When the pandemic hit, everything that could possibly be done online made the jump — work, job-hunting, school, doctor’s visits, and so on. The shift was hard for everyone, but many Americans didn’t even have the fundamental thing needed to make that change: a fast and reliable internet. People without internet access showed up at emergency rooms — during a pandemic — for non-emergencies, because they just weren’t able to do a video appointment. And when the time came, there was no refreshing a browser to find out where to get a vaccine. And the lack of access isn’t just in rural areas, as is often assumed. About one in five people in New York City don’t have any internet access at all — not even through data on their cell phones. We’re two decades into the 21st century, yet when it comes to life online, large segments of America are still living in the 1900s. To understand why, one first needs to understand how the internet works. In simple terms: there are multiple tiers, including large backbones that span countries and oceans, “middle mile” tiers connecting regions and cities — both which use high capacity fiber lines. But then there is the third tier, where it gets to end users — or in many cases: where it doesn’t get to them.

As the CEO of NTCA, Shirley Bloomfield represents an organization that supports 850 independent telecom providers driving broadband service opportunities in the rural and small-town US. With more than 30 years of experience representing the nation’s most rural operators, Bloomfield is an expert on how federal communications policies can sustain the vitality of rural and remote communities and the benefits rural broadband networks offer to millions of US families, businesses and the national economy. As states look to take advantage of various federal broadband funding sources – including the Infrastructure Investments Jobs Act (IIJA) – a key emphasis will be on partnerships, which will take several forms: public-private partnerships between traditional providers and communities, partnerships between electric cooperatives and other local telecom companies and partnerships between community providers and electric cooperatives. Hilda Legg, a rural economic development consultant for Legg Strategies, recently talked to Bloomfield about how broadband could create what she calls a “rural renaissance.” Broadband Communities include highlights of the conversation.

The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Inspector General alerted Lifeline, Emergency Broadband Benefit, and Affordable Connectivity Program consumers and providers to improper and abusive enrollment practices that are part of some providers’ online enrollment processes. These providers impermissibly coerce and deceive applicants for Lifeline service into enrolling in unwanted EBB/ACP service or into transferring their EBB/ACP service away from their preferred provider, contrary to the FCC Enforcement Bureau’s earlier Enforcement Advisory and FCC rules. OIG reminds all Lifeline, EBB and ACP providers that they are required to implement policies and procedures for ensuring their online enrollments comply with FCC rules.

In comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission, broadband service provider associations urged the FCC not to complicate the consumer labels that will be required at the point of sale for broadband services. The FCC should strive for “simplicity” in the labels by “only including that information that will give consumers meaningful insight into the broadband plans they are considering without including hypertechnical information that is meaningless to consumers and would overburden providers,” said USTelecom in its comments. In comments filed jointly, NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) also cautioned the FCC about the risk of overburdening providers. In 2016, the FCC had planned to require broadband consumer labels similar in concept to the nutrition labels found on food items sold in the US Plans for the labels, sometimes referred to as “broadband nutrition labels,” were scrapped when Ajit Pai took over as FCC chairman in 2017 but came to life again in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) adopted late 2021. In comments filed separately in the new broadband label proceeding, both ACA Connects and NCTA—The Internet & Television Association advised the FCC not to “reinvent the wheel” in establishing requirements for the labels. According to both associations, considerable stakeholder input went into the plans for the label that were made in 2016 and the FCC shouldn’t tamper with those plans.

The Illinois General Assembly is currently considering legislation that will constrain the state's use of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act broadband funding and likely impair efforts to close the digital divide in Illinois. Earlier this year, Illinois State Senator Patrick Joyce (D-Essex) introduced the Illinois Broadband Deployment, Equity, Access, and Affordability Act of 2022 (SB 3683), a bill that is rumored to be on a fast track to approval and attempts to establish the exclusive processes the state will use to distribute grant funds Illinois receives from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Although SB 3683 includes some of the same findings that Congress included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, State Senator Joyce proposes constraints on the use of federal funds that fly in the face of the clear language of federal law. If Illinois adopts this law, it risks losing access to over one billion dollars of federal support for broadband deployment.

[Kevin Taglang is Executive Editor at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.]

Hamilton (OH) has offered broadband services for some businesses during a beta test, but now is opening it up to any business in the city. City Council approved legislation that will implement a permanent offering for broadband services. “The intent is to provide local, reliable, affordable utilities to our customers and to provide those at a level of service that’s requested by our community,” said Edwin Porter, Hamilton’s executive director of Infrastructure. The program is working with and through Southwest Ohio Computer Association to receive broadband services and distribute those services to Hamilton’s business customers. Broadband services would be transferred to the city’s existing fiber system, which was established in 2004. New customers must pay $1.32 per foot to extend the fiber service from the closest available Hamilton fiber connection point to the point of use at their business, Porter said. Customers will also pay for the cost of equipment necessary, which the initial equipment is $5 per month. There are five varying levels of broadband connection speeds, which are catered to businesses. Speeds range from 50 Mbps (megabytes per second) at $100 per month base rate to 1,000 Mbps at $500 per month base rate. The broadband service will be a line item on the business customer’s utility bill.

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge remains a believer in the bundle — just with different parts. Rutledge said the vision behind Charter’s 2016 acquisition of Time Warner and Bright House Networks was that “we could put great products together, and packaged in a way that created value." But instead of traditional linear cable TV, Charter sees mobile — based on resold Verizon capacity augmented with the company’s network of Wi-Fi hotspots, and eventually its own licensed CBRS 5G spectrum—as the new counterpart to its core cable broadband service. “We have an opportunity to package that with great broadband,” he said, and “actually save customers money at the household level.” Mobile remains the smallest part of Charter’s residential business; at the end of 2021, it counted 28.1 million Spectrum broadband customers, 15.2 million Spectrum Video customers, 8.6 million Spectrum voice customers and 3.4 million Spectrum Mobile customers. But Rutledge emphasized mobile’s potential upside, noting that its cable service footprint encompasses some 120 million people who subscribe to one wireless service or another: “120 million is still 117 million more than we have.”

Rumors of Russian Internet services degrading have been greatly exaggerated, despite unprecedented announcements recently from two of the world’s biggest backbone providers that they were exiting the country following its invasion of Ukraine. Just as ISPs provide links connecting individuals or organizations to the Internet, backbone services are the service providers that connect ISPs in one part of the world with those elsewhere. These so-called transit providers route massive amounts of traffic from one ISP or backbone to another. Earlier this week Russian ISPs saw the exit of two of their biggest providers. One was Lumen, the top Internet transit provider to Russia. The other was Cogent, one of the biggest Internet backbone carriers in the world. But network metrics show that connectivity continues as it has historically. There are several reasons for this. One is that the exit of a single transit provider from a country the size of Russia—or two in this case—doesn’t have enough of an impact to degrade overall service. Another reason is that both Lumen and Cogent continue to provide transit services to the outposts of major Russian ISPs as long as those outposts aren’t located inside Russia.