Digital Divide

Springfield (MA) took its first step to explore whether it will become the first of New England’s five biggest cities to build a municipal fiber-to-the-home network. City officials are in the process of issuing a Request for Proposals to conduct a feasibility study to explore if Springfield will control its digital future by meeting “the growing demand for reliable and affor

It’s no secret that operators face a number of challenges when deploying fiber and other broadband technologies. But Wanda Tankersley, COO of Alaskan operator MTA, says providing internet service in Alaska comes with its own unique set of hurdles. MTA has around 35,000 internet subscribers and a service area of roughly 10,000 square miles. The operator is working to push fiber across its entire network and gradually expand its footprint, but progress is slow for myriad reasons.

Two utility cooperatives in South Carolina – one electric, the other a telephone co-op – have teamed up and are now cooperating to bring fiber-to-the-home Internet service to members living in Anderson, Greenville, Oconee, Pickens, and Spartanburg counties. The Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative (BREC) partnered with WCFIBER, a subsidiary of the West Carolina Telephone Cooperative.

The House should waste no time in passing the badly needed infrastructure bill while expanding its scope to include support for all viable broadband technologies demanded today by consumers. Fixed wireless is an efficient, competitive and popular high-speed alternative to fiber, particularly in more remote areas. With the massive investments going into the deployment of 5G wireless technologies by both national and local broadband internet service providers, fixed wireless capability is only getting better.

Jamestown plans to construct a citywide municipal fiber network using American Rescue Plan funds, the first city in the state of New York to do so. The city is currently working with EntryPoint Networks on a feasibility study to estimate the overall cost of the project, as well as surveying residential interest in building a municipally owned open-access broadband network in Jamestown. Under the open-access network model Jamestown is pursuing, the city would own and maintain all network infrastructure, which the city would then lease to third-party internet service providers (ISPs) to compe

Broadband funding has been pouring in from the federal government, and much of it is being allocated on the state level. This is the case for two of the biggest federal funding pots on the table right now, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and the yet-to-be-passed bipartisan infrastructure deal.

The National Tribal Broadband Summit will take place September 17, 24 and October 1, 2021. This year's virtual event will convene Tribal broadband industry experts to discuss how to make the most use of the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Grant funds, American Rescue Plan Act funds, and other Federal funding opportunities for broadband, and how to plan for the future of Tribal broadband networks and digital economies. The 2021 summit will focus on:

The Senate infrastructure bill gave the primary responsibility of universal broadband deployment and adoption to the states, with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) providing oversight. To help achieve the Senate’s goals, the FCC should:

Gov Roy Cooper (D-NC) proclaimed August 16–20 as Rural Broadband Week to call attention to the urgent need to improve broadband access and adoption across the state.

Congress has done a lot more than just set goals for access to broadband services—it finally provided the funding to do so. Most recently, the Senate passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which, if passed by the House, would provide another $65 billion in funding. But to understand what the Senate both did and did not do in the new infrastructure package, we cannot simply focus on spending levels.