In the final days of 2020, Congress approved a COVID-relief package that included $3.2 billion for the Federal Communications Commission to establish the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program to help households that were struggling to afford broadband. The program was up-and-running by spring, and the public’s response was overwhelming. It immediately became clear that demand for this program was going to outlast the pandemic, and Congress responded with a longer-term solution to the broadband affordability challenge. As part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, Congress approved over $14 billion to extend the Emergency Broadband Benefit, and changed its name to the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). Today, the ACP has more than 23 million subscribers. There’s no denying that demand for ACP support is high. But absent additional funding from Congress, the ACP will run out of funding after April 2024. To help us fully understand what is at stake if the ACP does not receive additional funding, in December 2023, the FCC conducted a survey of ACP subscribers. The survey was designed to provide deeper insights into whether participants would have been online without ACP, the type of connectivity they would have had without ACP, how they are using their ACP-supported service, and how the end of the program would impact them. The topline finding of this survey is that for the overwhelming majority of ACP recipients, the monthly subsidy is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. More than two-thirds of subscribers had inconsistent connectivity or zero connectivity at all before they enrolled in ACP. And more than three-quarters of respondents said losing ACP support would disrupt their service or cause them to drop internet service entirely. 

The US Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service is accepting applications under the Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) grant program for fiscal year (FY) 2024, subject to the availability of funding. Based on FY 2023 appropriated funding, RUS estimates that approximately $60 million will be available for FY 2024. Successful applications will be selected for funding and subsequently awarded to the extent that funding may ultimately be made available through appropriations. All applicants are responsible for any expenses incurred in developing their applications. Applications must be submitted through www.grants.gov/ and received no later than April 29, 2024 to be eligible for funding under this grant opportunity. RUS  encourages applicants to consider projects that will advance the following key priorities:

• Assisting rural communities recover economically through more and better market opportunities and through improved infrastructure.
• Ensuring all rural residents have equitable access to USDA programs and benefits from USDA-funded projects; and
• Reducing climate pollution and increasing resilience to the impacts of climate change through economic support to rural communities. 

The US Department of Agriculture just announced a new round of ReConnect grants. These are grants that can only be used to serve the most rural places in the country, and one of the qualifications is the distance between the grant market and the nearest towns. The homes served by the grants must not have any broadband available at speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps. A grantee must serve every home in a grant area. It’s not going to be easy to find a grant area that is rural and that has no homes where internet service providers claim the capability to deliver speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps. A few other consultants I’ve talked to are wondering if there will be enough markets that can meet the ReConnect grant parameters. But the oddest thing about these grants is the timing. This grant program was announced just as states are gearing up to award the much larger BEAD grants. Having both grant programs running concurrently is going to cause all sorts of problems for both ISPs and State Broadband Offices. In 2022 the Biden administration directed the Federal Communications Commission, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and the USDA to coordinate everything associated with federal funding for broadband. It’s clear that the FCC and USDA ignored that directive to coordinate grants and have done the opposite..

On February 22, 2024, our network partner, AT&T, experienced a broad outage that impacted public safety users of FirstNet. Based on initial reviews, the network outage occurred in the early hours of the morning on Thursday. The FirstNet network was restored by around 5:00 a.m. CST — about 3 hours since service was initially affected for some FirstNet subscribers across the country. AT&T says the outage was due to the application and execution of an incorrect process used while expanding its network; AT&T stated it was not the result of a cyberattack. As the network operator for FirstNet, AT&T took immediate action to prioritize the restoration of public safety services. The FirstNet Authority recognizes that AT&T put public safety first during the outage. Resilience is crucial in the face of adversity, and AT&T stepped up and prioritized the restoration of FirstNet. We are committed to identifying the circumstances that led to the outage and working with AT&T to implement strategies and corrective actions to help prevent FirstNet from experiencing an outage like this in the future. I am meeting with AT&T leaders to discuss this outage in depth. Further, I have established a FirstNet Authority After-Action Task Force comprised of public safety, technical, and emergency management experts from our team. The task force will help us strengthen our preparedness and emergency communications processes, so that in the event of any future outages the FirstNet Authority, together with AT&T, can understand the impact faster and surge to communicate with the public safety community.