You’re reading the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society’s Weekly Digest, a recap of the biggest (or most overlooked) broadband stories of the week. The digest is delivered via e-mail each Friday.

Round-Up for the Week of April 13-17, 2026

Readers of a certain age will recall former New York City Mayor Ed Koch's famous "How'm I doin'?" But for any age, people can and should ask for an accounting of policymakers' performance. Recently, the Federal Communications Commission released its annual performance review for fiscal year 2025 (October 1, 2024—September 30, 2025). How well is the FCC delivering on its core broadband deployment mission? Let's take a look. 

A Build Agenda for America

Before we jump into the report, first a reminder of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's top priorities—what he calls his Build America Agenda. “It is time to unleash new growth and opportunity. It is time to build," said Chairman Car as he unveiled his plan on July 2, 2025. "Through the FCC’s Build America Agenda, we will do exactly that.”

The Build America Agenda includes six elements:

1. Unleashing High-Speed Infrastructure Builds: The FCC must do its part to unleash high-speed infrastructure builds in communities all across the country.  We made a lot of good progress on this front during President Trump’s first term, but there is more work to be done to cut red tape that is driving up costs and holding back Internet builds.
2. Restoring America’s Leadership in Wireless: We also need to free up more spectrum that connects our communities and restore America’s wireless leadership.  This is an important step because freeing up spectrum creates jobs, increases competition, and drives down prices for consumers.
3. Boosting America’s Space Economy: From the high-speed Internet services they are offering to protecting the homeland, our space industry is delivering real results for the country.  We must ensure that U.S. businesses dominate in orbit.
4. Cutting Red Tape and Modernizing FCC Operations: Outdated and unnecessary regulations from Washington can derail efforts to bring communities across the digital divide.  That is why our Build America Agenda includes a comprehensive initiative to eliminate rules and regulations that are unlawful, outdated, or no longer necessary.
5. Advancing National Security and Public Safety: Our Build America Agenda will ensure the U.S. maintains secure and resilient networks.  It will extend America’s leadership over China in the race for critical technologies like 5G, 6G, and AI so that American companies continue to be the gold standard around the world.
6. Strengthening America’s Workforce: We cannot advance a Build America Agenda without a strong U.S. workforce.  That is why the FCC is already working to ensure that tower and telecom crews can operate in a safe and sustainable environment with rising wages.  By looking out for the American worker, we will see continued growth ahead.

FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty calls the Build America Agenda "a bold and focused course" that is "about building confidence that America can still lead in the technologies that will define the next century."

Commissioner Trusty sets a bar for FCC policymaking—evidence-based and responding to the needs of the American people. The FCC falls short of that standard in its annual performance review.

The Performance Review

In his message introducing the FY2025 performance review, Chairman Carr says:

The review identifies the FCC's four strategic goals: 1) Accelerate High-Speed Internet Builds, 2) Promote National Security and Public Safety, 3) Protect Consumers and Promote Free Speech, 4) Enhance Efficiency, Accountability, and Reduce Waste. The review also highlights FCC actions to achieve these goals. Here we focus on the FCC's efforts to accelerate broadband network deployment. Notably absent from these four goals: any mention of affordability, the cost of broadband service, or the programs that subsidize access for low-income Americans.

Accelerate High-Speed Internet Builds 

The review states that the FCC must promote a pro-growth agenda; maintaining and extending U.S. leadership in wireless communications is fundamental to that effort. The FCC will enable greater and more intensive use of spectrum— particularly prime, mid-band spectrum—to harness the promise of new wireless technologies. The FCC must also cut red tape to help ensure that providers roll out upgraded, high-speed networks to more Americans on a faster timeline. The FCC must utilize the full complement of its capabilities to free up unused and underutilized spectrum to serve as a catalyst for innovation and growth.

The review lists 21 FCC actions in FY2025² toward this goal. We've added context to help readers assess what was actually accomplished.

