The Trump administration has rescinded its final approval for Nevada to use its nearly half-billion-dollar broadband award, further delaying the state’s plan to achieve universal high-speed internet and speed up internet service for areas, including rural ones, plagued by slow connections. Nevada was one of three states to have its proposal fully approved by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, unlocking the full amount that the federal government had designated for the state under the 2021 Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program. The state had already selected more than 50,000 locations and provisionally awarded 19 providers to build out broadband infrastructure across the state, which ranks 20th in internet connectivity. In late April, Nevada broadband director Brian Mitchell said construction was set to start this summer—an enormous milestone for a program that had spent years in the bureaucratic approvals process. Instead, the state’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology will need to scrap its list of subawardees and redo the bid selection process using different guidelines—further delaying the beginning of construction potentially into 2026.

The Trump Administration announced critical reforms to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Reforms include:

• Instituting a Technology Neutral Approach: The National Telecommunications and Information Administration will adopt a technology-neutral approach for the BEAD subgrantee selection process by returning the definition of a “Priority Broadband Project” to statutory language. 
• Removing Burdensome Labor and Employment Requirements: NTIA will limit the labor and employment requirements of the statute to a certification of compliance with existing law and eliminate the central planning and diversity, equity, and inclusion labor and employment edicts that disadvantaged both workers and providers, drove up costs, and undermined broadband buildouts.
• Eliminating Climate Change Requirements: NTIA will eliminate obligations to conduct climate analyses. Instead, NTIA guidance will focus on ensuring reliability and resiliency of the network. 
• Ending Oppressive Net Neutrality Requirements: NTIA will eliminate the Notice of Funding Opportunity requirement that imposed wholesale access requirements on applicants. 
• Removing Coordination Requirements: NTIA will eliminate requirements on Eligible Entities to consult with a myriad of special interest groups, including representatives from demographic and identity-based organizations. 
• Ending Needless Municipal Broadband Paperwork: NTIA will eliminate the requirement in the Final Proposal that Eligible Entities favor participation of non-traditional broadband providers (such as municipalities or political subdivisions).
• Ending Backdoor Rate Regulation: NTIA will refuse to accept any low-cost service option proposed in an Eligible Entity’s Final Proposal that attempts to impose a specific rate level and instead call on Eligible Entities to permit providers to propose their existing, market-driven low-cost plans to meet the statutory low-cost requirement.
• Streamlining Environmental Reviews: NTIA will require the use of an NTIA-developed tool for broadband permitting. The Environmental Screening and Permitting Tracking Tool is designed to accelerate National Environmental Policy Act processing timelines by several months and will be utilized by all Eligible Entities deploying BEAD.  

Middle-mile networks form the essential link between local broadband services and the global internet. A middle mile network is defined as a network that connects two or more networks together. They are critical to delivering high-speed, reliable connections. Yet, many middle-mile networks today are built using outdated assumptions about household bandwidth needs. While public reports suggest peak-hour usage of 15–20 Mbps, real-world observations show active households often exceeding 100 Mbps. This discrepancy underscores the need to design middle-mile infrastructure based on real-world concurrency trends rather than diluted averages. This paper highlights the growing mismatch between reported averages and real usage patterns. It presents insights from service providers, examines current trends, and outlines clear recommendations for designing middle-mile infrastructure that can meet today’s—and tomorrow’s—demands.

Digital equity has been defined as a social justice issue. However, there is currently a lack of scholarship that describes how participatory action research, as a scholar-activist approach, has been used to advance digital equity and social justice through researcher-practitioner collaborations. This study presents on an in-depth reflection on how we used PAR in a research project with findings that were previously published in a white paper in 2023. This paper seeks to respond to the following research question: What is the value of a researcher-practitioner collaboration using PAR to advance digital equity as a social justice issue? To answer this question, we used our project team’s meeting minutes as a source of evidence. This approach provided us with a structured approach to reflect on and articulate the value of using PAR to guide our work together over an eleven-month period. The purpose of this current study is to address a gap in the existing digital equity literature and to more deeply reflect on our collaboration using PAR as a research/practitioner team. As researchers and practitioners working together to advance digital equity, our study found tremendous value in using PAR to create a theory of change, particularly in the context of the current $65 billion investment in universal broadband infrastructure and digital equity in the United States over the next five years, particularly to ensure that those most impacted by the digital divide are represented in solutions to the problems identified by the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act of 2021.

Stephen Rose, CEO of Render Networks, believes AI should be used sparingly—“just use it when you really need to.” One of these necessary use cases for AI is its role in improving broadband construction processes via AI-powered construction management platforms. Rose offered several examples of how AI can be deployed for broadband construction:

• Quality control: Field technicians tracking and reporting progress on broadband construction can take a picture of their work, which AI can analyze to ensure the work is done correctly or report that it needs to be fixed.
• Speech-to-text reporting: AI speech-to-text features allow technicians and other employees to speak into a recording device, like a cell phone, and submit reports without writing. 
• Planning and scheduling: At the start of a project, the work is separated into tasks—often thousands of tasks. AI can schedule tasks with appropriate dependencies so work crews are deployed at the right time.
• Project tracking and monitoring: AI platforms work with real-time construction data so you can see where crews and materials can be shifted for optimal efficiency.

Sen Deb Fischer (R-NE) introduced the bipartisan Secure Space Act of 2025. The legislation aims to strengthen America’s national security by preventing foreign adversaries from accessing and compromising America’s satellite systems. Sen Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) is co-leading the bill. Companion legislation—sponsored by Reps Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Brett Guthrie (R-KY)—passed the U.S. House on April 28, 2025. The Secure Space Act of 2025 prohibits the Federal Communications Commission from granting satellite licenses or U.S. market access for foreign-licensed satellite systems to any entity or its affiliates that produce or provide communications equipment or services deemed a national security risk. It amends the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 to extend this prohibition to both geostationary and non-geostationary orbit satellite systems and includes gateway stations within its scope. It applies to new licenses and authorizations issued after the bill's enactment and requires the FCC to establish implementing regulations within one year.