Individuals who primarily Reside in a Rural Area

In June 2023, President Joe Biden announced how $42 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment funding will be allocated across the US and its territories to bring 100% broadband access to nearly 60 million unserved or underserved Americans within five years. That goal, and the billions of dollars and new tools available, will give policymakers, communities, and industry stakeholders a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to bridge the digital divide. However, finances are finite and currently trending in a budget-busting “fiber-first” direction.

The availability of high-speed internet has become one of the driving factors in attracting new residents to settle in the Monadnock region, giving some towns a competitive advantage for people who work or attend school remotely. Rebecca Morse, broker for RE/MAX Town Square in New Ipswich, said towns with lower internet services are generally less desirable, though not entirely off the table to most buyers, unless they have specific work-from-home needs.

Growing up in a bustling suburb, accessing the internet was something I took for granted. I never thought about internet access or access in other parts of the country. It wasn’t until I embarked on my journey at USTelecom that I began to learn about the challenges of deploying broadband in rural communities. I headed to Sulphur, Oklahoma, population 4,700, home to the Chickasaw Telephone Company, to better understand what it takes to deploy broadband in rural America. USTelecom members, like Chickasaw, are leading the way in connecting rural America.

The US Chamber of Commerce is asking a federal appeals court to vacate the Federal Communications Commission’s recent digital discrimination order. As mandated by the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act, the commission adopted rules in November 2023 to prevent gaps in broadband access based on race, income level, and other demographic characteristics – known as digital discrimination.

The Purdue Center for Regional Development—in partnership with the Indiana Broadband Office, the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs, and Purdue Extension—has developed a draft of the state’s first-ever Digital Equity Plan.

Working parents in rural and urban America struggle daily to ensure they have adequate care for their little ones and certainly safe care at an affordable price. Here at NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association, we have spent countless hours talking about workforce issues that impact broadband deployment in rural America. During our annual Women in Telecom Fly-In to Washington, D.C.,  the discussion turned to what could be done to encourage more women to enter the rural broadband space as an attractive career path.

The purpose of the Arkansas Digital Skills and Opportunity Plan is to outline an actionable path forward to make digital opportunity an economic benefit and reality for all Arkansans. This plan will position the state’s residents to pursue cross-sectoral economic growth through broadband-related, nondeployment activities and enhance workforce development. The draft plan is open for public comment until January 25, 2024. ARConnect has a detailed vision for achieving digital opportunity in Arkansas: 

The Office of Broadband Development (OBD) is located in the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. OBD was created by statute in 2013 and just completed its tenth year of work on its mission to improve access to broadband service that meets the state’s speed goals, serving the needs of anchor institutions, and expanding the skills and knowledge needed to use these services. Border-to-Border high speed internet access is the goal throughout Minnesota. 2023 milestones for the Office included:

Several organizations, led by the Illinois Soybean Association (ISA) and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, are working on Broadband Breakthrough, a pilot program that aims to help bring federally funded high-speed connectivity to five rural Illinois counties. The idea behind the program, which is funded by United Soybean Board, is to increase the percentage of farmers with broadband by preparing a wide variety of stakeholders to apply for grant money from the federal government.

In his annual letter, Bill Gates predicted that the United States is “eighteen to twenty four months away from significant levels of AI use by the general population” and that African countries are just a year or so behind that. The pace of AI development is breathtaking, with generative AI tools like ChatGPT forecast to have an adoption curve steeper than the smartphone.