The Federal Communications Commission is committing nearly $84 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Program (ECP), which provides digital services for students in communities across the country. The funding commitments support applications from all three application windows, benefiting approximately 140,000 students across the country, including students in California, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. To date, the FCC has committed over $6.3 billion to schools and libraries across the country as part of the Emergency Connectivity Program. The announcement will support over 180 schools, 20 libraries, and 5 consortia. The funding can be used to support off-campus learning, such as nightly homework, to ensure students across the country have the necessary support to keep up with their education.

American Connection Corps, an initiative operated by Lead for America, is the nation’s largest fellowship program focused on bridging the digital divide. AmeriCorps, Land O’Lakes, Heartland Forward’s Connecting the Heartland initiative (which supports fellows in their target states of Illinois, Ohio, Arkansas, and Tennessee), and select partners from the American Connection Project all support the corps. The American Connection Corps is building and empowering a new generation of leaders to help bring connectivity to communities.

Dramatic increases in provisioned broadband speeds are continuing to shift the broadband landscape, including a continued increase in gigabit tier adoption, as well as migration of subscribers to speeds of 200 Mbps or higher. About 15% of subscribers were on gigabit tier plans in 3Q22, an increase of 35% over the 11.4% figure in 3Q21, and the percentage of subscribers on plans between 200-400 Mbps doubled to 54.8% from 27.4% in 3Q21. At the end of the third quarter, only 4.7% of all subscribers were provisioned for speeds of less than 50 Mbps, a reduction of more than 50% from the 3Q21 figure of 9.8%. Gigabit tier subscribers are up more than 600% since the third quarter of 2019, the report notes. “This trend is impacting bandwidth usage characteristics, with faster growth in power users and median bandwidth usage,” it adds. Other findings in the 3Q22 report include:

• Average monthly usage of 495.5 GB was up 13.9% from 3Q21’s average of 434.9 GB, and represented a slight increase over 2Q22’s 490.7 GB. Median broadband was up 14.3% year over year, representing broader growth across all subscribers.
• Year-over-year growth of power users of 1TB or more was 18%, to 13.7% of all subscribers, while the super power user category of consumers of 2 TB or more rose almost 50% during the same time frame.
• Participants in the American Connectivity Program consumed 615.2 GB of data in 3Q22, 24% more than the 495.5 used by the general population.

Gigabit passive optical network (GPON, if you're scoring at home) is a great technology. It is the predominant technology in place that is delivering fiber last mile broadband. GPON quickly became popular because it allowed the provisioning of a gigabit service to customers. A GPON link delivers 2.4 GB downstream and 1.2 GB upstream to serve up to 64 customers, although most networks I’ve seen don’t deliver to more than 32 customers. The biggest long-term advantage of GPON is that the technology serves more customers than active Ethernet, and most of the R&D for last-mile fiber over the past decade has gone to PON (passive optical network) technology. There are a few interesting benefits of GPON versus active Ethernet. One of the most important is the ability to serve multiple customers on a single feeder fiber. PON has one laser at a hub talking to 32 or more customers. This means a lot less fiber is needed in the network. The other advantage of PON that providers like is that there are no active electronics in the network – electronics are only at hubs and at the customer. That’s a lot fewer components to go bad and fewer repairs to make in the field. We’re now seeing most new fiber designs using XGS-PON. This technology increases bandwidth and delivers a symmetrical 10-GB path to a neighborhood. The technology can serve up to 256 customers on a fiber, although most providers will serve fewer than that. The biggest advantage of XGS-PON is that the electronics vendors have all gotten smarter, and XGS-PON is being designed as an overlay onto GPON networks. A provider can slip an XGS-PON card into an existing GPON chassis and instantly provision customers with faster broadband. The faster speeds just require an upgraded ONT (optical network terminal) – the electronics at the customer location. I’m sure GPON will be around for years to come. But as happens with all technology upgrades, there will probably come a day when the vendors stop supporting old GPON cards and ONTs.

Society has long fretted about technology’s impact on youth. The hyperconnected nature of social media has led to new anxieties, including worries that these platforms may be negatively impacting teenagers’ mental health. Despite these concerns, teens themselves paint a more nuanced picture of adolescent life on social media. It is one in which majorities credit these platforms with deepening connections and providing a support network when they need it, while smaller – though notable – shares acknowledge the drama and pressures that can come along with using social media. Eight-in-ten teens say that what they see on social media makes them feel more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives, while 71% say it makes them feel like they have a place where they can show their creative side. And 67% say these platforms make them feel as if they have people who can support them through tough times. A smaller share – though still a majority – says the same for feeling more accepted. These positive sentiments are expressed by teens across demographic groups. When asked about the overall impact of social media on them personally, more teens say its effect has been mostly positive (32%) than say it has been mostly negative (9%). The largest share describes its impact in neutral terms: 59% believe social media has had neither a positive nor a negative effect on them. For teens who view social media’s effect on them as mostly positive, many describe maintaining friendships, building connections, or accessing information as the main reasons they feel this way. Additionally, surveys show the following:

• Teens are more likely to view social media as having a negative effect on others than themselves,
• Teens reflect on parents’ concerns and assessments of teen life on social media,
• Teens who have a more positive outlook about social media are more likely to say these platforms benefit them,
• Online activism is not common on social media among teens; only a minority of teens are highly concerned about digital privacy,
• Teens feel a lack of control over their personal data but aren’t too concerned about social media companies having this information.