I was once lucky enough to have interviewed a number of rural people who told me what it was like when they finally got electricity. Almost every person I talked to mentioned how life-changing it was to brightly illuminate their homes with electric lightbulbs. Rural electricity was largely funded by low-income loans to newly formed electric cooperatives. We took a different approach to stringing telephone copper in rural areas, with a mix of private and public investment. Since it’s now clear that broadband is the newest utility that homes need to participate in today’s economy, the federal government naturally got involved in funding rural fiber networks. Some of this was funded with subsidized loans, but a lot more has been accomplished through federal grant programs like the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, ReConnect, and the Capital Projects Fund. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program was supposed to be the big grant program that filled in the final gaps in rural fiber, and many State Broadband Offices were well on the way to fulfilling that goal. I’ve never understood why and how we lost the lessons we learned from rural electrification. I am certain that a lot of rural America would already have fiber today if the federal government had offered 40- or 50-year loans at 1 percent. Instead, the Federal Communications Commission chopped the rural landscape into Swiss cheese areas with the RDOF program, and other grant programs have tried to fit fiber projects around the messy jigsaw puzzle that was left over. I’m not sure that we could have designed a worse way to mess up the rural broadband landscape.

Gov Tony Evers (D-WI) urged Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature to approve substantial state budget investments to continue expanding high-speed internet across Wisconsin as new sweeping Trump Administration changes to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program will effectively delay broadband funding Wisconsin expects to receive. The Wisconsin Broadband Office at the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin estimates that 39 percent of Wisconsinites lack access to affordable internet and that there are 262,000 locations that are considered unserved in Wisconsin as of December 2024. Republicans on the state budget committee—the Joint Committee on Finance—are scheduled to take up Gov Evers’ 2025-27 Executive Budget proposal to invest $400 million in the state’s Broadband Expansion Grant Program, which works to provide or improve broadband internet in unserved areas across the state. The vote comes as the Trump Administration recently announced sweeping new changes to the BEAD Program, effectively further delaying Wisconsin’s progress to bring affordable, high-speed internet to homes and businesses across the state.  

Greenlight Networks says that its $100 million investment in fiber infrastructure in Baltimore (MD) will serve its first customers in September 2025. Greenlight Networks wants to become a fixture in Baltimore and says that it is seeking a permanent office location in the city to serve as its regional hub. It also says that it will hire locally for construction crews, network and installation technicians, and community outreach representatives. Maryland is making good use of public-private partnerships. The effort is led by the state’s Digital Infrastructure Group, which is composed of representatives from 11 state agencies. 

AT&T and Mississippi have entered into contracts to expand AT&T Fiber internet across the state. More than 5,300 residential and business locations in portions of Hinds, Rankin, Leake, and Neshoba Counties will get expanded broadband as a part of the $30.5 million public-private project that is expected to deliver high-speed internet. AT&T says the company will expand fiber broadband to nearly 1,600 homes and small businesses. State officials used federal funds made available by the American Rescue Plan Act to help bring fiber internet to the area. Mississippi will invest nearly $16 million, and AT&T will invest more than $14 million in the project.

Nearly 90 percent of the internet traffic to and from our smartphones never touch our mobile carrier’s network. Instead, that traffic flows seamlessly through Wi-Fi, and that’s no accident. Wi-Fi is available for us to use because a whole host of people and organizations have spent decades preserving and expanding invisible airwaves known as spectrum on behalf of the American public. One of those people is Michael Calabrese, director of Wireless Future at New America’s Open Technology Institute. Calabrese describes his ultimate "Wireless Future" as "seamless wireless connectivity ... There would no longer be a digital divide based on your income or the service you can afford, and that will be really important as the Internet of Things continues to proliferate and AI ties it all together. It will be essential that everyone has the same baseline of excellent connectivity. Next-generation Wi-Fi and shared public spectrum are central to making that wireless future a reality."

Both providers and vendors in the broadband industry are trying to figure out how artificial intelligence can improve internal systems, customer service, construction, and more. Hailo Chief Technical Officer Avi Baum has another take. He believes in the importance of edge-based AI, especially for broadband customer experience use cases. While the opportunity for broadband providers around AI and data centers has gotten a lot of attention, Baum is focused on edge devices. Edge-based AI refers to AI that is installed and hosted directly on edge devices. Edge devices are devices at the edge of the cloud that are directly used by consumers: smartphones, internet of things devices, etc. These devices connect to the cloud but have a certain amount of information loaded directly on the device. Edge AI means certain AI capabilities would be built directly into devices without requiring a connection to the internet.