Infrastructure/Permitting/Deployment

1. Launched the FCC’s Build America Agenda. As noted above, the agenda was revealed in July 2025; the remaining 22 items on this list are, in effect, the agenda's implementation. 

2. Streamlined the process for retiring decades-old copper networks. These rules (finalized March 2026, after the performance review period closed) make it easier for carriers to shut down legacy copper infrastructure and transition customers to fiber or other modern networks, with reduced notification and filing requirements. [This action followed up on the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau efforts in March 2025.] Consumer and public interest groups have raised concerns that accelerating copper retirement without adequate consumer protections could leave some customers—particularly in rural areas and low-income households—without reliable voice service during the transition.

3. Proposed a systematic overhaul of the FCC’s outdated environmental and historic permitting rules that slow down wireless and space infrastructure builds. The August 2025 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposes to align the FCC's environmental and historic preservation review processes with the amended National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to speed permitting for wireless and space infrastructure builds. Municipalities, local governments, and other stakeholders argue that the FCC's proposals go beyond streamlining and amount to federal preemption of local zoning authority.

4. The FCC launched a proceeding to explore ways to accelerate the buildout of wireless infrastructure, including cell phone towers, in September 2025. The NPRM aims to expedite state or local approval of certain modifications of existing tower and wireless base stations. The proceeding is also considering a clarification of the FCC’s small cell deployment rules and whether further preemption of specific state and local regulations is necessary to ensure compliance with the Telecommunications Act. The NPRM specifically asks about state and local limits on deployment of macro cell towers and other wireless facilities, imposition of unreasonable delays or fees, conditioning of approval on aesthetic or similar criteria, and other impediments to building. As with item 3, municipalities and local governments have pushed back strongly, arguing the proposals amount to federal overreach into local land-use authority.

5. Updated pole attachment rules to make broadband deployment faster and more efficient. Pole attachment disputes between broadband providers and utility pole owners—typically electric utilities—have been a genuine and longstanding deployment bottleneck. These rules, adopted in July 2025, establish clearer timelines for large-scale pole attachment requests, speed up the contractor approval process, and aim to reduce the delays that have historically slowed fiber deployment.

6. Withdrew a 2022 proposal that would have tightened environmental regulations for new cell tower builds and increased the number of towers requiring detailed environmental assessments. This was one of Chairman Carr's first actions—taken just four days after President Trump designated him as chairman on January 20, 2025.

Merger Approvals

7. In May 2025, the FCC approved Verizon’s $20 billion acquisition of Frontier. To win approval, Verizon committed to ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-related practices. Verizon also reaffirmed the merged entity’s commitment to equal opportunity and nondiscrimination. Making DEI commitments a condition of merger approval is an unusual use of the FCC's merger review authority, and critics like Free Press and Public Knowledge argued it exceeded the FCC's statutory mandate.

8. In July 2025, the FCC approved T-Mobile's acquisition of a 50 percent stake in Metronet, a fiber-optic broadband provider operating in 17 states, in partnership with private equity firm KKR. The deal is part of T-Mobile's broader push into fixed home broadband. Blair Levin, policy advisor at New Street Research, said the deal "does nothing for the company strategically. If they determine that they need terrestrial assets, they will need to do something much bigger. The only assets that would move the needle are Charter and Comcast.”

Spectrum Auctions and Transactions

9. Proposed to auction up to 180 megahertz of prime, mid-band spectrum in the Upper C-band by July 2027—exceeding the 100 MHz minimum set by Congress in the Working Families Tax Cut Act, which restored the FCC's auction authority in June 2025. Mid-band spectrum is considered the sweet spot for 5G—offering a better balance of coverage and capacity than either low-band or high-band spectrum.

10. Adopted rules and announced the 2026 reauction of AWS-3 spectrum that covers 200 markets and hundreds of millions of Americans. These licenses were originally auctioned in 2015 but went into default and have sat unused for nearly a decade—the re-auction aims to put them to productive use for 5G services.

