Level of Government

The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) announced that it has awarded more than $40 million in state grants to internet service providers, telephone cooperatives, pueblos and a tribal company to deploy broadband across the state. Grant recipients include seven entities, some of which will handle multiple projects. The grants are being released through the state’s Connect New Mexico Fund. This $70 million state-led broadband grant program is designed to expand high-speed internet access and deploy infrastructure to unserved and underserved communities.

The process of creating effective, pro-consumer policies is often filled with opportunities, challenges, and ambiguity. The process has been no different for the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which allowed 23 million low-income households an opportunity to reliably connect to affordable high-speed internet.

Two very real Universal Service Fund (USF) problems need to be addressed: funding and spending. The way the program is funded is inefficient, unsustainable, and regressive. Regardless of the judicial outcome, the tax that the court declared unconstitutional is both inefficient, by taxing a small, price-sensitive, declining base, and regressive, with a higher proportional burden falling on those least able to afford it. The program spends too much money on the wrong things. The High Cost Fund in particular, which accounts for about half of total spending, is outdated and wasteful.

The Newsom Administration, local officials, and Arcadian Infracom announced the groundbreaking of a crucial segment of California’s Middle-Mile Broadband Network. The Capitol Route groundbreaking in Natomas celebrates California’s work in building the nation’s largest open-access, Middle-Mile Broadband Network. The groundbreaking is a milestone in a 256-mile route of new open-access broadband fiber spanning from San Jose in Silicon Valley through the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Carson City, Nevada.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules to move forward with targeted investments in the deployment of advanced, 5G mobile wireless broadband services in rural communities.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules to enable initial drone operations in the 5 GHz spectrum band for wireless communications necessary to safely control the flights of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS). The use of UAS in the United States is growing quickly: during this decade, UAS operations are expected to triple in terms of the number of devices and see the market expand into in the tens of billions of dollars.

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) approved Mississippi and South Dakota’s Initial Proposals for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. This approval enables Mississippi and South Dakota 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. This action allows states to request:  

The state of Kentucky was allotted $1.1 billion to get every home hooked up to high-speed internet.

The town of McKee (KY), population 800, was ahead of the curve. The federal government is currently implementing the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, with the goal of connecting every home to high-speed internet by 2030. In McKee, the nonprofit Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative already did that—a decade ago. PRTC has about 55 employees and is based in Jackson County, where McKee is the county seat. PRTC borrowed $45 million from the federal government—in part from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a Great Recession-era stimulus bill.

The Biden-Harris Administration is announcing two new actions that will help build more projects, more quickly.