The Federal Communications Commission announced it is committing nearly $159 million in two new funding rounds through the Emergency Connectivity Program, helping to close the Homework Gap. The funding supports applications from all three of the program’s application windows, supporting over 300,000 students across the country, including in Alabama, Guam, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Texas, and West Virginia. Nearly $2 million from the first and second application windows will provide support in the upcoming school year for approximately 15 schools and 4 libraries. For the third application window, the FCC is committing nearly $157 million that will support over 350 schools, 50 libraries, and 4 consortia. Total funding committed to date is nearly $5.3 billion.

Ookla released a new batch of Speedtest results which showed median download speeds for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband service jumped 38 percent year on year in the US in first quarter 2022. Even with that boost, the service still only delivered downstream rates of 90.55 Mbps, leaving it well short of the 144.2 Mbps median posted by the industry as a whole. And Starlink’s upload speeds actually dropped 33 percent year on year to 9.33 Mbps in the recent quarter. All of this data begs the question: What happens if Starlink can’t meet the 100/20 Mbps speed obligations attached to its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) projects? In December 2020, SpaceX emerged as a top winner in the Federal Communications Commission’s RDOF auction, which was designed to provide billions of dollars to support broadband deployments in unserved parts of the US. Of the $9.2 billion awarded in the Phase I auction, SpaceX won $885.5 million and committed to use the money to deliver its Starlink service to 642,925 locations across 35 states. RDOF rules set speeds of 25/3 Mbps as the minimum allowed for broadband service delivered by winners. However, participants were permitted to bid at four different performance tiers: 25/3 Mbps, 50/5 Mbps, 100/20 Mbps and 1 Gbps/500 Mbps. When the auction closed, the FCC noted 99.7 percent of locations were bid at 100/20 or higher, with 85 percent bid at the gigabit tier. That means Starlink will need to provide speeds of at least 100/20 in order to meet its obligations.

I’ve long been confused by the term “technological neutrality” in broadband deployment conversations. Advocates would say that if a provider can hit certain performance benchmarks, it doesn’t matter what technology is used. But all these technologies are not created equal. Using provider-reported performance benchmarks alone ignores valuable data on the access technology. For example, there are 210,000 housing units where the best available technology is DSL yet they are still considered served by 100/20 broadband and thus ineligible for any funding under the IIJA. Even if the provider-claimed “maximum advertised speed” of 100Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload is true, that is not an Internet connection I’d rely on in my home. It is painful to think that even after the investments the IIJA will make, we could still have rural Americans reliant on DSL to reach the Internet. Looking at it from the other side, cable networks provide good home broadband. In Census blocks covering 97% of the housing units where cable is the best available option, those housing units are “served” by broadband, meaning speeds better than 100/20. Generally, plans are available up to ~900/35. DOCSIS 4.0 and its promise of symmetrical bandwidth, fiber that runs deep through the middle mile, and investments in better queue management to reduce latency means some of these copper cable networks have a lot of life left. Do we really want federal funds going to the 3% of these networks that are “underserving” their subscribers with worse than 100/20 Internet?

[Mike Conlow writes about technology, policy, politics, and economics in various combinations in 'Mike's Newsletter'.]

This study describes how one small community in western Massachusetts addressed the need for reasonably priced high-speed symmetrical broadband service through the installation of a fiber optic infrastructure that not only serves the city but has prompted and facilitated similar fiber adoption throughout the region. Through a carefully conceived and cleverly executed plan sponsored by a local utility, Westfield (MA) became one of the first cities in the state to offer 1-Gbps symmetrical Internet connectivity to residents, schools, hospitals, and businesses. While the region continues to benefit from existing service, a full 10-Gbps will soon be available through a simple software upgrade for existing equipment.

Massachusetts state officials have spent years expanding broadband access in rural communities. Now, their focus needs to turn to urban neighborhoods. That’s the major takeaway from a new report funded by the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership and researched in collaboration with local think tank MassINC. The report underscores how large portions of cities such as Lawrence and Fall River (MA) still lack adequate broadband access — something that the Competitive Partnership members, some of the state’s most prominent corporate chief executives, say should be considered an essential utility. The report combines two sets of data: previously reported Census figures that show the number of homes without Internet service and newly reported figures from Microsoft and analyzed by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council showing the number of households that lack broadband-level speeds. Taken together, these numbers tell a startling story in many cities: 59 percent of homes in Chelsea lack adequate broadband service, for example, and 56 percent in Fall River. The numbers are also high in Springfield (54 percent)and Lawrence (50 percent), as well as Salem, New Bedford, and Pittsfield (all 48 percent). Boston is at 43 percent, compared with the state average of 34 percent. While rural broadband efforts have focused on stringing wires through remote communities, urban broadband access can be a more complex issue. Many households in these cities have broadband lines running on their streets, but the report notes they might have inadequate wiring inside buildings, too many users on the same connection, or no ability to pay for a high-speed plan.