Internet/Broadband

On October 25, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) awarded over $70 million in funding to California through the Digital Equity Act's Capacity Grant Program.

Over $140 million in awards from the ConnectALL Municipal Infrastructure Grant Program will expand broadband infrastructure throughout Central New York, the Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley, North Country, Mid-Hudson, and Western New York regions. These public-private partnerships will lead to the construction of more than 1,200 miles of publicly-owned fiber optic infrastructure and wireless hubs, connecting over 60,000 homes and businesses with affordable, symmetric service — offering equal download and upload speeds at rates below regional averages.

Evan Feinman, a director with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), addressed the “elephant in the room,” specifically what the new Trump administration will mean for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. “My job is to faithfully execute the laws as written by Congress and as directed by my leadership, and we are getting an awful lot done," he said.

Comcast is footing most of the bill for a $55 million broadband network buildout in Indiana for which the company also won funding from the state. The state of Indiana awarded Comcast several grants totaling about $9.4 million to cover some of the costs of the buildout in June. The remaining $45 million-plus will be covered by Comcast, the company spokesperson confirmed.  That’s around 83 percent of total project costs.

Charter Communications is making the latest move on the telecommunications mergers and acquisitions front, announcing it will acquire Liberty Broadband. But it won’t be getting Alaskan operator GCI as part of the deal. Liberty Broadband, which owns shares in a broad range of communications businesses, acquired GCI in 2020. It also has a 26 percent ownership of Charter, or around 45.6 million shares of Charter’s common stock.

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) today has approved and recommended for award applications from Delaware, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Puerto Rico allowing them to request access to more than $68 million to implement their Digital Equity Plans. This funding comes from the $1.44 billion State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program, one of three Digital Equity Act grant programs created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The awards received are:

Securing our nation's cyber infrastructure is imperative. That is why all Department of Commerce networks have taken the first step to implement Internet routing security. Routing security ensures that Internet traffic reaches its intended target. Misconfigurations or manipulations of routing information can lead to significant degradation and loss of service. The United States Government is tackling concerns about routing security through a whole-of-government approach. The Department of Commerce is playing a leading role in these efforts:

Chris Mitchell speaks with Andy Schwartzman, Senior Counselor at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, about pressing legal issues affecting telecommunications policy in the U.S.

The largest-ever federal broadband expansion program—Broadband Equity, Access and Development or BEAD—was passed in November 2021 but is only now really starting to hit its stride. No one has been connected to broadband by BEAD, nor have any BEAD funds been awarded to any internet service provider (ISP) for expansion purposes. But they will come soon.

Charter CFO Jessica Fisher recently announced that Charter will spend substantially less on pursuing Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants than the company spent on Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) [funny wording for how a company wins federal money]. This is big news because a natural assumption in some state broadband offices is that Charter would likely be a big player in the BEAD grant process.