The Federal Communications Commission renewed the charter of the Task Force for Reviewing the Connectivity and Technology Needs of Precision Agriculture in the United States (the Task Force) for a period expiring on January 1, 2025. The purpose of the Task Force is to:
The FirstNet Authority will post a detailed agenda for the Combined Board and Board Committees Meeting on FirstNet.gov prior to the meeting. The agenda topics are subject to change. Please note that the subjects discussed by the Board and Board Committees may involve commercial or financial information that is privileged or confidential, or other legal matters affecting the FirstNet Authority. As such, the Board may, by majority vote, close the meeting only for the time necessary to preserve the confidentiality of such information.
It turns out that the “smart homes of the future” cannot run on Wi-Fi alone thanks to the materials we’ve been using to construct our homes cheaply and quickly for decades. Over the last several years, more engineering and architecture firms have started including ethernet wiring in their building plans, but that’s as far as the digital infrastructure of a home usually goes. What’s forgotten is not only where the pre-built internet hub is placed inside the building but also what materials are used for construction.
A conflict between state and federal laws may delay the first distribution of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funds to the states. Sixteen states bar or restrict municipally owned broadband—and nearly all of those states appear unwilling to amend their laws as they finalize plans for how they will use their share of BEAD funds.
Arizona and Missouri are going to use a cost model as part of their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program grant review process. Consultants have built complex models that are supposed to predict the cost of building broadband anywhere in the country. The models have to be loaded with specific inputs for any given location, and the models are then supposed to calculate what it will cost to build a broadband network. These two states are using the cost models in the worst possible way because they are using the costs suggested by the cost models to help pick grant winners.
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