The US Department of Agriculture invested $3.3 million in a high-speed broadband infrastructure project that will create or improve rural e-Connectivity for 142 homes, businesses, farms and ranches in Beaverhead County. Southern Montana Telephone Company (SMT) will use a $3.3 million ReConnect Program grant to construct a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network in Beaverhead County. The 1,688-square-mile service area includes 109 households, 26 farms and ranches, seven businesses and the Grant Fire Station.

The Rural Utilities Service is issuing a final rule with request for comments to outline the general policies for servicing actions associated with financially distressed borrowers from the Telecommunications Infrastructure Loan Program, Rural Broadband Program, Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program, Broadband Initiatives Program, and Rural eConnectivity Pilot Program. This rule will ensure recipients comply with any revised terms in repayment on loans and ensures serving actions are handled by RUS consistently across programs. This final rule is effective February 25, 2020. Comments are due by April 27, 2020.

In the United States, 17 million of the 21 million people who lack fixed-line broadband access live in rural areas. (That’s one-third of all rural Americans.) The issue is twice as bad on rural tribal lands, where two-thirds of people lack high-speed internet connectivity. Eighteen percent of people living on reservations have no home internet access at all, according to a 2019 study by the American Indian Policy Institute at Arizona State University. The Havasupai were one of the first tribes to benefit from the work of a small Oakland-based nonprofit called MuralNet, where Mariel Triggs is now CEO. Its mission is to help tribal nations build and operate their own networks. Although Triggs is the sole full-time employee, the organization maintains partnerships with nonprofits, companies, law firms and other volunteers to provide tribes—for free—with the training, legal counsel and planning support they’ll need to become self-sufficient. On any given day, Triggs might be doling out a network starter kit, drawing up an engineering plan, installing hardware on a roof, teaching people how to connect to their network or calling the Federal Communications Commission’s wireless division—again. 

The 5G Spectrum Act of 2019 (S. 2881) would amend existing law regarding the disposition of offsetting receipts from an auction of licenses to use a section of electromagnetic spectrum often called the C-band. Under the bill, the Federal Communications Commission would be authorized to spend, without further appropriation, up to 50 percent of the auction proceeds to compensate current users and another 10 percent for programs that support the deployment of broadband infrastructure in rural areas. The rest—which could exceed 40 percent of the total if gross auction receipts exceed $40 billion—would be deposited into the Treasury. The bill would direct the FCC to begin the auction by the end of calendar year 2020 and to deposit the receipts into the Treasury by the end of calendar year 2022. Other provisions of S. 2881 would require the FCC to issue rules certain taxing jurisdictions must follow to spend fees collected to support or implement 911 or enhanced 911 services. CBO estimates that under current law the auction of licenses to use 280 MHz of C-band spectrum will generate net offsetting receipts totaling $15.4 billion over the 2020-2030 period.

President Donald Trump says he wants America to win the race to the fast new wireless future. He took it seriously enough to sign a presidential memorandum setting a deadline of July 2019 for a new national strategy on allocating the airwaves. That deadline came and went with no strategy in sight. In September, a Commerce Department undersecretary promised that the strategy was still on the way, telling a gathering of government officials that it would be released in the fall. A Commerce official said that the department did indeed deliver a draft to the White House. As of this writing, no strategy has been released. In the void, Trump administration officials have been lobbying their own ideas for how America can win the race to build superfast 5G service — seemingly with no coordination at all. Economic adviser Larry Kudlow talked up a new “virtualized” network to counter Chinese hardware dominance. Attorney General William Barr suggested that instead the U.S. should buy a controlling stake in one of Huawei’s European competitors. The idea was unprecedented — and apparently unsupported: A day later, Vice President Mike Pence seemed to walk it back. Democrats in Congress haven’t missed the chance to pounce on the White House’s disarray on such a fundamental new technology.

It’ll be years before most people have 5G phones and a super-fast network to connect them, but the future of mobile technology is shaping up right now. Behind the promises lie some big government decisions about what to prioritize, how to compete, and how fast to move. As citizens and consumers, whether they know it or not, people are being asked to weigh convenience against privacy, national competitiveness against national security, and speed against price. How they feel about those tradeoffs could shape national policies, and the competitive landscape of what is effectively a whole new internet. To gauge their views, a new worldwide POLITICO/Qualcomm global survey on 5G asked nearly 8,000 people in the US and 10 countries across Europe, Asia and South America what they were expecting, and what they worried about. Read on for the results, and why they could matter to decisionmakers

The Justice Department has essentially given up hope that tech companies will voluntarily build into their products a special way for law enforcement to access encrypted communications to help track terrorists and criminals. Instead, the department is focusing on getting legislation that forces companies to cooperate –  and is hoping encryption-limiting laws in Australia and the United Kingdom will ease the path for a similar law in the US, said John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security. “If there were a proposal from tech companies or a desire to talk about this issue that wasn't just everybody rehashing their own positions…then we'd be happy to hear it,” he said. “But we really haven't gotten anywhere in however many years we've been open to talk.”  The shift illustrates how law enforcement believes it now has a political advantage in the debate over warrant-proof encryption – especially in Congress where lawmakers harangued officials from Apple and Facebook over the systems during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Dec.