State

Pittsylvania County, Virginia, is taking a unique approach to one of the biggest challenges of expanding broadband in rural areas: the upfront cost of the infrastructure. “Who should pay for the infrastructure?” is a common question when it comes to broadband expansion, said Rebecca Watts, regional vice president of Western Governors University, who serves on the Virginia Chamber of Commerce Workforce and Education Executive Committee.

Extending broadband's reach to all Nevadans is a huge challenge. Nevada is the 7th-largest state in the U.S., but ranks just 32 in population, making it one of the least densely populated states in the country. Nearly three-quarters of Nevada's people live in Clark County which is home to the state's four largest cities, including Las Vegas. But, in 2000, over half of Nevada’s counties had fewer than 2 people per square mile.

When it comes to expanding broadband connectivity, policymakers face two major challenges: 1) ensuring that all US residents have access to high-speed fixed broadband connectivity (“availability”), and 2) ensuring that as many US residents as possible subscribe to fixed broadband (“adoption”). In other words, policymakers are tasked with making sure fixed broadband is both universally available and universally adopted.

In his first State of the Commonwealth address in January 2020, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) asked lawmakers to address some stark realities. At the time, Kentucky was the third poorest state by per capita income and over 1 in 5 children in the state lived in poverty. The state ranked in the top eight of states in terms of hunger. Kentucky had some of the highest child abuse and neglect rates in the country.

As federal and local government agencies award funding to cover some of the costs of deploying broadband to unserved and underserved rural areas, one company that has used that funding from a variety of sources to fuel its deployment efforts is Surf Internet. The company—which serves parts of Illinois, Indiana and Michigan—has been around since 2001 and initially focused on using fixed wireless broadband to serve rural areas.

Comcast plans to spend $36 million to deploy fiber broadband to unserved and underserved areas of 19 Indiana counties. The company has signed contracts with the state, which will contribute $13.6 million toward total project costs of $50 million. The state's funding comes through the Indiana Next Level Connections Broadband Grant Program.

Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced the first set of awards through the Broadband Opportunity Grant Program to expand access to broadband internet for Florida’s underserved communities.

The South Carolina Broadband Office (SCBBO) announced 56 newly funded projects through its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Priority 1.0 (ARPA SLFRF 1.0) grant program. For this round of investments, the SCBBO committed $132,799,403 to 15 broadband providers in 33 counties.  The total project cost for this round of broadband expansion is estimated to be $256,755,322.

As of 2021, roughly 13 percent of Alabama’s 1.65 million addresses were unserved by broadband of at least 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload (25/3), while about 19 percent of addresses were unserved by 100/20 service—the threshold recommended as the state’s five-year target to align with new federal funding opportunities. Higher-speed services like 100/100 and symmetrical 1 Gbps were available only to about 25 percent of addresses.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development's Office of Broadband Development (OBD) is developing a digital equity plan to create improvements in internet affordability, access to internet-enabled devices, and ways to provide digital skills training. We want to hear from Minnesotans most impacted by the digital access and skills gap to ensure our digital equity plan reflects the goals and needs of all Minnesotans. This plan will help us determine how to spend federal funding coming in 2024 aimed at increasing digital access and skills.