The US Department of the Treasury approved the use of $151.5 million for high-speed internet projects in Mississippi under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Capital Projects Fund (CPF). Mississippi is approved to receive $151.5 million for broadband infrastructure projects, which the state estimates will connect approximately 47,300 homes and businesses to affordable, high-speed internet. Mississippi’s funding will go to the Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi (BEAM) fund, a new competitive grant program designed to fund three types of broadband investments: large-scale projects, line extensions, and community-based broadband projects. The BEAM fund will prioritize last-mile fiber applicants for large-scale and line extension projects and will prioritize high-speed, reliable internet to downtown commercial areas for community-based broadband projects. The plan approved by the Treasury Department represents 93% of the state’s total allocation under the CPF program. Mississippi submitted plans for the remainder of their CPF funds and these plans are currently under review by the Treasury Department. 

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau), on its own motion, grants a limited, one-time waiver to a limited number of Lifeline subscribers who received incorrect information about the deadline for recertifying their eligibility for the Lifeline program. Specifically, in letters from the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), these subscribers were informed that they had approximately 80 days in which to recertify their eligibility for the Lifeline program, rather than the 60-days provided for under the Lifeline program rules. To prevent the impacted Lifeline subscribers from experiencing the hardship of de-enrollment as a result of their reliance on the incorrect deadline set forth in the USAC letters, we waive, to the extent necessary, the 60-day recertification deadline and allow the impacted Lifeline subscribers to recertify by the deadline provided in their respective USAC recertification letters.

The Federal Communications Commission is taking another step forward in its iterative effort to develop the best and most accurate broadband maps ever built in the US. The map we are releasing reflects challenges and improvements to the data. It has a lot of updated information about both locations and availability. Here are a few key takeaways:

• More than 8.3 million US homes and businesses lack access to high-speed broadband. If we want everyone, everywhere to have access to high-speed internet service, we will need to deploy broadband service to 8.3 million new locations. On net, the improvements to the map since November helped to identify nearly 330,000 more unserved locations.
• Our challenge processes are powerful tools to improve accuracy. Stakeholders have stepped up to provide lots of information and challenges to our data. Our mapping team has reviewed challenges to the availability of data for more than 4 million locations. Over 75% of those challenges have already been resolved and the majority have led to updates in the data on the map showing where broadband is available.
• Collaboration is key. Our mapping team met individually with representatives from every state at least once, and, in total, hosted over 200 individual sessions with state, local, and Tribal governments. These discussions were crucial to helping all stakeholders understand what we were showing on the map, how to submit—and respond to—challenges, and how this first-of-its-kind map could be improved. We also responded to more than 7,600 technical assistance requests from internet providers and challengers.
• We’re using all the data quality tools at our disposal. Beyond the challenge process, the FCC has built automated checks into the new system to validate submissions from internet providers. FCC staff have also begun to use the verification and enforcement tools available to ensure accurate availability of filings, initiating over 800 verification inquiries thus far. More stringent verification resulted in updates to over 600 submissions from providers and a clearer picture of broadband availability in every state and territory.
• Our maps are continuously becoming more accurate, and will only continue to improve. The FCC has a duty under the law to develop these maps in an iterative fashion. We are going to continue to release a major update twice a year, which overlays availability data from providers onto the tens of millions of serviceable locations. In addition to those major bi-annual updates, we have been making minor updates to the availability data in the map regularly for most of 2023. These incremental updates reflect both challenge outcomes and any corrections providers make to their filings.

Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said that the company is the “largest rural provider today.” Charter was the largest winner of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse auction in terms of passings and is slated to bring broadband to over 1 million rural homes and businesses. The company says it is ahead of schedule and has already built 40% of those passings. But does passing 400,000 homes make Charter the biggest rural provider in the country? It’s hard to get specific statistics from the big providers, but it’s hard to imagine that CenturyLink and Frontier don’t still have more rural customers than Charter. In all fairness, rural DSL customers are the prime target for Charter and everybody else who is building rural networks – but it’s unlikely that Charter has yet eclipsed them in customer counts.