July 2024

I’m here today to urge you—city officials, business leaders, educators, digital equity advocates and city residents—to consider moving forward on building a city-wide, city-owned broadband network.  I was asked by a Texas Public Radio reporter a few days ago whether now was the right time, and I said—it’s past time. If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it was that affordable, high speed broadband Internet access is essential for full participation in our society, our economy, our education and health care systems, and our democracy.

In this episode of The Divide, broadband advocate Gigi Sohn returns to the podcast, on behalf of the Affordable Broadband Campaign (ABC), to discuss the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and how to get a version of the ACP back through Universal Service Fund (USF) reform.

A television conference in Washington (DC) aired a proposed remake of one of the bigger spectrum-policy hits of the past decade, although it's not clear what kind of reception "Incentive Auction 2.0" might get. Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr endorsed the idea of a second "incentive auction" during his talk onstage with Madeleine Noland, president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

In the second installment of the Information Technology and Information Foundation’s Access America series, Jess Dine discusses the challenges and opportunities of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program for the state of Michigan with Jessica Randall of Michigan’s broadband office. They talk about the way that Michigan intertwined BEAD's deployment mandate with broader inclusion and equity concerns in the Michigan State Digital Equity Plan.