Universal Service Fund

I celebrated my thirteenth anniversary back at NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association in this role leading the best association team and the most exciting industry. I spent 20 years at NTCA after working on Capitol Hill and loved everything about the membership that the organization represented. At the time I started (in the dark ages, per my daughters), our mission was about bringing telephone service to rural Americans.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel asked her fellow Commissioners to support a proposal that would take further steps to enhance cybersecurity protections to protect school networks. Chairwoman Rosenworcel shared a plan to create a pilot program to invest in cybersecurity services for eligible K-12 schools and libraries.

On June 12, 2023, Sens Roger Wicker (R-MS), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), and JD Vance (R-OH) wrote the Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel seeking additional funding for Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) Phase I auction winners.

During a stop in Minnesota in June 2023, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo made a promise: The $652 million earmarked for Minnesota to help build infrastructure for rural high-speed internet would be enough to finally cover every part of the state. Is that true? It depends, it turns out, on how you define a finished job. When calculating who has access to proper broadband, the federal government counts much slower internet speeds compared to Minnesota’s definition.

American Association for Public Broadband Executive Director Gigi Sohn’s hope is that the incumbents that oppose community broadband will come to realize that there are better business opportunities for them to support the concept rather than fight it. For instance, they could have bid on the project in Bountiful City (UT), rather than use shadowy tactics to try and kill it. For decades, these incumbents have argued that taxpayer dollars should not be used to compete against their private investments. In response to that, Sohn said, “I’m sorry to laugh.

There is one mapping issue that unfortunately messed up the count of eligible passings for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program grants and that is going to be a real concern. Both T-Mobile and Verizon have activated rural cell sites that can deliver home broadband using licensed spectrum that can be 100/20 Mbps or a little faster.

How can we make the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding go as far as possible? The answer is that state grant plans need to be laser focused on how to generate competition and keep costs as low as possible. If we can do that, we stretch the BEAD dollars as far as possible. If we don’t, we run out of money. It’s really quite easy to construct this framework. We only need two pieces of data: the number of unserved and underserved locations, and what we pay to reach them.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) extended, for an additional year, the waiver pausing both the phase-out of Lifeline support for voice-only services and the increase in Lifeline minimum service standards for mobile broadband data capacity. Without this decision, support for services that meet only the voice minimum service standard, which currently stands at $5.25 per month, would be eliminated in most areas on December 1, 2023.

Fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) provider GigFire has acquired Rural Comm, a service provider headquartered in Farina (IL). GigFire, which now operates in ten Midwestern states, was known as LTD Broadband until earlier in 2023.

In 2022, Jeff Churchwell made history. As the general manager of Winnsboro-based Northeast Louisiana Power Cooperative (NELPCO), Churchwell led the initiative to become the first Louisiana electric cooperative to provide broadband for its members. NELPCO serves seven parishes in northeast Louisiana: Franklin, Madison, Richland, Tensas, East Carroll, West Carroll and Morehouse. With Campbell on board, construction for Volt Broadband began by June. As of April 2023, Volt Broadband has 930 active customers and installs eight to 10 new customers every day.