Analysis

Losing email service reminded me of businesses' reliance on technology and web platforms that underlie our businesses. The number one issue I hear from businesses is how devastating it is to lose a broadband connection. A lot of businesses go dead when losing broadband. I don’t think the average person realizes how reliant businesses are on broadband. People are not surprised when broadband shuts down consultants, engineers, or architects who rely on broadband to exchange data and files on projects.

Minnesota’s Border-to-Border Broadband Development Grant Program is the state's financial tool to address the primary cause for the lack of broadband in unserved areas: high costs and lower population densities resulted in unsustainable business plans and thus broadband installations are not feasible.

The Federal Communications Commission is the lead U.S.

Although broadband internet access has increased in much of the U.S., nearly 1 in 4 rural Americans still say it is a major problem in their community. Broadband access also remains a challenge for residents of affordable rental housing. These properties may have no internet access or only limited access in community facilities.

There is a provision in the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) grant rules that says that if no broadband provider seeks funding in an unserved or underserved area, a state broadband office may engage with providers to find somebody willing to serve such areas. In order to make this work, states are allowed to offer additional inducements, such as providing additional state matching funds for the grant areas.

The Federal Communications Commission's new broadband maps give us a view of what the broadband competition situation is in the United States. We want to answer the question of how many options a household has for broadband service. Using the new maps, and a 100 Mbps download and 20 upload throughput as the threshold for acceptable broadband, 37% of households have access to one offering, 34% have access to two offerings, and 18% have access to three or more offerings. This is slightly more concentration than was present in the most recent Form 477 data.

Netherlands is also the world’s top supplier of seeds for ornamental plants and vegetables. The country is a hub for agricultural research, with 15 of the top twenty agribusinesses having research and development labs in the country. All of this agriculture needs broadband. Like the U.S., the rural areas of the country are the last to get broadband. But the country has put a big push on connectivity. 100% of homes and farms can buy DSL. This is not like the slow rural U.S. DSL, but mostly with reliable speeds between 25 Mbps and 50 Mbps.

In May 2021, the Florida Legislature passed the Florida Broadband Deployment Act of 2021, codifying the Florida Office of Broadband, which had been created in the previous year within the state's Department of Economic Opportunity.

How much broadband will Americans get for the $75 billion that Congress committed in 2021? That’s enough money to equip an additional 17 million households with broadband, taking the US to 99 percent broadband coverage, according to a Federal Communications Commission staff paper and data from the Census Bureau.

The Federal Communications Commission voted recently to implement consumer broadband labels. The pricing information alone must be giving shivers to the marketing folks at the biggest broadband providers. The requirement that I think will be the most controversial is the requirement to disclose the typical broadband speed and latency. Some providers will have a real dilemma with the speed disclosure. Some of the dilemmas include the following: