Level of Government

Subsidies like the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) are unaffordable and set communities up for failure, according to Eric Sasaki, the manager of major programs at L.A. County’s internal services department. To address the digital divide in Los Angeles County, Sasaki said the county has chosen another path. “We were very flexible in terms of how we approached our model,” Sasaki said.

When millions of Americans cast their ballots on Election Day, the Affordable Connectivity Program won't be up for a vote, but the results could dictate whether we see an internet subsidy of its size again. The ACP was passed in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, when Congress dedicated $14.2 billion to making the internet more affordable to low-income users.

Broadband is one of the last remaining, truly bipartisan issues, according to Chip Pickering, the CEO of Incompas. Pickering said there might be a movement in Congress to restore and modernize broadband subsidies to help low-income earners afford services. “It is a national consensus and commitment of connecting every American,” said Pickering, who also served for 12 years in Congress representing Mississippi’s 3rd congressional district.

AT&T subsidiary Wisconsin Bell last recently reiterated its argument to the Supreme Court that telecommunications companies should not be hit with tougher fines for fraudulent reimbursement requests to a major broadband subsidy program. The company is seeking to overturn a Seventh Circuit ruling that found the False Claims Act applies to reimbursements from the E-Rate program, a broadband subsidy for schools and libraries funded by the $8-billion-per-year Universal Service Fund.

With a federal court recently declaring the funding mechanism for a major low-income connectivity program unconstitutional, telecommunications policy experts are actively discussing alternative solutions to keep essential broadband programs funded. Roslyn Layton, executive vice president of Strand Consult, met with the Federal Communications Commission to propose expanding the $8.1 billion Un

Some see Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, the agency’s senior Republican, as the most likely candidate for chairman of the agency under a second Trump presidency. What would he do if Trump won, and if Carr were selected for the job? Carr actually outlined his priorities for broadband and telecommunications policy in a chapter of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy agenda.

On Light Reading's The Divide, Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association, talks to host Nicole Ferraro about the fallout from the fifth circuit court's ruling this summer on the constitutionality of the Universal Service Fund (USF) and what comes next.

Attorneys for the Federal Communications Commission and groups representing the broadband industry argued about the future of net neutrality to a panel of appeals court judges on October 31. The hearing was part of an endless political ping-pong game over net neutrality rules—which reclassify internet service providers (ISPs) as common carriers, barring them from selectively throttling web traffic. After being enacted under President Barack Obama and repealed under his successor, Donald Trump, they were reinstated by Joe Biden’s FCC in April.

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved and recommended for award an application from New York, allowing the state to request access to more than $36 million to implement its Digital Equity Plan. 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. New York will use its $36,984,641 in funding to implement key digital equity initiatives, including:

Artificial intelligence, like everything else in the U.S.