Tuesday, September 22, 2026
Headlines Daily Digest
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Asking the Right Questions for the Next Social Contract
NRECA Calls On NTIA to Fix ‘Misguided’ Approach to Broadband Funding Program
Broadband Funding
State and Local
Broadband Mapping
AI
The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is urging the Trump administration to overhaul implementation of the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program to ensure BEAD meets its statutory goal to connect every American home and business with reliable, high-speed internet. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced a new round of available BEAD funding on Sept. 3 that NRECA CEO Jim Matheson said continues the program’s “misguided” approach that could leave rural communities behind. “BEAD’s initial investment is failing rural America,” Matheson said. “Delayed implementation, shifting guidance, cost constraints, and unrealistic funding assumptions have slowed progress, discouraged participation, and weakened a historic opportunity to bring long-overdue broadband service to rural communities. “Directing further investment under the same misguided approach will not deliver universal connectivity to rural America.”
California Public Utility Commission Approves Permanent Disaster Protections for California LifeLine Customers
The California Public Utilities Commission approved permanent, automatic disaster relief protections for customers enrolled in the California LifeLine program, helping ensure that low-income Californians can maintain access to essential communications services when disasters cause a disruption. Under the decision, affected California LifeLine customers will receive:
- Temporary relief from non-usage requirements during qualifying disasters, helping prevent customers from losing California LifeLine service because they are unable to use their service during an emergency.
- Temporary relief from annual renewal requirements, giving customers additional time to recover from a disaster and replace lost documents, devices, or other essential items.
- At least 30 days of disaster protections, with an automatic extension when communications service remains disrupted or evacuation or shelter-in-place restrictions remain in effect.
- Waived activation, connection, and conversion fees for affected California LifeLine customers while the emergency protections are active.
- Improved emergency outreach, including coordination with 2-1-1 service providers so customers can more easily find information about California LifeLine and available disaster protections.
There is a lot of talk about improving the Federal Communications Commission broadband maps. I published a blog a few weeks ago that described a bill passed by the Senate that would require a new review of the FCC broadband maps. The bill is labeled the Modernization, Accountability, and Planning for Broadband Funding Act. I’m all for changes that would create an accurate broadband map. But I’m fairly certain that the FCC is not going to consider making the changes that would actually improve the maps. The biggest problem with the current maps is that speeds claimed by internet service providers are sometimes far different than what is being delivered. Fixing that would require the FCC to actually look at what’s in the maps and challenge ISPs that exaggerate speeds. I can’t imagine the agency adopting new rules that would saddle itself with that responsibility.
What should the social contract be between the communications sector, the government, and the public in the next two decades? Its terms should reflect that the purpose of communications policy is to ensure that all Americans can fully participate in the economy and civic life of their communities. In 1996, there was a bipartisan consensus that policy should drive competition that, in turn, would drive the communications sector to continually deliver faster, better and cheaper communications for all. But there should be no argument about this: in the wake of developments with AI, it is time to think again about the social contract.
Blair Levin is the Policy Advisor to New Street Research and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Metro. Prior to joining New Street, Blair served as Chief of Staff to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt (1993-1997), directed the writing of the United States National Broadband Plan (2009-2010), and was a policy analyst for the equity research teams at Legg Mason and Stifel Nicolaus.
Days after Sam Altman and other AI executives joined calls for a slowdown of artificial intelligence development, OpenAI disclosed additional instances of its models going rogue over the past six months. The company published a blog post last week detailing six instances of models acting in “unexpected or concerning” ways since April. The findings include incidents in which models publicly posted files without permission, ignored prohibitions on malicious activity, and attempted to hide errors. The revelations come two months after OpenAI admitted that a group of its models escaped during testing to launch an unauthorized cyberattack on the AI platform Hugging Face. Anthropic and Meta soon reported similar incidents, fueling calls to pace AI development.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Zoe Walker (zwalker AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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