Doug Dawson

I’m hearing an increasing number of stories from rural internet service providers and telephone companies about voice calls that are not completing to their customers. People place a call to customers on a rural network and give up when they don’t hear the phone ringing at the receiving end of the call in a reasonable amount of time. The industry term for this phenomenon is an abandoned call, which generally occurs when the caller assumes the call didn’t work.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has circulated guidance to Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program grant winners titled BEAD Subgrantees: Protect Your Rights. The overall tenor of the document is odd in that it invites an internet service provider to directly contact NTIA if it thinks the contract offered by a State Broadband Office contradicts NTIA policy. Where I think NTIA went off the rails is a set of requirements related to permitting:

It’s always difficult for internet service providers to fully understand how changes in the economy might impact them. Folks in the industry see the usual statistics on unemployment and inflation, but those don’t really tell much about the future as it relates to broadband adoption. I’m not an economist, and this blog is not a prediction, but in the last few weeks, I’ve heard a number of unrelated economic statistics that I find troublesome when taken as a whole.

On May 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the Federal Communications Commission’s digital discrimination rules. The Court completely vacated the FCC’s 2023 discrimination order, which means it is the same as if it didn’t exist. The FCC is still obligated by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to implement discrimination rules, so we can expect the FCC to restart the process. Any new FCC proposed rules will undoubtedly acknowledge the Court rulings. The natural question to ask is what the court order means in the market.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has been promising a top-to-bottom review of the Universal Service Fund, and on April 29, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that looks specifically at the High-Cost fund mechanisms that provide ongoing subsidies to internet service providers operating in very rural markets. The High-Cost fund is the USF program that most people in the country (and even the industry) don’t understand.

I’m writing in recognition of the 60^th anniversary of Merit, a non-profit network operating in Michigan. There aren’t many network entities that can trace their beginning back to 1966 when Michigan State University, University of Michigan, and Wayne State University formed the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad with the goal of networking the universities together.

There is currently a bill being considered in Congress that would mandate a new set of permitting requirements for wireless and wired infrastructure. The bill is H.R. 2289–the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2025. The bill first started with the goal of making it easier to get permits for BEAD and other federally grant-funded projects, but the bill has grown to encompass all local and state permitting for telecommunications infrastructure. The heart of the changes that would come from the passage of the bill are as follows:

In an experience that is probably familiar to everybody, in the last few months I’ve found myself unable to get a cell signal in places I routinely visit. At the pharmacy, the only cell coverage I could find was directly next to the front windows. I went to my doctor and found I couldn’t get any reception while biding my time in a waiting room. There was no signal in the back half of the grocery store. I know my experience is not unique, and I regularly see other people grumbling in these locations about the lack of cell signal.

One of the most frustrating aspects of grant-funded projects for the public is that it takes years from the announcement that their neighborhood is covered by a grant until they see the new infrastructure.

The US Department of Agriculture has proposed a budget for the 2027 fiscal year, starting October 1, which contains drastic cuts for broadband. Overall, the agency is proposing to cut its overall discretionary funding by $4.9 billion, a 19 percent reduction. The cuts align with the proposed White House budget recommendations for the next fiscal year, which says: "USDA’s Rural Development programs are streamlined to focus on programs that have demonstrated efficient results and are an appropriate Federal role. . .