Individuals who primarily Reside in a Rural Area

Despite broadband being an essential infrastructure for conducting basic socio-economic activities and reducing inequality and the digital divide, expanding broadband coverage in rural areas remains a significant challenge in many countries due to high deployment costs.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of broadband internet connectivity became glaringly obvious for many people. As offices, schools, and businesses closed and stayed shuttered for weeks and in some cases months, many people worked or learned remotely – and continue to do so. Now is a critical time to address the issue of community broadband deployment in New York – and at the same time, enable the transition to clean energy.

Cell network coverage maps have always been dubiously accurate in the US, and even the ones released by the Federal Communication Commission in 2021 come with a ton of asterisks. A company called Ranlytics is hoping to make a much more accurate picture by attaching equipment to some of the mail trucks that are already driving to many locations in the US to deliver parcels and letters.

The Federal Communications Commission recently opened a docket, at the prompting of federal legislation, that asks for examples of digital discrimination. The big cable companies and telecoms are all going to swear they don’t discriminate against anybody for any reason, and every argument they make will be pure bosh. If people decide to respond to this FCC docket, we’ll see more evidence of discrimination based on income. We might even get some smoking gun evidence that some of the discrimination comes from corporate bias based on race and other factors.

The Idaho Broadband Advisory Board (IBAB) has awarded $26.3 million in funding from the Idaho Broadband Fund for two middle-mile broadband infrastructure projects in Idaho. After opening the request for proposals on December 22, 2022, the board moved efficiently to award eligible broadband projects, prioritizing projects focusing on expanding or extending middle-mile. The board awarded $20 million to the Idaho Regional Optical Network (IRON) and the Intermountain Infrastructure Group (IIG) for a 198-mile public/private partnership project from Grangeville to Star.

It was worth the wait. The third round of the US Department of Agriculture's ReConnect Loan and Grant Program closed in 2022, after awarding $759 million in rural broadband grants and loans to 49 deployers, mostly small local exchange carriers (LECs). The average cost of passing each home, farm, other business, or school was just over $4,500, compared to $4,100 in 2019 and almost $6,000 in 2020. All awardees in this round, and almost all in previous rounds, told USDA they were deploying fiber to the premises.

The wireless industry is out with a new paper that claims, “The bias [towards fiber to the home] ‘could increase costs by upwards of $30 to $60 billion depending on the distribution of fiber deployment costs for the unserved locations.’” It also says “[excluding unlicensed fixed wireless] ‘unambiguously adds’ at least 1.9 million new locations calling for government-funded overbuilding with [Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment] BEAD funds”. As both my 

The proportion of US urban populations declined slightly from 2010 to 2020, while the proportion of US rural populations increased during the same period. Yet while the narrative is good news, the changes seem to be less about people moving in or out of rural and urban places and more about how the Census Bureau defines “rural.” Specifically, the Census Bureau:

Alaska Communications expanded broadband availability and boosted speeds to almost 5,000 homes in the Interior region of the state in 2022. The company used a wide range of last-mile technologies – from XGS-PON to fixed wireless, even some DSL — to achieve that. The Alaskan Interior can be thought of as the center of the state – the area most removed from the state’s lengthy coastline. Much of the area is wilderness.

The American Library Association and the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition spoke with the Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Data Task Force staff and FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s advisor on Feb. 6, 2023 about including community anchor institutions (CAIs) on the FCC’s National Broadband Map. The groups expressed concerns about the current treatment of libraries and said CAIs that purchase mass-market broadband service should be included on the map.