Infrastructure

The US Department of Agriculture announced Justin Maxson, CEO of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, has been named Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development. Maxson served as the CEO of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, an organization that works toward poverty alleviation and economic justice in southern states. Before that, he spent 13 years as the president of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development.

CenturyLink and Frontier Communications have again failed to meet broadband-deployment deadlines in dozens of states after taking money from the Federal Communications Commission. The deadline to hit 100 percent of the required deployments passed on December 31, 2020. Both CenturyLink and Frontier informed the FCC that they missed the deadline to finish deployment in numerous states. The carriers won't face the possibility of punishment yet.

Exploring the use of an innovative approach to a public-private partnership (PPP) to spur the deployment of broadband and create more resilient telecommunications networks in Puerto Rico. Such a partnership is a critical ingredient of the plan for rebuilding the telecommunications sector of Puerto Rico after the island was devastated by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017. The proposed partnership also has the potential for enabling the expansion of citizen access to broadband services throughout Puerto Rico.

In his inaugural speech, President Joe Biden noted the various factions at odds with one another in America, including a rural and urban divide.

Solving the country’s broadband challenges will require bold new government action. That’s why Verizon is calling on Congress to take critical steps to further expand broadband access and implement new tools that will enable even more Americans to use the power of the internet, including:

Today, there’s a glaring inequity in one crucial area that guarantees inequity in myriad others: Internet access.

The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund is looking more and more like one of the most wasteful projects in Federal Communications Commission history. Critiquing the FCC for awarding more than $2 billion to unproven companies using questionable technologies to serve questionable areas is fully valid. So is raising concerns about awards to a bankrupt incumbent. These two critiques can coexist. Yet FCC Chairman Pai views them as the bread of a “job well done” policy sandwich.

President Biden is inheriting tricky tech questions including how to rein in powerful digital superstars, what to do about Chinese technology and how to bring more Americans online. Here’s a glimpse at opportunities and challenges in technology policy for the new Biden administration:

 Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), Senator John Thune (R-SD), and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) led a bipartisan letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and fellow commissioners regarding implementation of programs to help close the digital divide in rural America. With the recent completion of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, the letter urges the FCC to ensure recipients of broadband deployment funding can deliver on their commitments. In total, 157 Representatives and Senators joined Walberg on the letter.

The Federal Communications Commission released its annual Broadband Deployment Report. The gap between urban and rural Americans with access to 25/3 Mbps fixed broadband service fell from 30 percentage points at the end of 2016 to 16 points at the end of 2019. Additionally, more than three-quarters of those Americans in areas newly served in 2019 (nearly 3.7 million) live in rural areas, bringing the number of rural Americans in areas served by at least 25/3 Mbps broadband service to nearly 83%, up 15 points since 2016.