Analysis

National Telecommunications and Information Administration Assistant Secretary Arielle Roth recently made a speech at the Hudson Institute that outlined her policy positions related to reshaping the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. The changes to BEAD were initiated by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and are now being finalized and implemented by Assistant Secretary Roth.

My best guess is the public switched telephone network will ether be dead or dying by the end of 2030. This doesn’t mean the death of telephone voice service, but the end of the regulated service that has been offered by telephone companies. Any voice products that remain will be delivered using Voice over Internet Protocol. The death of the PSTN is being fostered by the Federal Communications Commission, which has made it much easier for telephone companies to tear down or decommission copper telephone networks.

Legal analysts are questioning the recent assertion by National Telecommunications and Information Administration head Arielle Roth that the NTIA can legally withhold federal broadband deployment funds from states that have laws enforcing net neutrality or that have enacted affordable broadband legislation similar to New York’s Affordable Broadband Act.

An article from the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute at the New York Law School claims that over 1 million locations were missed by Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment grants. They identified these as locations that are still shown as unserved and underserved on the Federal Communications Commission broadband maps, but which did not make it into the BEAD program. ACLP also identified two other sources of locations that will likely not get broadband. They predict some BEAD defaults since a number of small and untested internet service providers won sizable BEAD grants.

I cringe every time I see the term “technology neutral”. Over the last few years, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has morphed the phrase into a euphemism to mean we should favor the cheapest technology over the best technology. And it clearly is a euphemism meant to disguise the true nature of the broadband policy discussion from those not involved in the topic every day. Governments have gotten so good at developing such phrases that the euphemisms replace the right language and become common usage.

The Federal Communications Commission's October 28 Open Meeting was…productive. The FCC ushered in changes to space licensing and satellite infrastructure procedures, removed a swath of wireless rules, and launched a proceeding to overhaul current broadband label requirements, which may significantly impact the information consumers have available to them when subscribing to broadband plans.

Two pieces of news came across our desks this morning that we wanted to share regarding the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program (BEAD) and the status of guidance from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on how states can use BEAD Non-Deployment funds. On October 28, NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth delivered a speech regarding the BEAD program.

The conventional wisdom used to be that seniors would be slow to adopt new digital health technologies. A lot has changed, according to results from the first of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s survey series on the public and seniors' use of and appetite for digital health technology. Maybe COVID forced America’s seniors to get on a steep tech learning curve. Maybe their kids have educated them. Or maybe seniors have simply aged into tech or adapted to new technologies to survive, as they’ve had to do to deal with their cell phone company and streaming service—what choice do they have?

The Federal Communications Commission launched a new proceeding proposing to eliminate certain broadband label requirements and seek comment on other ways to streamline the broadband label rules to reduce compliance burdens. This Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is the latest chapter in a story that dates back at least to 2009, and the outcome could greatly impact the information consumers have available to them when they are subscribing to broadband plans.

One of the things that mystifies me is how many federal elected officials have disappeared in terms of supporting broadband. For example, there has been little talk of elected officials openly trying to stop the National Telecommunications and Information Administration from gutting the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program. There’s no news about trying to force NTIA to go ahead and award grants from the Digital Equity Act. This may be happening behind the scenes, but there’s no big public news about supporting better broadband.