Nicole Ferarro

Ookla's recent findings on the performance of wireless internet service providers were not well received by some of the referenced parties.

Verizon and the state of California seem to be a step closer to resolving issues preventing the California Public Utilities Commission from approving Verizon's bid for Frontier, thanks to a settlement agreement forged with the CPUC's Public Advocates Office.

Thursday, September 4, marked the deadline for states and territories to submit their final proposals for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, selecting their preliminary grant winners, to the Trump administration's National Telecommunications and Information Administration for approval.

Various industry players are warning that Secretaty Lutnick's approach may delay Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program project funding further and leave rural Americans with inferior connectivity.

According to data from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), there are now more than 400 public broadband networks in the US, serving over 700 communities. Moreover, several (but not all) communities have prevailed in recent years at changing existing state laws preventing the launch of public broadband networks, including most recently Colorado and Minnesota.

November marks the tenth anniversary of NextLight: the municipal broadband provider for the city of Longmont, Colorado, launched in 2014 as the first municipal broadband network in the state.

As public broadband networks expand across the US, so too does the body of knowledge on how to launch and run them successfully.

This episode of The Divide features John Horrigan, senior fellow at the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society. We discussed a new report released from Benton assessing the impact of the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) on low-income households and the economy at large.

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) came to a close at the start of June, due to a lack of funding and a failed effort in Congress to pass extended appropriations in time. But the program is not entirely dead yet. A couple of potential paths forward have reemerged in Congress.

With the FCC's vote on net neutrality coming up Thursday, April 25, some industry groups are making a final push for a change to the language in order to leave open the possibility of meaningful Universal Service Fund (USF) reform at the agency level. Specifically, representatives at industry trade groups NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association, Incompas, and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) met with members of the FCC in the last week to urge the Commission not to forbear applying USF to broadband Internet access providers (BIAS). I