Individuals who primarily Reside in a Rural Area

Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced a second round of awards through the Broadband Opportunity Program to expand broadband Internet access in Florida’s underserved communities. More than $22 million was awarded for eight projects across eight Florida counties for broadband Internet expansion that will impact more than 33,200 unserved residential, educational, business, and community locations.

T-Mobile has long been a participant in the Federal Communications Commission's spectrum auctions, which the Commission has used for 30 years to rapidly assign licenses. These auctions fuel the U.S. economy—they’ve returned $233 billion to taxpayers so far, and once armed with this spectrum, wireless companies have spent another $635 billion building out networks.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel delivered remarks on April 6th, 2023, about the state of communications infrastructure in Indian Country to the 2023 Reservation Economic Summit. "I believe affordable broadband access is a prerequisite for full participation in our society and economy." This statement made by Rosenworcel in her speech highlights the importance of universal broadband access. Rosenworcel discusses the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has brought attention to the digital divide affecting low-income families and rural communities.

Some questions about T-Mobile’s Home Internet service remain unanswered, including the cause of a deceleration of subscribers from the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2022. However, the analysts at MoffettNathanson took a stab at examining that and other issues related to fixed wireless access (FWA) in a new report. The report is an update of one from a year ago in which MoffetNathanson worked with Opensignal, formerly Comlinkdata, to analyze where FWA subscribers are coming from. Not a lot has changed from a year ago; Opensignal’s estimates of T-Mobile’s FWA subscriber mix show sign

Innovative Systems of Mitchell (SD) commissioned a survey of broadband and bundled rates paid by rural residents. This is the eighth year of the survey. The 2022 survey focused on zip codes that are completely rural in order to find out about rural rates. The results come from surveys administered to 841 rural residents. The study showed that the average rate paid for rural broadband increased from $68 per month in 2021 to $71 in 2022.

While most Californians have access to broadband, at least two million households (15 percent) still do not—a gap known as the digital divide. In 2021, California invested $6 billion through Senate Bill (SB) 156 to expand broadband infrastructure, address affordability, and promote digital literacy. The Public Policy Institute of California presents findings from the first year of implementation, drawing on statewide broadband data and interviews with 41 community partners, spread across 54 of California’s 58 counties. The Institute finds that:

Alaska Communications says that after a successful pilot of fiber-to-the-home service in 2022, it plans to extend its fiber network to another 14,000 homes over the course of 2023. Alaska Communications’ fiber network already serves some neighborhoods in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Soldotna. The fiber service offers three pricing tiers of symmetrical speeds up to 2.5 Gbps.

A new best practice white paper explores micro-trenching, an advantageous fiber broadband deployment method. The report compares micro-trenching amongst other deployment methods as a valuable option in the fiber broadband construction toolkit and it also details the scrutiny that micro-trenching faces, success stories, and best practices.

Hughes has been offering geosynchronous (GEO) satellite-based internet service for a couple of decades. It has more than 1 million internet subscribers in the Americas. But now it’s boosting its service with the help of some terrestrial wireless providers. HughesNet Fusion is a new home internet offering that combines satellite and wireless technologies to improve latency.

Charter Communications, Comcast, and Cox Communications all met with Federal Communications Commission officials earlier in March 2023 to discuss A-CAM issues. A-CAM refers to the FCC’s Alternative Connect America Model program, which supports broadband deployments in eligible high-cost areas.