Level of Government

The Federal Communications Commission’s Privacy and Data Protection Task Force announced a new Memorandum of Understanding with the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA).

Copper Valley Telecom (CVT) plans to deploy gigabit fiber-to-the-home broadband service to the village of Tatitlek (AK) and surrounding communities of the Chugach Census Area of Alaska. The project on the southern coast of the state in the Prince William Sound area is being financed with a $16.5 million grant from the U.S.

The Federal Communications Commission announced the creation of the Tribal Library E-Rate Advocacy Program (T-LEAP), which builds on the Commission’s Tribal Libraries Pilot Program. Through this new, permanent program, interested Tribal libraries will have the opportunity to sign up throughout the year for one-on-one assistance to start learning about and working on the E-Rate application process.

There has been a lot of chatter in the broadband industry recently, particularly as the election approaches, about whether the speed with which Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding is rolling out is too slow. But Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association, said the timeline doesn’t bother her too much. “There’s been enough money flowing into the system that I’m not concerned that it’s taken three years.” Bloomfield named two primary reasons why the BEAD funding process so far has been worth the time spent.

For Nevada, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband funding program will essentially be the third and final phase of a plan to make high-speed service available to everyone in the state, explained Brian Mitchell, broadband director for the Nevada Governor’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology (OSIT). That final phase will be funded not only through the $417 million in BEAD funding coming to the state but also through other sources. Phase Three of the three-phase High-Speed Nevada initiative aims to make high-speed broadband available to the 53,000 unserv

Over the past couple of decades, our nation’s reliance on the internet and its associated infrastructures and technologies has significantly increased.

As states begin to receive their allocations from the $42 billion federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment or BEAD program, Florida is leading the way in preparing the workforce needed for new high-speed internet networks. State officials were quick to convene industry stakeholders as part of their broadband planning process last year, and the state’s BEAD proposal has an unusually detailed section on workforce readiness.

It’s clear we need more resiliency in our broadband policy. If nothing else, the hurricanes ravaging the U.S. Southeast have shown us that. In the last few weeks, pervasive wireless and wireline communication outages have left people that are already struggling in the wake of disaster completely cut off from resources, important news updates, and loved ones.

As the main drivers of the digital divide evolve, digital inclusion efforts that seek to increase digital skills, build consumer trust in digital technologies, and promote information about affordability plans and other broadband availability programs have fast become key to getting everyone online. This report argues for the creation of a national digital skills framework and explains the immediate policy context.

The House Oversight Committee recently decided to investigate the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision in 2022 to deny Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) funding to Starlink. The timing of this announcement clearly has political overtones since it was announced as Elon Musk took the stage at a campaign event with one of the presidential candidates. RDOF was awarded using a reverse auction, where the provider willing to take the lowest amount of subsidy winning the funding.