Level of Government

Kendall County (IL) wanted to deliver a better broadband experience to its residents. So, it reached out to the local incumbent providers which reacted with smugness and arrogance. The county was so put off by the incumbents that it instead pursued a public-private broadband partnership. Many of the county’s residents have been dissatisfied with their selection of broadband providers, which include AT&T, Comcast and Metronet. So, the county decided to put out a request for proposal (RFP) for a private company to bring some broadband competition to the area.

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved Wyoming’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 Wyoming to request access to funding and begin implementation of the BEAD program. Wyoming was allocated over $347 million to deploy or upgrade high-speed Internet networks to ensure that everyone has access to reliable, affordable, high-speed Internet service.  

The Biden regulatory blitz continues, but courts are beginning to do their job to stop the biggest legal overreaches. A Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel blocked the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rule, citing the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine. Welcome to the post-Chevron world. “An agency may issue regulations only to the extent that Congress permits it,” the court writes.

This is the third Federal Broadband Funding Report produced by NTIA, showing fiscal year (FY) 2022 data reported by 12 agencies across 70 programs making investments in broadband. This is the first Federal Broadband Funding Report to highlight trends across three fiscal years of data collected. For the first time, this report not only will release a dashboard of major findings but will also include a comprehensive view of broadband investment data reported across the last three data collections—reflecting broadband investments from FY 2020 to 2022.

The Federal Communications Commission voted to establish a new alert code to help save missing and endangered persons by delivering critical alert messages to the public over television, radio, and wireless phones. In 2023, more than 188,000 people went missing who fall outside of the criteria for AMBER Alerts.

The Federal Communications Commission proposed new consumer protections against AI-generated robocalls and robotexts.

At the Mountain Connect conference, one of Elon Musk’s top lieutenants—Gwynne Shotwell, president and COO of SpaceX—regaled the audience with exciting stories about rocket launches, and she also touted SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service as a great way to close the digital divide in hard-to-reach rural locations. Shotwell also revealed SpaceX was working with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on some “structural elements” to determine if SpaceX will bid for Broadband Equity Access and D

AST SpaceMobile, which is preparing to offer low earth orbit (LEO)-based cellular broadband network services, says that it has gotten an initial license from the Federal Communications Commission for space-based operations in the United States. Initially, AST SpaceMobile’s services will include a cellphone-to-satellite offering.

As Tribes work in record numbers to close the significant digital divide across Indian Country, they need good policy that facilitates self-determined and sustainable solutions. To the contrary, the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), became, for many, yet another lesson in the dangers of investing significant sums of federal money into new Internet networks on Tribal lands without regard to local knowledge or priorities, leaving Tribal governments to spend their own time and resources to fix broken processes. This report exami

Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr joined Rep John Joyce (R-PA) in Blair County, Pennsylvania, for a roundtable discussion on the Biden-Harris Administration’s $42 billion plan for extending Internet service throughout rural America. Commissioner Carr and Rep Joyce heard directly from a range of stakeholders that want to see new Internet builds in their communities—from healthcare, education, economic, local government, and other leaders to the broadband builders that are ready to get the job done. Commissioner Carr said: