Internet/Broadband

The African American Mayors Association (AAMA) has urged congressional leaders to extend funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provides high-speed internet service to low-income households nationwide. The coalition issued a statement on January 25. The AAMA seeks an additional $7 billion to ensure the program’s continuation. Since its inception, the ACP has afforded high-speed internet access to more than 20 million low-income families and has positively impacted the lives of communities of color disproportionately affected by these conditions.

The city council in Los Angeles (CA) passed a motion banning “digital discrimination,” which is when internet service providers inequitably deploy high-speed internet connections or disproportionately withhold the best deals for their services from racially or socio-economically marginalized neighborhoods.The legislation, authored by Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, expanded the types of discrimination the city could investigate to include digital discrimination.

In January 2024, the US Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology released the 2024 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP): A Call to Action for Closing the Digital Access, Design, and Use Divides. The NETP examines how technologies can raise the bar for all elementary and secondary students.

In the fall of 2020, around the height of the debate over pandemic school closures, a lawsuit in California made a serious claim: The state had failed its constitutional obligation to provide an equal education to lower-income, Black and Hispanic students, who had less access to online learning. State officials distributed more than 45,000 laptops and more than 73,000 other computing devices to students, according to court documents in the case.

In 2023, Democracy Fund invested $3 million in grants to support state and local leaders advancing digital equity. We believe this work is vital for an inclusive, multiracial democracy. The 2023 Digital Democracy grantees  all share a commitment to action toward community-focused media policy and tech accountability. 

Consolidated Communications is one step closer to taking its company private, as shareholders approved the proposed $3.1 billion acquisition by Searchlight Capital Partners and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI). Approximately 75% of Consolidated’s shareholders voted yes on the private equity deal, which is expected to close by the first quarter of 2025.

It’s clear in reading the various proposed Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) rules that State Broadband Offices are following the lead of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and putting a lot of emphasis on making sure that everybody gets served with the grant funding. I’m not sure they understand the costly consequences of this emphasis. There are some passings in this country that are largely unservable.

Rep Doris Matsui (D-CA) released new, updated state-by-state data from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (SCRP). Previous data from the FCC was attributed to the location of a company’s corporate headquarters rather than the location of actual project sites – leading to a misrepresentation of the nationwide distribution of projects.

Americans made more than 280,000 calls, emails, and social media posts to Congress in support of funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The program needs $7 billion in funding from Congress to ensure people aren’t disconnected from the internet in 2024. Don’t Disconnect US Day, which took place on January 25, spurred those who care about affordable internet to contact their congressional representatives. The resulting actions from supporters calling for Congress to fund the program included:

High-speed internet is something we count on to function day to day. The service elevates the lives and livelihoods of Americans whose broadband needs have been previously unmet. The 2023 Cox Expansion Impact Survey found 86 percent of consumer respondents with recently available high-speed internet said their lives have improved. This report outlines three ways that high-speed internet enriches the lives of rural Americans: