Reporting

According to interviews and research from the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, state broadband officers are exhausted by the challenges and shifting dynamics of implementing the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. Leaders from the Benton Institute have interviewed over 30 SBOs so far about what it is taking to implement BEAD. And Dr. Revati Prasad of the Benton Institute talked about the takeaways from those conversations in a recent Fiber Broadband Association webinar.

Brandy Reitter, the executive director of the Colorado Broadband Office since February 2022, stepped down after giving the agency two days’ notice. “Yes, unfortunately, OIT received Brandy’s resignation. She will be missed and we appreciate her service to the state,” Erin Jeffreys, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Information Technology, home to the broadband office, said in an email.

The Federal Communications Commission has announced it’s waiving its rules limiting foreign equity ownership to 25 percent in the Paramount-Warner Bros.

A host of industry players, policy wonks and businesses are grappling with the question of how to regulate AI in a trustworthy manner. The industry's mad dash is the product of an ad hoc regulatory apparatus and a general consensus that swift action from Washington is 

Eleven bills carrying most of a bipartisan artificial intelligence package cleared the House Science Committee in July, and a separate bill setting safety rules for the most powerful AI systems could get a hearing in November, said Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA). He said the pieces could be combined into a single bill eligible for a floor vote in December. The package started as the Great American AI Act, a 269-page discussion draft Obernolte released with Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA) on June 4, 2026.

Democratic consultants are privately encouraging their battleground candidates to avoid talking about artificial intelligence regulations out of fear that powerful tech groups will unleash a tidal wave of spending against them ahead of November. That guidance came from strategists in three separate top-tier House races, according to people involved in those races, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

The company Ooma has been around for about 20 years, offering its voice-over-IP and unified communications as a service phone technologies, but now Ooma has come up with a product that lets residential Starlink broadband subscribers add voice to their Starlink service. Ooma’ StarDial is targeted to Starlink internet users in rural, remote or off-grid locations who may want to also tap their satellite broadband service for voice.

California is on the verge of accepting $1.86 billion in federal broadband grant funds, despite the Trump administration telling states they cannot enforce net neutrality rules on any Internet service provider that gets a piece of the grant money.

SpaceX is continuing to pursue its case with the Federal Communications Commission that the proliferation of low-Earth orbit satellite service renders rural broadband subsidies obsolete, while depicting the opposing arguments of "subsidy-dependent incumbents" as "unfounded" and "implausible." The company's most recent remarks on the matter came in the form of reply comments to the FCC's proceeding on modernizing High-Cost, a program operated under the Universal Service Fund that helps subsidize telecom network deployment and maintenance in rural areas.

In July, SpaceX's 13th Starship test flight successfully deployed 20 "V3" Starlink satellites into sub-orbital trajectories for a series of speed tests before they "demised" some 20 minutes later to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.