Sen Markey and Rep Meng urged Congressional leadership to include $1 billion in the disaster supplemental division of the year-end omnibus for the Federal Communications Commission's Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF), which supports devices and broadband services for students and educators to connect to the internet at home. This funding would be sufficient for the FCC to fund every valid application it received in the most recent application window. In May, the FCC announced that it had received more than $2.8 billion in requests for ECF funds in the most recent application window – far more than the estimated $1.5 billion in remaining funds. Without Congressional approval of supplemental funds, the impact will fall hardest on the low-income, disadvantaged, and rural communities that relied most heavily on the ECF.  The end of the Emergency Connectivity Fund will effectively turn an important investment in our students into stranded assets and a wasted opportunity.

The authors were previously asked to analyze from an economic perspective the appropriate contribution methodology for the federal Universal Service Fund (USF). In a prior study, they analyzed the effects of modifying and expanding the “contribution base,” i.e., the supply of financial resources for the USF, to include both voice and broadband connections. In particular, the prior study investigated the economic effects of modifying and expanding the contribution base on broadband adoption rates. In this new report, the authors have been asked by NTCA to evaluate and respond to critiques of the prior study as submitted to the Federal Communications Commission. The authors continue to find that modifying the USF contribution methodology to include both voice and broadband connections within the contribution base would not have a material impact on broadband adoption or retention.

Broadband provider Brightspeed has completed a network deployment in Eutawville, South Carolina, that was funded, in part, through the South Carolina 2021 Rural Broadband Grant Program. The network provides service to more than 3,000 addresses in the town and the surrounding Orangeburg County area. The network is capable of 940 Mbps data speeds. Brightspeed invested half of the cost of the build. Brightspeed has bigger plans for South Carolina moving forward. In August, 2022, the company said that it would deploy a fiber network to 50,000 addresses in the state. The first phase would include 14,000 addresses and was scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. The balance of 36,000 addresses would be completed in subsequent years. The technology used in Eutawville apparently is different from what Brightspeed has planned for the 50,000 additional locations. Those projects are to include XGS-PON platforms capable of symmetrical data speeds of more than 1 Gbps, which is faster than what is specified for the Eutwawville build.

There was an interesting phenomenon that happened in September when Starlink launched 49 new satellites. The satellites were successfully deployed by the rocket, but as the satellites were being maneuvered to reach the final orbital slots there was a geomagnetic storm that caused 38 of the satellites to fall back to earth. Space storms happen when radiation affects the magnetosphere that surrounds the earth. The extra energy from the storms can also play havoc with GPS and other space-based communications. Strong storms can wreak havoc with radio communications and can even produce feedback in long-haul electric wires that can disrupt the power grid. Scientists have been looking at ways to better predict solar flares and the ensuing storms. Tracking space weather matters since we are becoming reliant on space technologies. We’ve all incorporated GPS and satellite weather into our daily routines. Space technology has become everyday technology, but it’s too easy to take for granted and to assume it will always work.

Elon Musk said that Twitter was reinstating the accounts of several journalists whose accounts were suspended after he had accused them of violating the social media platform’s rules on personal privacy. Musk said he was restoring most of the accounts, which had been deactivated on Dec 15, after a majority of respondents in his informal Twitter survey voted that the suspensions should be lifted immediately. But for at least some of the reporters, including Drew Harwell of The Washington Post and Ryan Mac of The New York Times, the restoration of their accounts appeared to be contingent on them deleting posts that Twitter had flagged as “violating our rules against posting private information.” In Harwell’s case, he was told to delete a Twitter post reporting on the suspension of Mastodon, one of Twitter’s competitors. If he attempted to appeal the decision, the message said, his account would remain locked while Twitter reviewed his appeal.