Infrastructure

A bipartisan group of senators and representatives unveiled highlights of the $748 billion Bipartisan COVID-19 Emergency Relief Act of 2020. Provisions for broadband include:

Welcome to the Federal Communications Commission’s first-ever Forum on the Quantum Internet! Quantum networks promise to unleash this power by enabling distributed quantum computing and giving us a level of computational clout far beyond what is possible with today’s Internet. This would be an incredibly powerful tool for solving complex problems and enabling scientific discoveries. When we think about the possible benefits of the Quantum Internet, the first big advancements we are likely to see involve network security.

School districts and cities across the country are racing to bridge a digital divide that has existed for decades. At least 39 states have said they would use funds from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (Cares) Act to help school districts close the tech gap. The fixes can be fairly simple. School-district and municipal IT departments are using technology that has been around for years, such as solar-powered antennas to transmit Wi-Fi, or wireless broadband, closer to more peoples’ homes.

The preliminary results of the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction are now public and while it is a long road from auction results to authorization of funding to actual deployment, the results have significant implications for US broadband policy.

The United States Department of Agriculture is investing approximately $12 million to provide broadband service in unserved and underserved rural areas in Louisiana. Star Telephone Company Inc. will use a $6.1 million ReConnect grant, and a $6.1 million Reconnect loan to deploy a fiber-to-premises network. This high-speed broadband network will connect 3,857 people, 69 businesses, 149 farms, five educational facilities and two essential community facilities in Rapides, Concordia, Pointe Coupee, Avoyelles and Evangeline parishes in Louisiana.

To gauge the deployment rates of advanced services by its member companies, for nearly two decades NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association (NTCA) has conducted its Broadband/Internet Availability Survey. This latest broadband survey is a follow-up to similar surveys conducted in recent years by NTCA and seeks to build upon the results of those surveys. This year’s survey asked about technologies used to provide broadband service in ILEC service areas, broadband availability and subscription rates, anchor institutions, fixed wireless broadband services, competitive broadband services, mobile vo

Cuyahoga County (OH) is seeking more partnerships and projects to help close the digital divide, planning for a long-term solution to lack of internet access in the county. The county issued a “request for information,” which is due by Jan. 15.

Progress on gigabit deployment in the US has been greatly exaggerated. This is true for the state of the internet in general. However, the gigabit landscape is a subsection worth examining more closely, as it is the connectivity threshold that will be required to solve the speed and functionality divides of the near future. The Federal Communications Commission claims that gigabit availability has ballooned from 4% in 2016 to 84% in 2020. Our own estimates, however, show that gigabit plan access has actually gone from 2.4% in the same year to 56% in 2020.

It is Day 1,421 of the Trump Administration. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, from Day 1, has insisted that closing the digital divide is the Trump FCC's top priority. This week, the FCC announced the winners of over $9 billion worth of rural broadband subsidies -- the "single largest step ever taken to close the digital divide," according to Chairman Pai. But looking at the results may leave millions of rural residents apprehensive -- and disconnected.