Analysis

We got some pretty good wins in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. One of those wins was the mandate for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to implement broadband consumer labels, also known as “broadband nutrition labels.” These labels will empower consumers with clear, accessible, and accurate information about broadband services.

The Federal Trade Commission recently proposed rules that would stop businesses from charging hidden fees. The agency estimates that junk fees cost consumers tens of billions of dollars per year. The new rules would prohibit companies from jacking up bills with hidden and bogus fees and instead require that businesses clearly disclose their fees to customers.

The Missouri Office of Broadband Development, housed in the Department of Economic Development, released the state's draft Digital Opportunity Plan for public comment. The plan serves as a comprehensive guide to the actions that Missouri intends to pursue in order to achieve digital equity in the state.

There is still one more chance for local communities or broadband service providers to fix the maps that will be used to allocate Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program grant funding. Under the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) rules for the BEAD grant process, every State Broadband Office (SBO) must conduct one more challenge process to the broadband maps.

The Federal Communications Commission plans to adopt both a disparate treatment (intent) and disparate impact (effects) analysis to determine whether there is any discrimination of internet access.

I would wager that most of the supposed Affordable Connectivity Program fraud is coming from cellular carriers. My suggestion is that we stop using ACP to subsidize cellular service. The underlying concept of ACP is to get better broadband to folks, and I don’t care how you try to justify it—cell phone data is not a substitute for home broadband. Many people claim that they only use their cellphone as a broadband connection, but if they are more than a casual broadband user, they are probably getting most of their broadband through WiFi connections on somebody else’s broadband connection.

There is a positive and significant correlation between broadband adoption growth and Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) enrollment. As of December 2022, ACP was aiding one in every eight residential broadband connections in metro and urban counties in the United States, many of them new subscribers. New analysis of the 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) and ACP enrollment data points to important findings as Members of Congress consider additional funding for ACP.

On October 19, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to reinstate the agency’s 2015 decision that brought internet service providers (ISPs) under the agency’s jurisdiction as Telecommunications Carriers. This action is necessary because the Trump FCC repealed the previous rule in 2018 at the request of the ISPs.

The House of Representatives will be led by Rep Mike Johnson, who represents Louisiana’s 4th district. A previous Chair of the Republican Study Committee and a Vice Chair of the House Republican Conference, Johnson has also served on the House Judiciary and Armed Services Committees. What could this mean for the Congressional broadband agenda? Speaker Johnson is largely in line with his Republican colleagues on most broadband issues.

Buried deep within the stunning array of broadband subsidy provisions contained in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 lies Section 60506—labeled “Digital Discrimination”—which requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to issue rules to prevent “digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin,” while taking into account the issues of “technical and economic feasibility.”1 Although Section 60506 perhaps represents a sign of our political times,2 there simply is no credible evidence of a racial disparity in