Federal

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced it has awarded 12 grants as part of the Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program (CMC). These grants, totaling more than $33.5 million, will expand community technology hubs, upgrade classroom technology, and increase digital literacy skills at 12 minority-serving colleges and universities in 10 states. The awardees are as follows:

I understand why folks are confused about the Federal Communications Commission's maps, because there are several major mapping timelines and issues progressing at the same time. The first issue is the FCC mapping fabric. The FCC recently encouraged state and local governments and internet service providers (ISP) to file bulk challenges to the fabric by June 30. The first mapping fabric issued in June 2022 was largely a disaster.

Citing a smear campaign to continue to prevent Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] from being seated as the fifth Federal Communications Commissioner, former Fox and ABC/Disney executive Preston Padden has written the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee to call out those tactics and advocate for Sohn, with whom he is not aligned politically. Padden also said he had been in contact with Fox’s Rupert Murdoch, an opponent of the Democratic nominee.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a major hand in broadband matters. The agency's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) is responsible for overseeing a number of rural broadband funding programs, including the well-known multi-billion-dollar ReConnect loan and grant initiative. Andrew Berke has only recently taken the reigns as RUS Administrator, having been appointed by President Biden in October 2022.

In response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, the Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau has waived certain Lifeline program rules in thirteen previous Orders to provide relief for low-income households. The Bureau finds good cause exists to continue to waive the Lifeline recertification and re-verification requirements for those Lifeline subscribers residing on Tribal lands through April 30, 2023.

The US Department of the Treasury announced the approval of broadband projects in four additional states under the American Rescue Plan’s Capital Projects Fund in President Biden’s American Rescue Plan: Alabama, Kentucky, Nevada, and Texas. Together, these states will use their funding to connect over 292,000 homes and businesses to affordable, high-speed internet.

The Federal Communications Commission proposed rules to help ensure that the public has access to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline if a service outage occurs.

The Federal Communications Commission approved several proposals for the Rural Health Care (RHC) Program to make it easier for healthcare providers to receive support, reduce delays in funding commitments, and improve the program's overall efficiency. Reliable high-speed connectivity is critical for rural healthcare providers to serve patients in rural areas that often have limited resources, fewer doctors, and higher rates for broadband and telecommunications services than urban areas.

New Federal Communications Commission maps that measure broadband access, and new American Community Survey data that measure adoption, show that only 64.4% of rural American households have access to broadband at 100/20 throughput. Most, 58.8%, subscribe to broadband, a gap of less than 6 percentage points. Even with new FCC maps, 98.5% of urban households have access to broadband, but only 73% subscribe.

Social media companies need to further enhance transparency around the content moderation requests that they receive from governments to better safeguard users’ speech online, according to Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), who has focused on tech-related policy issues during her time in office. Sen. Lummis—who serves on the influential Senate Commerce Committee—said that it is “an unprecedented time in history” for freedom of speech and the manner in which governments regulate public discourse, particularly “the real-time failures of government when it comes to interacting with companies that