Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr made headlines when he denounced the FCC's decision to deny Starlink $885.5 million in broadband subsidy support from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) Phase I auction. Commissioner Carr believes that Starlink would have had a positive impact on the future of the RDOF, specifically in how it could have helped unify the broadband coverage map to all corners of the country. The RDOF Phase I auction was designed to be the first of two auctions which would allocate a total pot of more than $20 billion to expand broadband in hard-to-reach areas of the country. Phase I focused on completely unserved locations and doled out a total of $9.2 billion, though the FCC rejected winning bids from Starlink and LTD Broadband totaling more than $2.1 billion. That means there is still around $13 billion on the table for a Phase II auction, which would focus on remaining unserved locations as well as underserved areas. Commissioner Carr said the need for a second round is less clear in light of other federal broadband funding efforts, such as the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Though, if the FCC does decide to push ahead with a Phase II auction, Commissioner Carr said he’s open to making changes to auction rules to avoid a repeat of the Starlink decision. Concerning broadband "overbuilding," Commissioner Carr argued priority number one for federal dollars should be connecting all unserved locations rather than diverting funds to overbuild or update existing service.

I define the digital divide as a technology gap where good broadband is available in some places, but not everywhere. The technology divide can be as large as an entire county that doesn’t have broadband or as small as a pocket of homes or apartment buildings in cities that got bypassed. Until late in the 1990s, the only way for most people to get onto the Internet was by the use of dial-up access through phone lines.  At first, dial-up technology was only available to people who lived in places where an ISP had established local dial-up telephone numbers. But the online phenomenon was so popular that broadband providers eventually offered 800 numbers that could be reached from anywhere. There was no residential digital divide at this time, except perhaps in places where telephone quality wasn’t good enough to accommodate dial-up. The digital divide came into being when the faster technologies of the digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable modem were offered to homes. The advent of DSL created the first digital divide – the gulf between urban areas and rural areas. When DSL and cable modem technologies improved, the second digital divide was created. Cable modem technology improved more quickly than DSL, meaning cable companies could charge more for their broadband services. This price difference largely meant that low-income households were stuck with DSL, while folks who care about speeds migrated over the years to the cable companies. The digital divide persists into the fiber age, as large telecommunication companies cherry-pick their locations based on preferable demographics and lowest in cost of deployment—which exacerbates the digital divide between urban and rural areas against more affluent areas. 

Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL) announced $26.6 million in grants to help deliver access to high-speed internet to communities in 10 counties. The grants will help fund the work to make broadband available to almost 15,000 homes, businesses, schools and other public facilities. The expansion will include links to make future expansion more feasible. The grants come from the Broadband Accessibility Fund program administered by the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs through a plan created by the Alabama Legislature to spend $277 million in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act on broadband expansion over the next few years. See grants awarded and affected areas at the link below

Charter's Spectrum Mobile service only uses geolocation information to optimize its service and does not sell to or share it with third parties, including advertisers, the company told the Federal Communications Commission. Charter assured Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel that the company has been, and will continue to be, completely transparent about its privacy practices, and explicitly requests permission to collect customer geolocation data—which Charter limits to data that will "optimize service."