Rural Digital Opportunity Fund

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the consolidated cases Nos.

Lawyers defending the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to manage a longstanding $8.1 billion broadband subsidy expressed cautious optimism ahead of the March 26 Supreme Court oral arguments in FCC v.

Community anchor institutions (CAIs)—such as schools, libraries, community health centers, and similar organizations—play a crucial role in offering free or affordable internet access to underserved communities. In many areas, the connectivity options offered by CAIs—whether on-site (via wired or wireless networks) or through remote programs like hotspot lending—are among the few affordable and reliable services available.

Congress is supposed to write the laws, but these days it often prefers to delegate to the executive branch, and then cheer or boo the results. Twice amid the New Deal, but not since, the Supreme Court struck down statutes as abdications of Congress’s lawmaking power. Yet the Court has another chance in the case that the Justices will consider Wednesday, FCC v. Consumers’ Research.

Spectrum announced the launch of Spectrum Internet, Mobile, TV and Voice services to more than 260 homes and small businesses in rural areas of Pike County (OH), with additional launches planned across the county. Spectrum’s multi-year rural construction initiative is driven by more than $7 billion in private investment from the company and will ultimately add an additional 100,000+ miles of fiber-optic network infrastructure and deliver symmetrical and multi-gigabit speed internet access to more than 1.7 million new locations across the country.

Federal law seeks to make communications technology like telephones and the internet, in the words of one older statute, “available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States.” A longstanding federal program that seeks to implement this goal is now before the Supreme Court, in a case known as FCC v. Consumers’ Research, and the stakes could be enormous.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-MO), in partnership with Missouri Farm Bureau President Garrett Hawkins, directed a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, urging it to rightfully return defaulted funding through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to Missouri to expand broadband and rural internet access. The letter follows the recent reveal that the RDOF will not connect 85,000 Missouri service locations, and Missouri will lose approximately $177 million in federal investment. Attorney General Bailey urges “that action be taken by the FCC to rightfully return previously

The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Managing Director (OMD) announces that the proposed universal service contribution factor for the second quarter of 2025 will be 0.366 or 36.6 percent. Contributions to the federal universal service support mechanisms are determined using a quarterly contribution factor calculated by the FCC. The FCC calculates the quarterly contribution factor based on the ratio of total projected quarterly costs of the universal service support mechanisms to contributors’ total projected collected end-user interstate and international telecommunications re

Conexon Connect, the internet service provider formed by rural fiber broadband leader Conexon, continues to extend access to high-speed internet across rural America.

Regardless of the final form it ends up taking, the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program is poised to play a key role in addressing rural connectivity. But the rural access divide isn’t the only issue we need to worry about, according to New Street Research Policy Analyst Blair Levin.