Reid Sharkey

The Mary S. Biesecker Public Library in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, created the Library Internet Checkout Program in partnership with T-Mobile, allowing residents to “checkout” home internet service like they would a book.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration recently published general terms and conditions for the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program. NTIA's previous version of these terms and conditions dates back to April 2024.

In 2021, New York State enacted the Affordable Broadband Act (ABA). The law requires large internet service providers (ISPs)—those with over 20,000 subscribers—to offer one of two affordable monthly service plans for qualifying customers. Providers can choose between a $ 15-per-month plan with download speeds of 25 Mbps and a $ 20-per-month plan with download speeds of 200 Mbps.

On August 19, 2025, West Virginia released its revised Final Proposal for the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program. The West Virginia Office of Broadband recommends awarding $625 million in BEAD funding to deploy broadband infrastructure to 73,701 eligible locations. Of those locations, 94.2 percent would be served by fiber to the premises and 5.8 percent by low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite.

Nebraska’s state broadband map—which was carefully designed and included a wealth of local input—received a major jolt with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s changes to the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program. The map is now inundated with industry data from unlicensed fixed wireless providers. Congress allocated $405 million to Nebraska to bring broadband internet to all unserved and underserved locations in the state.

Low Earth Orbit satellite internet service providers, like Starlink and (eventually) Amazon’s Kuiper, are poised to win big in the restructured Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program. That’s because the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s new policy notice, released June 6, makes two major changes that benefit LEO technologies.

Top broadband leaders in Illinois are concerned that changes to the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program could leave rural communities unconnected. Mandated changes—if they come from either Congress or the U.S. Department of Commerce—could force states to rerun their entire BEAD sub-grantee selection processes.

Passed in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Digital Equity Act established three grant programs to help close the digital divide by facilitating broadband adoption, implementing digital skills training programs, making internet-connected devices more available, and creating and improving public access computing centers. State broadband offices have spent over three years working on plans to close the digital divide among eight “covered populations,” including veterans.

The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) is a program created by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) under former Chairmen Ajit Pai during the first Trump administration. The program was designed with two goals: 1) to extend broadband networks into unserved rural areas while 2) expending the fewest number of federal dollars possible. To accomplish this, RDOF used a “reverse auction” to select winning applicants (ISPs) that requested the least amount of federal funding to deploy broadband in eligible rural areas.

Prior to the election on November 5th, I wrote about Arizona’s Congressional races and the candidates’ positions and records on broadband issues. In the House, I highlighted two races: the 1st and 6th Districts. In both of those races, the Republican candidate prevailed, riding the wave of support for Donald Trump. In Arizona’s highly publicized Senate race, however, Democrat Ruben Gallego was able to find success despite Trump carrying the state in the presidential race.