Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

Governor Janet Mills (D-ME) has pledged that everyone in the state who wants high-speed internet will be able to get it by the end of 2024. Laying fiber cable to remote regions is the first phase of making good on that promise. Maine’s 2020 Broadband Plan estimated the total cost to build out 17,502 miles of fiber-optic or coax cable to currently unserved areas would be at least $600 million.

There's a wave of jobs that will result from $1.2 trillion in direct government spending from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

With Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) finally getting enough votes to be elected Speaker of the House and that body cleared for the takeoff of Republican committee leadership, look for that leadership to launch Federal Communications Commission and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) oversight hearings.

The year 2023 could prove to be a volatile year for the Federal Communications Commission as it wrestles with a number of lawsuits concerning its Universal Service Fund (USF) program.

It is unfortunate timing that the new Federal Communications Commission broadband map was issued in the middle of the process of trying to determine the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant funding. Congress said that the amount of funding that will go to each state must be based upon the FCC map – and the first draft is clearly flawed. However, assuming that that grant funding question gets resolved somehow, there remains the bigger issue of whether the new FCC map will ever accurately portray broadband availability.

Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NM) and Jacky Rosen (D-NM) sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking the body to reconsider maps drafted for the Silver State's broadband Internet connectivity, calling the drafts "deeply flawed" and warning that such maps could perpetuate the digital divide among the state's urban and rural areas.

In November 2021, President Joe Biden (D) signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) into law.

The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission grants a request filed by seventeen groups and individuals for an extension of the time in which to file comments in response to the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Empowering Broadband Consumers Through Transparency docket. As determined by the date of publication in the Federal Register, comments and reply comments were originally due on January 17, 2023 and February 14, 2023, respectively. The FCC extends the comment date 30 days to February 16, 2023.

The Federal Communications Commission's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau reminds potential applicants that complete applications to the Affordable Connectivity Outreach Grant Program (ACP Outreach Grant Program) must be received electronically through Grants.gov no later than 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST) on Monday, January 9, 2023.