State

Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) selected Laphonza Butler—the President of the nation’s largest organization dedicated to electing women, EMILY’s List—to complete the United States Senate term of the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, which runs through 2024. Butler, a longtime senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, labor leader, and advocate for women and working people, will be the first openly LGBTQ person to represent California in the Senate.

GeoLinks has a lot going on with fixed wireless access (FWA), Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) deployments, gig+ speed offers, and spectrum bands. The company has more licenses in the 28 GHz band than any other license holder and "that will give us the opportunity to look into other states in the future,” said COO Ryan Adams. Investments from Rock Mountain Capital and JLC Infrastructure make GeoLinks' expansion plans possible and help GeoLinks build upon their signi

The goal of the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Digital Equity Plan is to establish a roadmap that ensures everyone, regardless of their background or community, has access to the necessary technological resources to fully engage in our society, democracy, and economy. The Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet’s (ELC) Department of Workforce Development (DWD) has made the state's draft plan available to the public for feedback until October 15, 2023.

The Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB) awarded $58.9 million in grants to Vermont’s Communications Union Districts (CUDs) in summer 2023. The construction grants were approved to expand broadband in five different CUDs across the state, bringing broadband to at least 13,000 currently underserved homes and businesses. The most recent grants were approved earlier in September 2023.

Charter Communications won close to $16 million in funding to cover some of the costs of making broadband available in seven North Carolina counties. The funding was part of a total of $22 million awarded through the Completing Access to Broadband (CAB) program. The awards were made by the North Carolina Department of Information Technology (NCDIT). According to the agency, the funding awarded in this round will connect 6,012 households and 164 businesses. Funding recipients must provide service at speeds of at least 100/20 Mbps, scalable to 100/100 Mbps. Projects must be completed by Dec.

The goal of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) $40+ billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program is to ensure that everyone in the United States has access to reliable, high-speed, and affordable broadband. Part of the challenge is how to treat areas where funding already has been awarded for broadband deployment. Will all awardees perform as expected?

Having a high-speed internet connection—and the ability to use it—is critical to modern life. One major challenge persists: we can run fiber broadband to every home in North Carolina, but if the residents can’t afford the service, they still risk being left behind. Fortunately, Congress created a tremendously impactful tool to combat the high costs of internet service as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). I urge you to reauthorize this critical program that makes internet access more affordable.

The Department of the Treasury approved $156.7 million for high-speed internet projects in Oregon under the American Rescue Plan Act's (ARPA) Capital Projects Fund (CPF). Oregon is approved to receive $149 million for broadband infrastructure projects, which the state estimates will connect approximately 17,195 homes and businesses to affordable, high-speed internet.

Plans to spend Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program dollars to connect underserved populations could be impacted by state elections, according to broadband policy experts. Among the ten states that got the largest BEAD allocations, three (Missouri, North Carolina and Louisiana) will hold gubernatorial elections before the end of 2024. Executive Director of ConnectLA Veneeth Iyengar—Louisiana’s broadband program—plans to have as much BEAD work as possible done before th

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the fact that millions of people, especially in rural America, do not have access to broadband. In response, more than $150 billion of federal and state funding will be spent over the next five years to close the digital divide. However, a new digital divide centered around latency—the delay before a data transfer begins, exemplified by video stuttering—could emerge if rural communities lack the broadband infrastructure to provide low-latency services.