As required by the Digital Equity Act, the $1.25 billion Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program will be established soon, making hundreds of millions of dollars available in the first Notice of Funding Opportunity to implement digital inclusion projects. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act mandates that funding be directed towards programs designed to empower those impacted by the digital divide, known as Covered Populations. Covered Populations include low-income households, aging populations, incarcerated individuals, veterans, people with disabilities, people with language barriers, racial and ethnic minorities, and rural inhabitants. It is crucial to recognize that Covered Populations are not monolithic groups but encompass individuals with unique needs and lived experiences. When individuals are members of more than one of the Covered Populations they may experience even greater barriers to accessing digital technology, underscoring the importance of tailored solutions. Digital Equity is more than just an acknowledgement of the digital divide—it is about creating tangible socioeconomic opportunities. Digital Equity is more than just an acknowledgement of the digital divide—it is about creating tangible socioeconomic opportunities. 

They say Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither is broadband. One in five New Mexicans don’t have reliable high-speed internet at a time when such technology is a necessity, not a luxury. It’s imperative that constituents, households, businesses and other entities have broadband that delivers telehealth, distance learning, government services, job creation, economic growth and other vital services. Throughout New Mexico—particularly in rural areas and the 23 tribal communities—lack of accessible and reliable internet continues to hinder people from getting online. That’s why the state Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) exists: to help close that digital divide by funding broadband deployment to internet-dry regions and to expand broadband to all New Mexicans. But it takes time. Administrative and legal hurdles slow down the process. OBAE wants broadband built quickly and efficiently too, and we continue to work hard to bring broadband to New Mexicans who need connectivity. But we can’t cheat time.

[Andrew Wilder is the BEAD Coordinator at the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion]

Governor Laura Kelly (D-KS) announced that $10 million has been awarded to 12 internet service providers (ISPs) in the latest round of Broadband Acceleration Grants. The awards will be paired with an additional $12.7 million in matching funds, resulting in an investment of nearly $22.7 million for high-speed broadband access projects across 14 rural Kansas counties. Initiated in 2020, the Broadband Acceleration Grant is a 10-year, $85 million program designed to bring essential internet access to Kansas communities. Administered by the Kansas Office of Broadband Development and funded through the Kansas Department of Transportation’s Eisenhower Legacy Transportation Program (IKE), this latest round of grants brings the program’s total investment for broadband infrastructure to more than $41.5 million.  

Rural broadband provider Comporium said yesterday that it gave York Electric Cooperative (YEC) a check for nearly $1.1 million, which represents a portion of a grant that Comporium was awarded by the South Carolina Broadband Office. The money came through an innovative program offered by the state for a project on which Comporium and York Electric partnered. The program, known as the Accelerated Deployment Grant Program, reimburses network operators for some of the costs of buildouts in previously unserved areas that were constructed and completed without any public funding between March 15, 2021 – June 30, 2022. The use of the word “accelerated” in the program name suggests that the goal of the program is to enable providers to complete projects or perhaps take on new projects more quickly. The project included areas where YEC provides electric service that are outside Comporium’s local telecom service footprint. Comporium and YEC planned the fiber buildout together.

I write to bring to your attention a serious and time-sensitive censorship issue occurring on the social media platform X. Numerous users have recently reported being blocked from following Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign handle @KamalaHQ in the past two days, following the news that President Biden will not seek re-election and that he has endorsed Vice President Harris as a candidate for President. As you know, Vice President Harris is now a bona fide candidate for President of the United States in the 2024 elections.  Regardless of political ideology, Americans have a protected interest in receiving Vice President Harris’ communications regarding her candidacy. Vice President Harris, in turn, has a right to communicate with the American people as she runs for the highest office in the country. Alarmingly, numerous users on X have reported that when they try to follow @KamalaHQ, they receive a “Limit reached” error message, stating that the user is “unable to follow more people at this time.” The Committee should immediately launch an investigation and request at a minimum the following information from X:

1. A precise explanation of the cause for why certain accounts, including the users who have been included as exemplars to this letter, were blocked from following Vice President Harris’ handle @KamalaHQ from July 21, 2024, through the present.  
2. The total number of users who attempted to follow @KamalaHQ from July 21, 2024, to present, but were unable to due technical or other reasons.  
3. What specific actions have been taken to address these issues, if any, and the timeline for when each remedial action was taken.  
4. Whether CEO Elon Musk was personally involved in directing, encouraging, or coercing any employee at X to throttle or limit any user from joining @KamalaHQ.

Project 2025 echoes Donald Trump’s critical view of the media. As a result, it proposes to strip public broadcasting of its funding and legal status, thus endangering access to reliable news for American citizens. The authors allege that Big Tech colluded with the government to attack American values and advance “wokeism.” In response, they envision sweeping antitrust enforcement not on economic grounds, but for socio-political reasons. On artificial intelligence policy, Project 2025 remains vague and fails to propose solutions for key policy areas such as privacy, safety, and the information ecosystem. Lagging on AI oversight and dismantling existing protections is dangerous for individuals and democracies alike.

[Roxana Muenster is a COMPASS Fellow at The Brookings Institution, PhD Student in Department of Communication ata  Cornell University, Graduate Affiliate  at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, University of North Carolina.]

As competition authorities for the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, we share a commitment to the interests of our people and economies. Guided by our respective laws, we will work to ensure effective competition and the fair and honest treatment of consumers and businesses. This is grounded in the knowledge that fair, open, and competitive markets will help unlock the opportunity, growth and innovation that these technologies could provide. Our experience in related markets suggests that, while competition questions in AI will be fact-specific, several common principles will generally serve to enable competition and foster innovation: 

1. Fair dealing. When firms with market power engage in exclusionary tactics, they can deepen their moats, discourage investment and innovation by third parties, and undermine competition. The AI ecosystem will be better off the more that firms engage in fair dealing.   
2. Interoperability. Competition and innovation around AI will likely be greater the more that AI products and services and their inputs are able to interoperate with each other. Any claims that interoperability requires sacrifices to privacy and security will be closely scrutinized. 
3. Choice. Businesses and consumers in the AI ecosystem will benefit if they have choices among diverse products and business models resulting from a competitive process. This means scrutinizing ways that companies may employ mechanisms of lock-in that could prevent companies or individuals from being able to meaningfully seek or choose other options. It also means scrutinizing investments and partnerships between incumbents and newcomers, to ensure that these agreements are not sidestepping merger enforcement or handing incumbents undue influence or control in ways that undermine competition. For content creators, choice among buyers could limit the exercise of monopsony power that can harm the free flow of information in the marketplace of ideas. 

AI technology seems to be a hot topic in every industry, and broadband is no exception. It seems inevitable that AI will be used to help monitor and control complex broadband networks. It looks like the biggest ISPs are already phasing AI into the customer service process. The big question that nobody seems to be able to answer is if AI will change the amount of broadband the average household uses. It’s not an easy question to answer. Corporate AI centers will use lots of energy, data, and broadband. The impact on home broadband is harder to predict. There may eventually be more data-intensive uses for AI at home, but for now, for most users, it’s hard to think that AI will increase bandwidth usage at home.