Level of Government

In the coming months, more than $42 billion in federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) funds will be distributed among U.S. states and territories. Federal and state policymakers have key roles to play in supporting the efforts of the BEAD program. On the federal level, policymakers should focus on removing regulatory barriers rather than erecting new ones.

There are many folks making the argument that the country doesn’t have enough carrier exchange points. An exchange point is a physical location where multiple carriers meet for purposes of exchanging traffic. I don’t know if this is an accurate statistic, but I’ve heard several people claim there are fourteen or fifteen states that don’t have a major exchange point. This might be true if you use the definition of an exchange point to be a place where everybody meets. There is a big downside to internet service providers (ISPs) that are not located close to an internet exchange point (IXP).

The mission of the Indiana Broadband Office (IBO) is to assist residents in need of affordable and reliable broadband connectivity. IBO recognizes that affordability is an important component of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program and that deployment without affordable options will severely limit Indiana residents’ ability to navigate the internet effectively and utilize digital services.

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA), the Democratic nominee for president, has chosen Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate, elevating a former football coach whose rural roots, liberal policies, and buzzy takedowns of former President Donald Trump have recently put him on the map. Gov Walz emerged from a field of candidates who had better name recognition and more politically advantageous home states.

The availability of reliable, high-speed internet throughout the United States has been a focus of policymakers for decades, with the need for an expansive broadband infrastructure listed as “the great infrastructure challenge” of the 21st century by the Federal Communication Commission. However, federal guidelines have never set a benchmark for what “reasonable prices” might mean for residents in each state, and there are no established benchmarks for determining what an affordable level of broadband service would look like throughout the country.

The Wisconsin Governor’s Task Force on Broadband Access released its fourth annual report. In 2024, the Task Force continued to emphasize its goals established in the 2023 report, which are that:

Fixed wireless access (FWA) is often thought of as a way to connect remote areas where fiber can’t do the job. But the technology also has a place in the big city, as nonprofit DigitalC has shown. DigitalC kicked off in January an 18-month plan to construct a citywide FWA network in Cleveland.

The broadband industry needs more workers. Specifically, it needs tens of thousands more construction workers and broadband technicians to complete a coming wave of government-funded deployment projects or else critical broadband expansions could be delayed. Some original research conducted by Continuum Capital found that the U.S.

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved Wisconsin’s Initial Proposals for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris Administration’s “Internet for All” initiative.  This approval enables Wisconsin to request access to funding and begin implementation of the BEAD program—a major step towards closing the digital divide and meeting the President’s goal of connecting everyone in America with affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet service. Wisconsin was allocated over $1 bi

A federal judge said on August 5 that Google broke the law to kneecap competition in web search in ways that entrenched the company’s power. The next steps, which involve proposing legal fixes to undo Google’s behavior, are essentially about imagining an alternative future in which Google isn’t Google as we know it. We have the internet we have, and it’s hard to imagine something different or if you’d like it more, but here are six possible alternati