Digital Equity and Adult Education
Strong partnerships and innovative community solutions are key for organizations looking to advance adult education opportunities using upcoming Digital Equity Act funds.
Strong partnerships and innovative community solutions are key for organizations looking to advance adult education opportunities using upcoming Digital Equity Act funds.
In 2024, the Digital Equity Act moves past the planning phase and into the grant-making phase to deliver programs and policies to communities on the ground. In 2021, the federal government made the biggest ever investment in digital equity with $2.75 billion in the Digital Equity Act.
The US Department of Agriculture just announced a new round of ReConnect grants. These are grants that can only be used to serve the most rural places in the country, and one of the qualifications is the distance between the grant market and the nearest towns. The homes served by the grants must not have any broadband available at speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps. A grantee must serve every home in a grant area. It’s not going to be easy to find a grant area that is rural and that has no homes where internet service providers claim the capability to deliver speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps.
It’s easy to understand the growth in download bandwidth due to people streaming higher quality video and similar uses. Why do you think upload broadband usage is growing even faster? According to OpenVault, average upload usage has increased 290% since 2019, while average download usage has increased by 270%. There are some obvious reasons why upload bandwidth usage has been growing. There is now a substantial percentage of people who work from home.
Does a search warrant ordering Google to give law enforcement information regarding internet searches containing specific keywords made during a particular window of time violate the Fourth Amendment? This question was before the Colorado Supreme Court in 2023 and is now before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
State broadband offices are asking internet service providers interested in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding to self-fund a $30 discount for low-income customers after the end of Affordable Connectivity Program. Since this request came from multiple states, I have to imagine the idea came from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. I can’t think of any better proof that policymakers are out of touch with the reality of rural business plans. Even providers that are successful in rural markets are going to have small margins.
This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) announced the latest window to receive applications for Rural eConnectivity (ReConnect) Program support to extend broadband networks in rural areas.
February 8 marked the Affordable Connectivity Program’s enrollment freeze as the Federal Communications Commission prepares for it to run out of money in April. This is happening as ACP hit a major milestone—connecting 23 million households to get affordable, reliable access to America’s Excellent Internet. New stats from the White House show the true scope of the ACP’s impact:
The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) exists to help Americans of all stripes get and stay connected to America’s Excellent Internet. But for millions around the country, Internet access and a device alone aren’t enough to close the digital divide. Digital skills and tech support services offered through a trusted community organization is critical to solving this puzzle—just ask US Army veteran Bobby Jenks. After leaving the service as a decorated peacetime soldier, Bobby worked as a truck driver for 20 years until an accident left him unable to continue his trucking career.
A group of lawmakers is making a major push to extend a key internet subsidy program in their upcoming government spending talks, part of a last-ditch effort to head off a lapse in funding. In recent days, top Democratic lawmakers and officials at the Federal Communications Commission have held numerous rallies calling for the $14 billion Affordable Connectivity Program, or ACP, to receive a new round of appropriations from Congress. The ACP “allowed some 23 million low-income households to receive discounts on their internet bills of up to $30 a month,” or higher for tribal lands.
Cities have been petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to ask it to revisit the issue of the ‘mixed-use’ rule that blocks municipalities from assessing franchise fees on broadband revenues. Cities argue that franchise fees are not taxes, and instead are fees that help cities to manage their rights-of-way. The municipal (or state) franchise fee is capped at 5% of retail cable TV revenue, and cable companies typically tack this fee onto every cable bill. The biggest complaint from cities involves what they call cable company arbitrage.
If you follow broadband news, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re about to end the digital divide. That sentiment has dominated recent conversations we’ve had with foundation leaders who, having initially joined the chorus of voices calling for digital equity at the height of Covid-19, are now drifting to the sidelines, under the impression that the government’s broadband spending push will solve the problem. It won’t. Despite its ambition, the latest round of public investment will not reach all 42 million Americans still living without internet access.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration made a monstrous mess of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program maps when they decided to allow licensed fixed wireless to be counted as reliable broadband. This has a huge ramification for the BEAD grants. It has made maps into hodgepodges of served and unserved homes.
During the Covid pandemic, there was concern that some households would lose internet access. In the end-of-the-year omnibus spending bill in 2020, Congress created the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program (EBBP). The EBBP was temporary at first, but of course, government programs don’t stay temporary. It was made into a non-emergency program in the bipartisan infrastructure law in the summer of 2021.
Through the implementation of two Executive Orders on equity and President Joe Biden's Investing in America Agenda, the Biden-Harris Administration is working to advance opportunity and make real the promise of America for everyone. In the rural South and dense
Over 1300 energized and engaged practitioners, policy makers, academics and activists came together at the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA)’s annual Net Inclusion Conference in Philadelphia, PA. The conference brings together experts from the broadband and technology industry, along with national, state, and local digital equity leaders to share ideas, best practices and to champion the fight for digital inclusion.
Several members of Congress teamed up with county officials to show their support for extending the Affordable Connectivity Program, which provides internet access to more than 23 million households across the country. Reps Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Marc Molinaro (R-NY), and Norma Torres (D-CA), and county officials advocated for the extension of the program. Congress must come together to pass the “bipartisan, common-sense and urgent” extension, or else millions of Americans will be left behind in the digital divide, Rep Torres urged. Counties are “absolutely unified” in support of extending
In these comments to the Federal Communications Commission, the American Library Association affirms support for including Wi-Fi hotspots and services in the E-rate program, ALA urges the FCC to:
My biggest pet peeve about the Federal Communications Commission's mapping is that the agency made the decision to give power over the mapping and map challenge process to CostQuest, an outside commercial vendor. The FCC originally awarded CostQuest $44.9 million to create the broadband maps. Many people think that was an exorbitant amount, but if this was the end of the mapping story, fine.
As implementation of the $2.75 billion federal Digital Equity Act gets underway, state broadband officials and other policymakers are hurrying to put plans in place to measure the impact of these new investments. A key area of focus is digital skills—how to measure the baseline of residents’ current skills, what data digital skills program providers will need to collect and report on, how to set targets for improvement, and more. The field has not yet coalesced around a single list of digital skills that all individuals should possess.
In early 2023, Brookings Metro and other experts were warning that, without action, the United States was likely take the biggest step any country has ever taken to widen rather than close its digital divide. The reason? The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provides a $30 per month subsidy for broadband to about 23 million homes, would run out of funds sometime in late April or May 2024. Now, we’ve arrived at that precipice.
As government officials increasingly scrutinize how digital platforms may harm kids, a growing number of states are proposing sweeping restrictions to limit their access to social media. But a top federal enforcer active on kids’ safety issues said that he opposes such limits, arguing they are unlikely to work and may run afoul of the Constitution. “Meet a teenager, they will find a way to get around that,” said Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya.
Rural households were not as likely as their urban counterparts to enroll in the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), a federal fund that is running out of money to help low income families connect to the internet. About a third (37 percent) of rural households that are eligible for the monthly discount on broadband subscriptions had enrolled in the program as of December 2023.
Hey there. Lonely heart here, looking for that spark, that zing, that high-speed connection that doesn’t drop when things get hot. A relationship that promises gigabits of love and delivers every single byte. I long for a forever network that isn’t afraid to go the distance, preferably without data caps. So don’t promise me a whole new digital world if you don’t have the upload speed to back it up. The ideal date night? It’s simple: you, me, and a router that doesn’t need to be reset every hour. Netflix and chill?
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