Charter Communications said that it will commit an additional $1 million to its 2022 Spectrum Digital Education grant initiative, boosting the total amount invested in the six-year program to $8 million. Charter launched Spectrum Digital Education in 2017, and through February 2022 the company said grants and in-kind contributions have helped 99 nonprofit organizations and more than 95,000 people in 22 states and Washington (DC). According to Charter, the funding has been used to provide computers to those without digital access and digital literacy training for older adults, as well as assisting organizations to expand their online programs, purchase software to make technology more accessible for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and to combat isolation amongst senior citizens. Nonprofit organizations that offer broadband education, training and technology can apply for support here, beginning Wednesday, June 1 through Friday, June 24, at 5 pm ET. Recipients will be announced in fall 2022.

Installing fiber-optic internet in sparsely populated places like western Kansas is extremely expensive, even with government subsidies. But some smaller, local broadband providers are finding ways to make it work where the big national companies have not. Federal and state governments have poured billions into trying to bring more bandwidth to the remote corners of the country. But for many people in rural places, it hasn’t made any difference. An estimated 42 million Americans still don’t have high-speed internet, or what most people today simply think of as internet. With fiber-optic cable installation costing tens of thousands of dollars per mile, it’s unlikely that big national providers will ever find a way to make money — or even avoid losses — by connecting rural communities. But a growing number of small towns, farms and ranches are finally joining the Digital Age with help from small, local companies that have more of a stake in the rural areas they call home. They’ve found ways to stretch state and federal subsidies to strategically install high-capacity wires to homes, or construct over-the-air relays, to bring more robust speeds to remote outposts, town-by-town, farmstead-by-farmstead. Now, with $42 billion in new federal broadband funding about to go to state governments, those local companies say how much money they get could decide how many more rural Americans get connected.

Verizon currently cites a speed of 300 Mbps for its 5G fixed wireless offering. That speed could increase beginning as early as 2023 when the company gains access to additional spectrum that it won in the 2021 C-band auction, said Matt Ellis, Verizon executive vice president and chief financial officer. The company was the biggest winner in 2021’s C-band auction. Some of the spectrum that the company won was subject to early clearing, enabling the company to launch mobile and fixed wireless service in the band early 2022. According to Ellis, the C-band spectrum currently available to the company averages 60 MHz per market but will increase to 160 MHz when the company gains access to the additional spectrum in 2023. He also noted that the company has the option to deploy more fixed wireless in the millimeter wave band, which could further boost speeds. The expectation, he said, is that fixed wireless “will be part of our relationship with customers for many years to come.”