June 2025

The Federal Communications Commission reports that 19.6 million Americans lack access to a fixed 100/20 Mbps broadband service. A nationwide audit using 109,473 internet service provider‑address tests from October 2024 to March  2025 finds the true figure closer to 26 million, exposing a 6.4 million-person (33 percent) undercount.

Digital equity has been defined as a social justice issue. However, there is currently a lack of scholarship that describes how participatory action research, as a scholar-activist approach, has been used to advance digital equity and social justice through researcher-practitioner collaborations. This study presents on an in-depth reflection on how we used PAR in a research project with findings that were previously published in a white paper in 2023.

Midco and Savage Communications Inc. have signed an asset purchase agreement under which Midco will gain subscribers and addresses-passed in Minnesota. SCI was founded in 1984 and serves almost 12,000 customers in central, eastern, and northeastern Minnesota. The company will pass almost 28,000 addresses by the end of 2025. The Midco acquisition of SDI is scheduled to close on October 1 and is subject to customary closing conditions including receipt of regulatory approvals. No financial details were included in the press release. 

Toptana Technologies—which calls itself the only Indigenous-owned internet infrastructure company on the West Coast—has extended its regional build with an east-west fiber route. The route was created in collaboration with MOX Networks and Assured Communications. The new route extends the previously completed north-south fiber route that was constructed in partnership with MOX Networks. The project will connect the Toptana Cable Landing Station in Ocean Shores (WA) to fiber connectivity corridors in Seattle and Hillsboro (OR).