Internet/Broadband

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced the tentative agenda for the April Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Monday, April 28, 2025:

Ontario already tore up a $100 million Starlink deal. Now Yukon is following suit—freezing Elon Musk’s satellite service, cutting Tesla incentives, and logging off X as part of its retaliation against U.S. tariffs on Canada’s auto sector. Yukon Premier Ranj Pillai (Liberal) announced the territory’s next phase of its response to sweeping U.S.

Spectrum announced the expansion of Spectrum Internet, Mobile, TV and Voice services to more than 230 homes and small businesses in previously unserved or underserved addresses in portions of northeast Dane County and southeast Columbia County (WI). Spectrum’s multi-year Rural Construction Initiative is driven by an approximately $7 billion private investment from Charter and will ultimately connect approximately 1.7 million new homes and small businesses across the country.

A study conducted on behalf of Amdocs finds that consumers value reliability, affordability, and uninterrupted access—and suggests that providers may benefit by offering all three via mixed-technology networks. Highlights of the study include: 

• Cable has the highest level of internet access (39 percent), followed by fiber (31 percent) and FWA (9 percent). The study found that 3 percent of consumers do not have a dedicated internet connection at home.

• 60 percent of respondents say their home internet is very reliable, and cite cost as the biggest issue.

Less than two weeks before the start of a landmark antitrust trial against tech giant Meta, the growing relationship between President Donald Trump and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is stoking fears in Washington (D.C.) that the White House could pull the plug on the whole case.

In this Order on Reconsideration, the Federal Communications Commission address several petitions for reconsideration (PFRs) of the Enhanced A-CAM Order, which established the Enhanced Alternative Connect America Cost Model (Enhanced A-CAM) program as a voluntary path for supporting broadband deployment of at least 100/20 Mbps throughout the rural areas served by carriers that previously received A-CAM support and in areas served by legacy rate-of-return support recipients.  Among other requests, Petitioners encouraged the FCC to extend the Enhanced A-CAM Program’s deployment milestones by

Working in rural Iowa, where seven of the state’s smallest incorporated communities are located, Digital Navigator Allison Ruhl has been tirelessly building a program to reach residents with technical assistance, digital skills training, and devices. Her work bridges the gap for people in hard-to-reach geographies, helping them gain the tools and confidence they need to thrive in an increasingly digital world. Allison is central to the Community Broadband Action Network (CBAN)’s participation in NDIA’s National Digital Navigator Corps.

Dizzied by an accumulated pileup of busted norms, you might have missed a presidential executive order issued on March 20. It’s called, “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos.” It basically gives the federal government the authority to consolidate all the unclassified materials from different government databases.

The Federal Communications Commission voted in 2024 to launch the 5G Fund for Rural America to expand 5G coverage into the many parts of the country with poor cell coverage. It may turn out that market forces might mean that some of that subsidy won’t be needed since the big carriers are expanding into rural areas. A recent blog from Ookla documents the rural expansion of 5G.