Telecommunication

President Joe Biden’s trillion-dollar infrastructure bill promises the largest public investment in telecommunications in the country’s history. Of the $65 billion allocated for high-speed internet—broadband—$42.45 billion is earmarked specifically for deployment projects through state grants.

While people have focused on President Biden’s Federal Communications Commission nominations, Biden also nominated Alan Davidson to head the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and there haven’t been a lot of headlines about that nomination. However, the next head of NTIA will have a broad scope of responsibilities at a critical time in US broadband infrastructure.

80 civil-rights, media-justice, community-media, workers-rights and consumer-advocacy groups sent a letter urging Senate leadership to swiftly confirm Jessica Rosenworcel as chairwoman and Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, and Alan Davidson as the director of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

In the US, we need better internet. We need oversight over Big Tech, ISPs, and other large companies. We need the federal agencies with the powers to advance competition, protect privacy, and empower consumers to be fully staffed and working. New infrastructure legislation aimed at ending the digital divide gives new responsibilities to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and Congress relies on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to reign in Big Tech and others.

President Joe Biden signed into law the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on November 15, 2021. Republicans and Democrats gathered at the White House as Biden signed the legislation, which is aimed at improving the country’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections.

Frontier Communications is gearing up to capitalize on broadband funding opportunities created by the passage of the US infrastructure bill and points to the federal dollars as a key part of its fiber expansion plan.

President Biden signed Congress's $1.2 trillion infrastructure package into law, including a whopping $65 billion to expand broadband access. Now, it's up to federal agencies, states and civil society groups to implement it. The bill prioritized broadband projects that target unserved communities — as laid out in the bill, that means communities that either have no broadband access or lack sufficient speeds.

The Greendale (IN) city council approved a deal with Cincinnati Bell to bring fiber broadband to businesses and residents in the city. Mayor Alan Weiss says the fiber broadband will be a lot faster and more reliable than what Greendale businesses and residents are used to. Cincinnati Bell offers up to 1 GB which equals 1,000 MB per second. Currently, a lot of homes in Greendale have 25 MB per second or less. The minimum package offers 100 MB per second. Work to install fiber lines is expected to start in early 2022. It will take 18 months to two years to complete the installation.

North Carolina could be on the receiving end of more than a billion dollars to expand broadband internet access between the bipartisan infrastructure plan and the upcoming state budget. And that could lead to some of the largest-ever investments in broadband in a state with a rural population larger than any other, except for Texas. It still remains to be seen exactly how much North Carolina will get from the federal infrastructure bill, as the money is being distributed in a formulaic approach among 50 states and territories.

Among the $65 billion allocated to broadband in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (the Act), $42.45 billion will be used to fund a last-mile broadband development grant program administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The scale of this investment is unlike anything seen before in US history.