Network management

President Donald Trump's $200 billion infrastructure proposal released Feb 12 includes $50 billion in funding for rural communities, but nothing specific for broadband deployment. Even though President Trump has talked about the importance of expanding broadband in rural areas, he has not committed any funding to help build networks. Instead, his efforts have been aimed at eliminating red tape and regulation to get infrastructure built.  

President Donald Trump says rural areas are going to get broadband as part of his infrastructure plan as a way to address what he signaled was an "unfair" lack of such access. "[T]he rural folks have been left out, including broadband Internet access, which they don't have," President Donald Trump said in a meeting with state and local officials on his $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan. "And they want it, and the farmers want it.

President Donald Trump released his legislative goals to rebuild our Nation’s crumbling infrastructure. The six principles include:

[Commentary] The solution to the country’s digital divide isn’t going to come from private-market competition, but rather from massive government mobilization. Just don’t call it “nationalization.”

The Federal Communications Commission's quest to prove that killing network neutrality is somehow raising broadband investment recently focused on Charter Communications. Charter, the second largest US cable company after Comcast, "is investing more in its broadband network and workforce because of the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom Order [that repealed net neutrality rules] and last year's tax reform legislation," FCC Chief of Staff Matthew Berry claimed in a tweet Feb 8. But Charter raised its capital investment in 2017 while the net neutrality rules were in place.

Documents disclosed in late January suggest that, in order to move his nomination forward, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) head David Redl promised Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) that he would assemble a “panel of experts to investigate options for unwinding” the 2016 Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition.

[Commentary] Rural America now has an opportunity to work with, and add to, the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network, FirstNet.  A recent study in Arizona showed a number of businesses would relocate to rural areas with sufficient workforces if the areas weren’t lacking broadband coverage. It has also been reported by Connect America, a group under the direction of the federal government, that areas that deploy broadband services are more likely to keep businesses already located in their area.

For my time today, I'd like to lay out some of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration's early international policy priorities in the new Administration. We plan to be aggressive in advocating for US interests and values in our engagement across the globe, at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the International Telecommunication Union and other fora.

In the latest in a legislative flurry of broadband-related items, a bipartisan bill has been introduced in both the House and Senate to promote rural broadband deployment and identify fallow broadband fields in key agricultural sectors.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's claim that repealing network neutrality rules will boost network investment didn't get much support from Verizon's latest spending forecast. Verizon's network spending won't change much in 2018, and the company also won't be using its newfound tax savings to upgrade its broadband networks. Verizon reported $17.2 billion of capital expenditures in calendar year 2017, with the net neutrality rules in place the entire year.