Report on past event

US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo addressed Tribal leaders at the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit. Secretary Raimondo reiterated the Department’s commitment to working and coordinating with Tribal Nations to ensure Tribal communities have the needed resources for economic growth.

The US Broadband Summit brought together top leaders from across the country to talk about state efforts related to the Broadband Equity, Access & Deployment (BEAD) program. Three major topics emerged from the summit — both at public sessions as well as the buzz in the hallways.

On December 5, 2023, the City of St. Louis, TechSTL, and the St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC) hosted the #Connect STL Digital Inclusion Summit. The event kicked off the #ConnectSTL Digital Equity & Inclusion Coalition, which seeks to encourage collaboration and cooperation with technology-driven businesses and community stakeholders interested in helping to bridge the digital divide in St. Louis. Filament lead workshops for the #ConnectSTL Coalition focusing on collaboration and outlining current projects and plans for moving forward with Digital Equity work.

As US states and territories put the final touches on Initial Proposals outlining how they will utilize funding for broadband expansion through the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, state broadband offices are gearing up for what is expected to be a months-long challenge process ahead, said panelists at the Digital Infrastructure Investment Summit 2023.

Since my last appearance before the House Commerce Committee in May 2023, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has made considerable progress toward the bipartisan initiatives that Congress tasked to NTIA. These include:

Leaders from the Biden Administration said access to high-speed internet will bring opportunity and dignity for residents of rural communities in Wisconsin and across the country. Tom Perez, White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, and Don Graves, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce, visited Dairyland Power Cooperative in La Crosse (WI) on November 30 to talk about federal money for broadband infrastructure. Dairyland is one of the recipients of the Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Grant, a program created through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a Federal Communications Commission oversight hearing that included testimony from each of the five (yes, there are five now) FCC commissioners. A partisan tone was set by the get-go as the title for the hearing was "Oversight of President Biden's Broadband Takeover." The key questions for the Republican Members of the panel going into the hearing were:

Although the lack of broadband, transit, childcare and housing are all stacked against rural counties as they develop the kind of robust workforce that can attract business, planning and relationships between state and local government can help alleviate some of those challenges. That’s the assessment various practitioners in the workforce development field offered during the Rural Action Caucus Symposium in Greenbrier County (WV). West Virginia faces steep challenges in delivering broadband connectivity to residents, given both the population distribution and the geography. Without housing

Vice President Kamala Harris said, "One provision of our Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that President Biden signed exactly two years ago directed the Federal Communications Commission to create first-of-its-kind rules to prevent digital discrimination. Today, the FCC answered our call by voting to adopt these necessary rules, taking a critical step to prohibit digital discrimination in high-speed Internet access based on income, race, ethnicity, religion, and national origin.

Experts disagreed on the potential for artificial intelligence to aid broadband mapping efforts at a House Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing. Courtney Lang, a vice president at tech industry trade group ITI, said AI could be used to improve the quality of current broadband maps. A machine learning model could do that by using past data to identify buildings that are likely to be accurately marked as having adequate broadband, according to Lang. But Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, urged caution.