Analysis

The US Department of the Treasury released its long-awaited guidance for how states, territories, freely associated states, and Tribal governments can spend the $10 billion allocated in Section 604 of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) for Capital Projects.

This week, the Department of the Treasury released guidance for the Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund program established by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

California's legislative session has ended and Governor Newsom is expected to sign into law S.B.4 and A.B.14, the final pieces of the state’s new broadband infrastructure program. With a now-estimated $7.5 billion assembled between federal and state funds, the state has the resources it needs to largely close its digital divide in the coming years.

As the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act awaits a vote in the House of Representatives later this month, a debate over the future of the Federal Communications Commission's Universal Service Fund (USF) is already starting. Provisions in the infrastructure bill call for the FCC to quickly complete an evaluation of how the legislation will impact how the FCC's achieves the goal of deploying broadband to all Americans. Congress wants to know how the FCC can be more effective in achieving this goal. One brewing USF issue is how we pay for it.

The Emergency Broadband Benefit Program continues to have a positive impact on many communities nationwide, but persistent challenges to accessing the benefit limit full participation.

The United States must act aggressively to meet two core broadband challenges. One is to ensure that all Americans have affordable access to the Internet at levels sufficient to enable them to participate fully in modern life. The other is to ensure that all of America’s communities obtain the advanced communications capabilities they will need to survive and thrive in the increasingly competitive global economy.

Pew Research Center released a sweeping report looking at how Americans have used the internet in the pandemic, how reliant they were on digital tools, and some of the struggles they have had as they tried to conduct many of the work-related, educational, social and community activities of their lives online. The headlines from the survey included:

Speedtest by Ookla analyzed how much internet speeds have increased over the past four years, and which countries have seen some of the largest gains. Major findings include:

President Biden has been historically slow to appoint officials to the federal government’s top telecommunications agencies, and advocacy groups say the vacancies are preventing the administration from carrying out key agenda items, such as reinstating net neutrality rules killed during the Trump administration. Nearly eight months into his presidency, Biden has yet to pick permanent leaders for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which together oversee and set policy for the broadcast and Internet service in

Opensignal conducted a comprehensive analysis of smartphone users' 5G mobile experience across the US. Major findings include: