Individuals who primarily Reside in a Rural Area

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-MO), in partnership with Missouri Farm Bureau President Garrett Hawkins, directed a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, urging it to rightfully return defaulted funding through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to Missouri to expand broadband and rural internet access. The letter follows the recent reveal that the RDOF will not connect 85,000 Missouri service locations, and Missouri will lose approximately $177 million in federal investment. Attorney General Bailey urges “that action be taken by the FCC to rightfully return previously

Evan Feinman, a top Commerce Department official sent a blistering email to his former colleagues on his way out the door warning that the Trump administration is poised to unduly enrich Elon Musk’s satellite internet company with money for rural broadband. The technology offered by Starlink, Musk’s company, is inferior, Feinman warned.

The Maine Connectivity Authority believes there are several ways to both accelerate and improve the BEAD program, reducing barriers and maximizing the Return On Investment (ROI):

The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition commends the Federal Communications Commission for granting a 60-day extension of the Funding Year 2025 Rural Health Care Program application filing window, moving the deadline from April 1, 2025, to June 2, 2025.

The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Managing Director (OMD) announces that the proposed universal service contribution factor for the second quarter of 2025 will be 0.366 or 36.6 percent. Contributions to the federal universal service support mechanisms are determined using a quarterly contribution factor calculated by the FCC. The FCC calculates the quarterly contribution factor based on the ratio of total projected quarterly costs of the universal service support mechanisms to contributors’ total projected collected end-user interstate and international telecommunications re

Conexon Connect, the internet service provider formed by rural fiber broadband leader Conexon, continues to extend access to high-speed internet across rural America.

The Bringing Online Opportunities to Texas (BOOT) Program, which announced a second round of broadband grants for $701.9 million earlier in 2025, has updated its list of grantees to include seven new awards. The awards now cover more than 76,000 locations in Bastrop, Burleson, Caldwell, Carson, Coleman, Colorado, Edwards, Falls, Fannin, Irion, Karnes, Kenedy, Liberty, Marion, Morris, Newton, Reagan, Roberts, Throckmorton, and Trinity counties.

The next phase of Elon Musk’s plan to entangle his companies with the workings of the federal government is well underway. That entails not only President Donald Trump’s photo op with a Tesla in front of the White House but also, surprisingly, the future of your internet connection.

Benton Institute for Broadband & Society Board Chairman and Trustee Austin Hirsch announced that longtime Executive Director Adrianne B. Furniss will transition to Benton Senior Fellow and will be succeeded by the Institute’s current Vice President of Programs, Dr. Revati Prasad. Furniss will continue to manage the Institute’s programming in Illinois and advise Dr. Prasad for the rest of 2025. Dr. Prasad will assume leadership of the Benton Institute beginning May 1, 2025.

This study investigates the impacts of 23 US Department of Agriculture Community Connect grant projects approved in fiscal years 2017–2019 on measured broadband download and upload speeds during 2019–2022 using program data, Ookla Speedtest data, and other data. We find that these projects had a positive impact on upload speed but not download speed, increasing upload speeds in project areas by an average of about 28 percent across the study periods. We find larger impacts on upload speed of projects that supported fiber-to-the-household than other projects and larger impacts in some geogra