Issie Lapowsky

Alan Davidson, the administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) who is overseeing the disbursement of the $42 billion Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, said the "starting gun" of the program will go off May 16 when states can officially start declaring they want the money.

The White House is set to announce plans for its much-anticipated Alliance for the Future of the Internet, a bid to rally a coalition of democracies around a vision for an open and free web.

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.

As far as telecommunications regulators go, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has always felt like something of a bit player compared to the Federal Communications Commission. But if the Senate infrastructure bill successfully makes its way through the House and to President Biden's desk, that could change.

Telecommunications giants are among the winners of the infrastructure bill, according to Protocol. The package includes $65 billion to expand broadband connectivity and does away with some parts of President Biden's initial proposal that were the least popular with the telecommunications industry, including more aggressive requirements regarding network speed and provisions that would have targeted grant funding to municipal networks.

Nearly 4 million households have enrolled in the Federal Communications Commission's emergency broadband benefit program since it launched in May. But as researchers have begun digging into data recently released by the FCC, they're finding that not only are the vast majority of eligible Americans still being left out of the $3.2 billion program, but there are also stark geographic differences in where people are being enrolled.

The Federal Communications Commission has already signed up 2.3 million households for the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, which was designed to help low-income users with affordable internet access during the pandemic. But while the agency is heralding these numbers as a success, the program appears to be plagued by ongoing issues that are causing some internet service providers to block eligible Americans from accessing up to $50 a month off of their internet bills.

Spectrum is forcing customers who are eligible for a new federal subsidy for internet service to opt into full-price plans once the subsidy runs out. The policy appears to skirt rules set forth by the Federal Communications Commission, which is running the Emergency Broadband Benefit program. The $3.2 billion emergency broadband benefit, which launched earlier this month, gives people up to $50 off of their monthly internet bill. The stopgap funding was allocated in response to the pandemic and is expected to run out within the year.

Comcast, Charter, AT&T and their respective industry associations have spent years beating back municipal broadband networks in states across the country, lobbying for laws that prohibit such networks and arguing that government-funded broadband puts the thumb on the scale of competition.

The COVID crisis has highlighted both the severity of the so-called "homework gap" and the shortcomings of early remedies like mobile hotspots and even low-cost home broadband plans. Now, more than a year into the pandemic, schools and cities across the country are increasingly testing novel ways to get students connected, not just for the duration of the pandemic, but for the long term.