11. Established sharing rules for 600 megahertz in the 37 GHz band, making 600 megahertz available for fixed wireless and Internet of Things applications. The rules prioritize military uses in a portion of the band and require commercial licensees to coordinate and register individual sites before operating. The 37 GHz band is genuinely useful for dense urban fixed wireless deployments but the range limitations of high-band spectrum make it poorly suited for the sparsely populated areas where deployment issues are most acute.

12. The FCC approved AT&T's purchase of 3.45 GHz and 600 MHz spectrum licenses—a total of 50 MHz of nationwide spectrum—from EchoStar. The Rural Wireless Association (RWA) opposed the transaction, saying it would consolidate spectrum among the big three wireless operators and raise "significant concerns" about rural connectivity and wireless competition. The FCC also approved AT&T’s acquisition of US Cellular’s spectrum, strengthening AT&T's network coverage in rural markets. [Note: The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society joined other groups asking for a broader review of the sale of US Cellular spectrum licenses to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.]

13. The FCC approved SpaceX’s agreement to purchase EchoStar's AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses for approximately $17 billion. EchoStar has since told the FCC it felt pressured to sell its spectrum to both AT&T and SpaceX after Chairman Carr publicly criticized the company's slow progress on building a fourth national wireless network—a claim the tower companies involved disputed.

14. The FCC approved T-Mobile's purchase of US Cellular's spectrum licenses, wireless customers, and network assets. This was the largest of the three transactions that divided US Cellular's assets among the big three carriers. As noted in item 12, consumer groups like the Benton Institute argued the three deals should have been reviewed together as a single transaction.

Satellite/Space

15. Established a framework for automakers to transition connected cars to cellular-vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology, using the 5.9 GHz spectrum band dedicated to Intelligent Transportation Systems. The rules were adopted in November 2024 under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel—before Chairman Carr's tenure began—and provide a timeline for retiring the older Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC)-based technology.

16. Initiated a proceeding to make more than 20,000 megahertz of spectrum available for satellite broadband—more than the total amount of spectrum currently available for satellite use. The May 2025 proceeding targets several high-frequency bands, including the W-band. This is a proposal, not a final allocation, so the spectrum has not yet been made available.

17. The FCC has announced a vote this month (April 2026) to modernize its satellite spectrum-sharing rules—an action that falls outside the FY2025 review period entirely. Chairman Carr says decades-old technical rules throttle LEO satellite systems and that a new framework could boost satellite broadband capacity by up to 180 percent. Including a future action in a retrospective performance review raises questions about what the FCC is telling Congress it accomplished in FY2025.

18. In October 2025—just after the FY2025 review period closed—the FCC sought comment on expanding flexibility for satellite operators in high-frequency spectrum bands shared with terrestrial wireless services. As with items 16 and 17, this is a proceeding, not a final action.

19. Adopted rules in August 2025 to streamline satellite earth station licensing, making it easier to obtain baseline licenses, reducing the number of modifications requiring prior authorization, eliminating paper filing requirements, and establishing a 30-day shot clock for renewal applications. Practical improvements to licensing efficiency, but largely administrative in nature.

20. In January 2026—outside the FY2025 review period—the FCC authorized SpaceX to deploy an additional 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites, enabling direct-to-cell connectivity outside the United States and supplemental coverage within the U.S. This is the second significant regulatory win for SpaceX in this list, following the EchoStar spectrum acquisition in item 13.

21. In July 2025, the FCC approved the merger of SES and Intelsat, two major GEO satellite operators, for $3.1 billion. The FCC found no competitive harms, concluding that growing competition from LEO satellite constellations like Starlink and expanding terrestrial fiber networks provide sufficient competitive alternatives. The combined company will operate a fleet of about 90 GEO and nearly 30 MEO satellites.

What About Universal Service Fund Programs?

Conspicuously, the performance review makes no mention of the FCC's Universal Service Fund (USF), the agency's most effective tool for closing the digital divide. USF's High Cost program provides support through legacy and modernized funding programs to eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) to deliver affordable voice and broadband service in rural areas that would otherwise be unserved or underserved. The legacy funds support voice service, while the modernized Connect America Fund (CAF) programs are bringing broadband to rural America.

