Cities Corinth and Lake Dallas as well as towns Hickory Creek and Shady Shores (TX), collectively known as the Lake Cities, are seeking a public-private partnership to deploy a fiber network to households and businesses in the area. The project, with the help of $4 million in American Rescue Plan funds, would include building a middle-mile fiber ring to support government services around the four cities, connecting public buildings and facilities. Their Request for Proposals (RFP) seeks a financially sustainable public-private partnership where the local governments of the four cities make the initial capital investment and jointly own the network with a private Internet Service Provider (ISP). The ISP would operate and maintain the network primarily with little to no additional government funding needed after the network is up and running. In the RFP, the Cities stated a preference for fiber, but they are open to wireless and mixed solutions as well. The minimum speed they are requesting is 100/20 Mbps with reliability and affordability being key considerations for a future partnership. All four cities plan to grant right-of-way access to whichever private provider they decide to proceed with, and the four communities are currently working on leasing space on light poles which are owned by Oncor Electric.

The Technology Policy Institute's Broadband Connectivity Index (BCI) built into the TPI Broadband Map is derived using a principal components analysis that explicitly takes into account many factors of access to broadband. The index can help policymakers prioritize areas for buildout (the “where”), while the components of the index can help identify the type of assistance (the “what”) that might be most useful. Here, TPI uses Florida to demonstrate how a connectivity index can be useful. This example is not intended to tell policymakers anything they don’t already know about their counties; rather, TPI shows how multiple datasets can be combined to yield new insights with a method that generates a comprehensive snapshot of connectivity data through the development of a Broadband Connectivity Index. The states may find it useful to take a similar approach at smaller geographic levels that takes into account a state’s own data to most effectively spend the resources available to it. Access to connectivity and the digital divide are multi-faceted policy problems that require multi-faceted analytical methods. The Broadband Connectivity Index may be a powerful approach to integrate what we know in separate datasets to better focus the priorities and attention of state officials with limited time and the important task at hand to fund broadband infrastructure projects in their local districts.

If the five companies using the most broadband bandwidth contribute more to the costs of providing it, they could help address the digital divide. Roslyn Layton, a vice president at Strand Consult, researched four rural broadband providers and found that 75 percent of downstream network traffic comes from five companies: Amazon Prime, Disney+/Hulu, Microsoft Xbox, Netflix and YouTube. According to her report “Middle Mile Economics: How streaming video entertainment undermines the business model for broadband,” the traffic from those companies drives about 90 percent of the net new network costs for rural providers. Now is the time to reexamine the broadband setup, Layton said, particularly as it pertains to the middle mile, which is most impacted. That is the part that enables the transport and transmission of data from the central office, cable headend or wireless switching station to an internet point of presence, the local access point that lets users connect to the internet through their provider.  She also cited the $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill that includes $65 billion to improve broadband access – another use of public funds she said should be unnecessary if the biggest internet users paid their share.But whatever solution comes to be, the current pricing model will become unsustainable, the report states. “We have to get more money into the system or we’ll just never close the digital divide,” Layton said.

AT&T gets a chance to close a 5G airwaves gap with its rivals as bidding begins in a US auction of frequencies for ultrafast wireless service that’s expected to attract $25 billion in bids. The third-largest US wireless carrier is predicted to be the top bidder in the spectrum auction run by the Federal Communications Commission. Mobile leaders Verizon and T-Mobile are also ready to take part in the sale that starts October 5, as is Dish Network. The airwaves being sold are in the 3.45-3.55 GHz range, and are known as midband frequencies. They can carry rich information streams rapidly and over distances, making them ideal for 5G’s data-intensive services. The sale comes as AT&T tries to reorient itself toward 5G mobile services and fiber-delivered broadband, and away from the $100 billion TV and media businesses it acquired under previous management. With the spinoff of DirecTV and the pending separation of its WarnerMedia business, Chief Executive Officer John Stankey has vowed to return the phone giant to its roots as a network operator. Overall bidding needs to top $14.8 billion to reimburse the government for costs to move some of its wireless services out of the airwaves being sold, in order to avoid interference. 

The complaints filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission against Facebook by former employee Frances Haugen include "original evidence showing that Facebook ... has, for years past and ongoing, violated US securities laws by making material misrepresentations and omissions in statements to investors and prospective investors, including, inter alia, through filings with the SEC, testimony to Congress, online statements and media stories." Haugen's attorneys have filed at least eight whistleblower complaints with the SEC based on tens of thousands of internal Facebook documents secretly copied by Haugen before she left the social media company in May 2021. "The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook," said Haugen. "And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money."