MoffettNathanson researchers say funding through the upcoming Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction and other government programs could play a key role in fueling rural cable broadband footprint growth. To date, cable footprint growth has been minimal, according to the researchers, who note that Comcast’s footprint has grown at an average rate of 1.1% annually since 2016 and that Charter’s has grown an average of .7% per year over the same period. That’s likely to change, however – at least for Charter, as the company plans to bid in the RDOF auction, as does Altice USA, the researchers note.

As MoffettNathanson notes, deployment costs are higher in rural areas, but competition is less, which means that government-supported buildouts could be a means of “de-risking” broadband and creating a longer “runway” for sustained broadband subscriber growth for the cable companies. The MoffettNathanson researchers see a strong likelihood of additional government funding being made available for rural broadband buildouts moving forward. They also note that they expect cable companies, driven by the allure of cable footprint growth, to be “significant players in all rural broadband buildouts going forward.”

The Trump Administration announced that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing nearly $10 million to provide broadband service in unserved and underserved rural areas in Tennessee. This investment is part of both the $100 million Congress allocated to the ReConnect Program through the CARES Act and the $550 million available in the second round of ReConnect Program Funding. In rural Tennessee, Ardmore Telephone Company will use a $4.9 million grant and a $4.9 million loan to deploy a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network to connect 4,005 people, 263 farms, 28 businesses, four educational facilities and one fire station to high-speed broadband internet in Benton, Giles and Lincoln counties.

NCTA – the Internet & Television Association, in partnership with EducationSuperHighway (ESH), announced a new initiative to help increase home connectivity solutions for students, as many schools adapt to remote and hybrid learning classrooms amid the coronavirus pandemic. The core principles reflected in the K-12 Bridge to Broadband framework released today by EducationSuperHighway and NCTA include:

• NCTA member companies will create a “sponsored” service offering for school districts or other entities — school systems purchase broadband on behalf of low-income students at a discounted rate provided by broadband service providers.
• NCTA member companies will work together with school districts to facilitate the confidential exchange of information to identify which students need service.
• NCTA member companies will agree to a baseline set of eligibility standards. At a minimum, the baseline standards will include households containing students on the federal Free and Reduced Lunch program.
• To maximize adoption, NCTA member companies will minimize the amount of information necessary to sign up families. In a sponsored service program, providers should limit the data they require from families only to that required for providing service (i.e. confirming the service address) and reducing fraud (i.e. proof of identity).
• NCTA member companies offering sponsored service arrangements to schools should not use school-supplied information for targeted marketing of collateral services to families covered by the program.

Cable broadband providers that have committed to this unique initiative include Comcast (Xfinity), Charter (Spectrum), Cox, GCI, Mediacom, Midco, Sjoberg’s and Vyve. These providers offer broadband service to 80% of U.S. homes or 110 million housing units.

The US Chamber of Commerce urgently calls on Congress to provide the funding necessary to ensure students without sufficient access to digital tools do not fall behind. In addition, Congress should fully fund the “Broadband DATA Act” signed into law in March, which would allow the Federal Communications Commission to better facilitate long-term digital resilience.

To urgently address [the pressing issue of the digital divide], Congress should appropriate timely and temporary funding in a technologically-neutral manner outside the existing E-Rate and other Universal Service Fund programs to provide: 1) wired or wireless connectivity; 2) service equipment such as modems, routers, and hotspots; and 3) devices like tablets, computers, and smartphones.

Chicago Public Schools started the school year remotely Sept 8, and district officials say they are stepping up efforts to reach families about a new $50 million initiative, "Chicago Connected," which aims to connect low-income students to the internet. But they have run into a "trust gap:" skepticism in some communities that they would get this service for free, no strings attached. The program has so far signed up a quarter of the 100,000 students that officials estimate can benefit from it. "Some of the folks we are trying to reach don't believe this is true," said Philip DiBartolo, the school district's chief information officer. "(They think) 'I'm going to get a bill at the end of the month.'"

Recently, the Federal Communications Commission’s first-ever Rural Tribal Priority Window (TPW) came to a close. This special spectrum application window allowed for rural tribal nations to apply for valuable Educational Broadband Service (EBS) frequencies over their lands that had never been licensed. The agency received applications for spectrum on 266 separate tribal lands; 418 applications and amendments were filed in all. The decision to auction unassigned EBS was made in a July 2019 FCC rulemaking regarding EBS. But is auctioning the remaining EBS spectrum the right decision? Absolutely not. Here’s why:

1.  The main reason the FCC created the TPW was because of a lack of broadband access on rural tribal lands. The same is true for non-tribal rural lands. Why not give rural communities the same opportunity to access EBS as rural tribal nations?
2. The TPW clearly demonstrates that rural communities are hungry for tools to help them deliver broadband, namely wireless spectrum. In its paperwork to the Office of Management and Budget in 2019 following the EBS rulemaking, the FCC severely underestimated the number of tribal nations that would apply for spectrum in the window.
3. A commercial auction will slow the deployment of broadband in rural communities.
4. There is already a significant amount of spectrum in the hands of commercial providers all across the country, including rural areas. Giving them more won’t necessarily solve the digital divide.
5. Commercial carriers are set to get even more spectrum. Carriers will control over 1100 MHz of spectrum, not to mention their hundreds of MHz of high-band frequencies. Does the commercial sector really need all of EBS, too?
6.  Licensing EBS to educators does not mean commercial carriers are denied access. Most EBS spectrum that has been licensed is leased to a commercial provider – either mobile or fixed. Issuing new licenses in a Rural Educator Window would give local communities an option to either deploy their own network or partner with a commercial carrier.

The Rural Tribal Priority Window demonstrates just how eager rural communities are for tools to help close the digital divide. But the TPW also shows that auctioning EBS rather than offering it to local educators and communities will foolishly forego a critical opportunity to help other rural communities meet their connectivity needs.

For the 2020 American Views survey, Gallup and Knight polled more than 20,000 U.S. adults and found deepening pessimism and further partisan entrenchment about how the news media delivers on its democratic mandate for factual, trustworthy information. Many Americans feel the media’s critical role of informing and holding those in power accountable is compromised by increasing bias. As such, Americans have not only lost confidence in the ideal of an objective media, they believe news organizations actively support the partisan divide. At the same time, Americans have not lost sight of the value of news — strong majorities uphold the ideal that the news media is fundamental to a healthy democracy. This report is based on data collected between Nov. 8, 2019, and Feb. 16, 2020, just before the novel coronavirus became a global pandemic and the burgeoning movement for racial justice swept the nation. Some findings:

• The vast majority of Americans (84%) say that, in general, the news media is “critical” (49%) or “very important” (35%) to democracy.
• Nearly 8 in 10 Americans (79%) say news organizations they distrust are trying to persuade people to adopt a certain viewpoint, while 12% say they are trying to report the news accurately and fairly but are unable to do so.
• Almost three-fourths of Republicans (71%) have a “very” or “somewhat” unfavorable opinion of the news media, compared to 22% of Democrats and 52% of independents.