive 20 percent of its allocation of funds.

Elon Musk, became involved in the war in Ukraine soon after Russia invaded, in February 2022. Along with conventional assaults, the Kremlin was conducting cyberattacks against Ukraine’s digital infrastructure. Ukrainian officials and a loose coalition of expatriates in the tech sector, brainstorming in group chats on WhatsApp and Signal, found a potential solution: SpaceX, which manufactures a line of mobile Internet terminals called Starlink. The tripod-mounted dishes, each about the size of a computer display connect with a network of satellites.

The Federal Communication Commission used FCC Form 477 to collect subscribership information from providers of voice telephone services – incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), and mobile voice providers – since December 1999. The FCC has required interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (“interconnected VoIP”) service providers to report subscribership information since December 2008. Also, starting with the data reported for 2014, FCC Form 477 has been modified to distinguish “over-the-top” (colloquially, “bring your own broadband”) inte

Permitting has long been the bane of broadband deployments across the country, but a little-known federal council is working to change that.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced the FCC's intent to recharter the Precision Agriculture Connectivity Task Force for its third and final term, calling on the four working groups to examine the impact of connectivity in meeting the production and sustainability challenges facing agricultural and food systems. In addition, Chairwoman Rosenworcel called for representatives from diverse and historically underrepresented communities, including socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, to apply for membership to the Task Force and its working groups.

An AI expert suggested that AI could be used to produce better broadband maps. I had to chuckle at that idea. The primary reason for my amusement is that Federal Communications Commission maps are created from self-reported broadband coverage and speeds by the many internet service providers (ISP) in the country. ISPs have a variety of motivations for how and why they report data to the FCC. Some ISPs try to report accurate speeds and coverage.

The Coalition of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) Winners has filed an emergency petition with the Federal Communications Commission regarding its request for extra funding or other relief measures. The group argues that the COVID pandemic has raised deployment costs dramatically and that the funding the companies won is now insufficient.

Over the past 26 years, the Universal Service Fund — a federal subsidy pool collected monthly from American telephone customers — has spent close to $9 billion a year to give Americans better phone and internet connections, wiring rural communities in Arkansas, inner-city neighborhoods in Chicago, and public libraries and schools across the country. Now it faces the biggest crisis of its existence, and Congress appears paralyzed in the effort to fix it.