Level of Government

Rural and Native communities in the US have long had lower rates of cellular and broadband connectivity than urban areas, where four out of every five Americans live. Outside the cities and suburbs, which occupy barely 3% of US land, reliable internet service can still be hard to come by.

The Washington State Broadband Office in the Department of Commerce has hired Estakio Beltran to serve as Digital Equity Manager. Beltran comes to the job with significant experience working on equity policy, program development, and community-driven solutions to inequity. During more than a decade working in Washington DC, Beltran advised senior members of Congress and high-ranking officials as public policy professionals.

Major federal broadband consumer subsidy programs that have been implemented, in the U.S. (the Lifeline, the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB), and the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)) are rebates administered through broadband providers. Yet, uptake in these programs among eligible households has been modest. Direct-to-consumer voucher subsidies have been widely applied to non-broadband social benefit programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), yet there is limited implementation for broadband.

The Federal Communications Commission lists Pacific Network Corp. and its wholly-owned subsidiary ComNet (USA) LLC and China Unicom (Americas) Operations Limited on its list of communications equipment and services that have been deemed a threat to national security. The actions implement recommendations in letters filed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)  on behalf of Executive Branch interagency bodies.

Detroit Digital Inclusion Director Joshua Edmonds is departing the city to head up a nonprofit organization that also works in the digital equity space. Edmonds has taken a position as CEO of DigitalC, a Cleveland-based nonprofit focused on getting people connected to high-speed, affordable Internet. He started with the city in December 2018 and was named Detroit’s director of digital inclusion in January 2019, making him one of the first people in the country to head up digital equity work within a municipal government.

The Federal Communications Commission’s existing broadband availability maps have been heavily criticized as inaccurate, especially for the purpose of distributing billions in subsidy dollars to extend broadband networks to unserved areas. In a rush to distribute the National Telecommunication and Information Administration's (NTIA's) Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) subsidy dollars, a few states have initiated their own mapping efforts and some advocates have proposed alternative mapping means using speed-test data to identify areas that lack adequate broadband.

In Fall 2022, states, territories, and the District of Columbia (DC) will receive Digital Equity Act (DEA) Planning Grant awards – and, with approximately a year to develop their state digital equity plan, they’ll start the process quickly. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act requires states, territories and DC (or the administering entities) to engage with a variety of stakeholders in creating the plan, including community anchor institutions, county and municipal governments, local educational agencies, and nonprofit organizations.

It’s been nearly a year since President Joe Biden named Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] as his pick to become the fifth member of the Federal Communications Commission, but the nominee’s prospects of actually being installed are as unclear as ever. A fresh report from The Deal tipped Sohn to squeak through the Senate confirmation process during a lame duck session in the coming months. But New Street Research analyst Blair Levin warned it’s extremely difficult to predict what will happen.

The report recognizes spectrum as a national, public asset. Planning for effective spectrum policy – the way we allocate and use the airwaves for wireless applications – is foundational to meeting our national goals of economic growth and leadership in the information economy, and a “Made in America” industrial agenda. The report from the Aspen Institute stakes out key principles to inform spectrum policies, sets forth broad recommendations for US spectrum policy for the years ahead, and details potential actions to implement those recommendations.

To provide relief to E-Rate program participants affected by this unprecedented national pandemic, the FCC will extend the service implementation deadline to September 30, 2023 for certain funding year 2020 and 2021 applicants with non-recurring service deadlines that expire on September 30, 2022. In providing this relief, the FCC seeks to prevent schools and libraries from losing their funding due to circumstances out of their control, alleviate administrative burdens, and assist schools and libraries by giving them additional time to receive the equipment and services they need to serve t