March 2021

There are estimated 12 million students who, according to a recent analysis, lack internet service or make do with a patchwork of short-term fixes to participate in remote learning. Their issues are regionally specific, from a lack of broadband in the isolated reaches of Appalachia to worn-out and obsolete devices distributed to poor families on Chicago’s South Side.

Here are the names you'll hear a lot as Biden builds out his tech policy apparatus at the Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission:

The American Rescue Plan, the biggest infusion of funds in decades, will soon start putting state, local and tribal governments in a situation they have not experienced in years: Items that had long seemed totally unaffordable are now well within reach. Erie County (NY), which includes Buffalo, has for years struggled with barely functioning internet in its rural areas, which have been mostly bypassed by internet providers. A plan for the county to lay cable for internet service was scrapped a year ago when COVID-19 blew a hole in the county’s budget, but the county executive plans to inclu

A growing number of school districts across the country, spurred in part by the coronavirus pandemic, are going into the cell tower business. Many school districts have tried for years to provide internet service to needy families with mixed success.