Internet/Broadband

As public broadband networks expand across the US, so too does the body of knowledge on how to launch and run them successfully.

Is broadband service in the U.S. affordable? This question has dominated public discourse in recent years as policymakers have focused on, and allocated significant resources towards, closing the country’s digital divide once and for all. But determining the “affordability” of something is highly subjective and thus not amenable to a neat one-size-fits-all definition arrived at by central planners.

Seven network operators are slated to share millions of dollars in Nebraska broadband deployment funding through the state’s Universal Service Fund program. Awardees must file certain additional information, which must be approved by the state, before the awards will be finalized. If all awards are approved, deployments will be made to 1,258 locations. The program has a total budget of over $19 million in this round. The seven funding winners are:

As states gear up to allocate Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) money, the challenges of permitting are top-of-mind for all parties involved in the process. To ensure that local governments and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can reduce broadband network construction challenges, The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, in partnership with the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, the American Association for Public Broadband, Fiber Broadband Association, Brightspeed, and GFiber, held a summit earlier to discuss the issues and recommend solutions

Electric co-ops are uniquely positioned to apply for, and win, Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) funds because they already reach most of the homes in the U.S. that are currently unserved with broadband. But the question is: do co-ops even want to apply for BEAD? Cliff Johnson, head of the Rural Broadband Initiative with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) says electric co-ops are uniquely positioned to serve broadband to remote and rural customers.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has gone on the offensive and defended itself against possible lawsuits that might claim that the FCC has overstepped its regulatory authority that was granted by Congress.

Kansas State University is establishing a program to improve broadband access for thousands of Kansans, helping them navigate the digital economy more safely and successfully.

Fiber service providers have been given a boost in their pursuit of more energy-efficient networks that can unlock significant power savings thanks to a new project launched by Broadband Forum. The project will seek to lower energy consumption when accessing the internet. The project, which is set to publish its specification in Summer 2025, will encourage the development of technologies that satisfy the power-saving requirements, test plan, and data model it sets out.

During the Trump Administration, the Federal Trade Commission ordered nine of the largest social media and video streaming services—Amazon, Facebook (which is now Meta), YouTube, Twitter (now known as X), Snap, ByteDance (which owns TikTok), Discord, Reddit, and WhatsApp—to provide data on how they collect, use, and present personal information, their advertising and user engagement practices, and how their practices affect children and teens.

The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) announced the award of $20,000 Digital Equity Leadership Grants to 36 jurisdictions in California to participate in the Local Government Best Practices Check List Project to accelerate the adoption of policies and practices to accelerate progress in closing the Digital Divide in California. The CETF Digital Equity Leadership Grants are made possible as a result of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between CETF and T‐Mobile USA in which T‐Mobile committed to specified public benefits in conjunction with its acquisition of Sprint in 2020, inclu