Internet/Broadband

Seven Star Communities is a new initiative to honor and celebrate Native nations accomplishing digital inclusion work. The Seven Star Communities program hopes to highlight outstanding work, and also provide an opportunity for Native nations to learn from each other. The application for Seven Star Communities 2024 will open towards the end of August. Seven Star Communities are Tribal governments, Native entities and organizations that are working toward digitally inclusive communities.

Gov Greg Gianforte (R-MT) announced that the State of Montana will be the first state in the nation to open its Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) application portal. On August 1, Gov.

A plan to fund broadband Internet infrastructure with AT&T by Solano County (CA) to the tune of $1 million has stalled, as holdups through the process meant that American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for it could not be allocated before the deadline. According to county staff, however, the ARPA funds will be funneled into other broadband projects around the county. Chief Information Officer Tim Flannigan said the county started a study in 2022 regarding broadband access throughout the county to promote digital equity.

The number of unserved and underserved locations in Connecticut is estimated to be just under 8,000 (0.57% of all locations in the state).

Internet service providers (ISPs) asked the US Supreme Court to strike down a New York law that requires broadband providers to offer $15-per-month service to people with low incomes. Although ISPs were recently able to block the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules, this petition shows the firms are worried about states stepping into the regulatory vacuum with various kinds of laws targeting broadband prices and practices. A broadband-industry victory over federal regulation could bolster the authority of New York and other states to regulate broadband.

Fiber provider FiberLight has been selected to build a 10 Gbps fiber network for the Region 16 Education Services Center (ESC) in the Panhandle area of Texas. The project is part of the Federal Communications Commission’s E-rate program, which gives discounts to eligible schools and libraries to make internet access and telecommunications services more affordable to eligible schools and libraries. For this E-rate project, FiberLight will provide technical assets and expertise to the region, which will generate $10 million as part of its 22% of the E-Rate program.

President Biden and Vice President Harris are launching “Time Is Money,” a new governmentwide effort to crack down on all the ways that corporations—through excessive paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation—add unnecessary headaches and hassles to people’s days and degrade their quality of life. Today and in the coming months, the Biden-Harris Administration will take wide-ranging action to crack down on unfair practices and save Americans time and money. Key actions include:

A group of archivists—a coalition from government, academia and nonprofits—has begun capturing the Biden administration’s digital footprint. The monthslong undertaking is called the End of Term Archive, and it has occurred every four years since the George W. Bush administration. Archivists first amass a sprawling list of public government URLs. They then catalog all of those websites (and the websites within those websites) and a snapshot of their content. In the end, it’s as much as 300 terabytes worth of material.

I write to request a detailed update on the major administrative delays in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program that have resulted from unlawful red tape imposed by your agency [the National Telecommunications and Information Administration]. Despite the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) three-year-old clear statutory mandate to bring the internet to the unserved, your agency has failed to connect a single American. What NTIA has done with the money so far is create a nearly billion-dollar slush fund to “administer” the program. Speci

A bid to break up Alphabet Inc.’s Google is one of the options being considered by the Justice Department after a landmark court ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market. The move would be Washington’s first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up