September 2023

Black Rock, AT&T, and Gigapower executives shared their vision for the joint venture and how they expect to change attitudes toward open access. Adam Waltz, Managing Director of Black Rock’s Global Infrastructure Fund was excited because the company sees the US as underpenetrated when it comes to fiber broadband. Gigapower CEO Bill Hogg said, “scale will be a differentiator” beacuse the network’s scale will appeal to service providers interested in offering service over the network because “you don’t want to make [them] invest over and over with a lot of small players.” Erin Scarborough

Cox Communications was the biggest winner in Florida broadband funding, and will get over $80 million for 11 projects. Fellow cable provider Comcast was the second biggest winner and will take home over $60 million for 34 projects, followed by Conexon, which will receive about $40 million. Other companies winning funding include Charter Communications, AT&T, CenturyLink, Suwanee Valley Electric Cooperative (SVEC), Consolidated, TDS, IBT, and Myakka. The Florida broadband awards were made through the state’s Broadband Infrastructure Program, in which $247 million was funded through the f

I’m here to talk about why and how against this backdrop we as a nation need to graduate to a fundamentally new mindset with regard to how our government partners with and approaches technology … leaving behind a mindset rooted in fear and articulated through regulatory fiat … and re-rooting in the modern-day reality of an interconnected planet driven by the tools and technology of broadband.

In June, the Biden administration allocated $42.45 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding among states—the largest single pot of federal broadband spending in our country’s history. Biden officials at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) made these allocations despite repeated requests from lawmakers and communities across the country to first improve the data underlying NTIA’s funding decisions.