In November 2020, the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) awarded $9.2 billion in support to winning bidders—including incumbent telephone companies, cable operators, electric cooperatives, satellite operators, and fixed wireless providers. Winning bidders have committed to deploy broadband to more than 5.2 million homes and small businesses in census blocks that previously lacked broadband service with minimum speeds of 25 megabits per second downstream and 3 megabits per second upstream (25/3 Mbps). Nearly all of these locations are expected to receive access to broadband speeds of at least 100 megabits per second downstream and 20 megabits per second upstream (100/20 Mbps), and more than 85 percent are in areas where the winning bidder has committed to provide gigabit-speed service. 

In December 2025, the FCC reminded winning bidders of their deployment milestone obligations—requiring carriers authorized in 2021 to have built out to at least 60 percent of their locations, and those authorized in 2022-23 to at least 40 percent.

FCC data show that by 2025, $3.3 billion in RDOF awards were in default, and 1.9 million locations were no longer scheduled to receive service: more than one out of every three RDOF investments had failed. Since then, additional awardees have missed deployment milestones, indicating the default rate is likely to worsen. Yet the FCC's performance review makes no mention of RDOF defaults, missed milestones, or the nearly two million locations now at risk of remaining unserved—a striking omission for the agency charged with closing the digital divide. At minimum, a credible performance review would account for whether RDOF commitments are being met and what the FCC is doing to protect the nearly two million households now at risk of losing their promised broadband service.

Conclusion

At the outset of this review, we noted that Commissioner Trusty set a clear bar for FCC policymaking: evidence-based and responsive to the needs of the American people. The FCC's FY2025 performance review falls short of that standard in two fundamental ways. First, it measures process, not outcomes—rules deleted, proceedings launched and completed, applications processed—but offers no evidence that broadband deployment has actually accelerated, that prices have fallen, or that the digital divide has narrowed. Second, the review entirely omits the FCC's most consequential broadband deployment and affordability tool—the Universal Service Fund—and says nothing about the nearly two million households whose promised broadband service is now at risk due to RDOF defaults.

Commissioner Trusty is right that policy should be grounded in evidence and driven by the needs of the people the FCC serves. The Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide are still waiting for both.

Notes

1. The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) requires agencies to submit annual performance reports to Congress by March 31.
2. A few items listed in the review were proposed or initiated in FY2025 but finalized after the review period closed on September 30, 2025. We've flagged those where relevant.

Quick Bits

• Lawmakers Aiming to Circulate Draft USF Framework This Summer
• Judge Won’t Pause Suit Over Trump’s $2.75 Billion Digital Equity Act Cuts
• FCC seems to make higher-level point with denial of RDOF waiver requests

Weekend Reads

• FCC Seeks Comment on USAC Processes and Oversight Reforms
• State of Wireless 2026
• Setting Conditions for Success: Guidelines for Responsible Use of Technology for Schools
• 2026 Economic Report of the President

ICYMI from Benton

• The Trump Administration is Using BEAD Funds as a Cudgel. Is that Legal?
• The Department of Labor Does AI 101
• The FCC Asks, "Are Broadband Markets Competitive?"
• How the Trump Administration is Narrowing the Path to Lifeline, Part I: The One Big Beautiful Bill
• How the Trump Administration is Narrowing the Path to Lifeline, Part II: The FCC

Upcoming Events

Apr 21—SAT Streamlining Act: Modernizing Satellite Licensing for the Final Frontier

Apr 22—Screen People (New America)

Apr 23—Making AI Work: Productivity, Diffusion, and Policy (Georgetown University)

Apr 29—Connecting One: Minnesota 2026 Broadband Summit

Apr 30—April 2026 Open Federal Communications Commission Meeting (Federal Communications Commission)

Apr 30—Digital Equity Community of Practice Meeting

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

© Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 2026. Redistribution of this email publication - both internally and externally - is encouraged if it includes this copyright statement.

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