Universal Broadband

Donald Trump’s commerce secretary touted Elon Musk’s Starlink to federal officials in charge of a $42 billion rural broadband programme, raising new questions about the billionaire White House adviser’s conflicts of interest. In a private meeting in the Herbert Hoover building near the White House, Secretary Howard Lutnick told civil servants at the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) programme to increase the project’s use of satellite connectivity — over fibre-optic cable — and singled out Musk’s provider, Starlink.

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.

The Colorado broadband office offered an update on Round 2 of their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program grants applicant activity. The office closed the second application window through its Advance Colorado Broadband grant program at the end of February. During the second round, the office received 96 applications from 22 companies for a proposed $825 million total investment, including $649,000 in requested funding and $176 million in matching funds.

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 New Jersey Office of Broadband Connectivity and its director, Vallary Bullard, answered 16 questions from Telecompetitor recently. Some highlights:

• OBC will determine and publish “Project Area Building Blocks." Potential subgrantees will have the flexibility to design their overall project area proposals by combining a set of PABBs.

Today’s defining technology is the internet, along with the interlocking digital tools that contributed to and resulted from its inception. Artificial intelligence may well usher in its own technology epoch, but even this branch of computer science is as beholden to the internet — as the internet is to electricity. How and whether high-speed internet access is like the electrification of homes can teach us something. Getting online and knowing what to do once you’re there matters.

Evan Feinman, a top Commerce Department official sent a blistering email to his former colleagues on his way out the door warning that the Trump administration is poised to unduly enrich Elon Musk’s satellite internet company with money for rural broadband. The technology offered by Starlink, Musk’s company, is inferior, Feinman warned.

After three years of working with the federal government for more than $1 billion in broadband expansion funding, state officials are bracing for what will come next after a pause was announced. West Virginia Broadband Office Director Kelly Workman said they are expecting changes in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program but aren’t quite sure what those might include.  Officials with the Trump administration announced a “rigorous review” of the $42.5 billion program. “There are some suggestions that have been raised concerning efficiencies that can be gained through the enviro

The Maine Connectivity Authority believes there are several ways to both accelerate and improve the BEAD program, reducing barriers and maximizing the Return On Investment (ROI):

The N.C. Department of Information Technology’s Division of Broadband and Digital Opportunity announced more than $10 million in Completing Access to Broadband program projects to connect 2,762 households and businesses in Cherokee, Clay and Macon counties to high-speed internet. These projects will be funded by more than $7.5 million from the federal American Rescue Plan awarded by NCDIT and nearly $2.6 million from selected broadband providers: