Federal Agency

The Healey-Driscoll administration and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s Massachusetts Broadband Institute announced $10,410,183 in grants to upgrade internet access in nearly 8,000 public and affordable housing across 26 Massachusetts communities. MBI provided the awards through the Residential Retrofit Program, an initiative that works with housing operators and internet service providers to upgrade broadband infrastructure in public and affordable housing properties.

Adam Cassady was appointed by President Trump on March 17, 2025, as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Deputy Administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In this capacity, he provides advice and assistance to the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information in the formulation, development, and implementation of telecommunications and information policies of the Executive Branch. Until an Assistant Secretary is sworn in, Mr.

Today, we published Older Adults Online: Measuring Internet Access and Use, guidance to help states develop the indicators and methodologies that will help them measure progress and identify ongoing connectivity gaps and hurdles. Our guide provides an overview of statutory requirements about indicators and measurable objectives from the Digital equity Act (DEA).

Donald Trump’s commerce secretary touted Elon Musk’s Starlink to federal officials in charge of a $42 billion rural broadband programme, raising new questions about the billionaire White House adviser’s conflicts of interest. In a private meeting in the Herbert Hoover building near the White House, Secretary Howard Lutnick told civil servants at the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) programme to increase the project’s use of satellite connectivity — over fibre-optic cable — and singled out Musk’s provider, Starlink.

Federal law seeks to make communications technology like telephones and the internet, in the words of one older statute, “available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States.” A longstanding federal program that seeks to implement this goal is now before the Supreme Court, in a case known as FCC v. Consumers’ Research, and the stakes could be enormous.

Commissioner Geoffrey Starks will resign from the Federal Communications Commission this spring.

Sheriff John Montgomery of Baxter County, Arkansas, isn't going to take it anymore—if by "it" you mean "having to offer lower phone call rates to incarcerated inmates." Noting that such phone calls are "not required to be provided by law," Sheriff Montgomery is ending all inmate phone calls on March 30, 2025. The cause of Montgomery's wrath, and of his March 30 date, is the Federal Communications Commission, which set an April 1, 2025, deadline for smaller jails to lower the obscene ra

President Donald Trump fired the only two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, handing the remaining Republican commissioners exclusive control over the agency that oversees antitrust and consumer protection laws and serves as the U.S. government’s primary regulator of the tech industry. FTC  Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter announced their dismissals on the social media site X, with both calling their firings illegal.

The Colorado broadband office offered an update on Round 2 of their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program grants applicant activity. The office closed the second application window through its Advance Colorado Broadband grant program at the end of February. During the second round, the office received 96 applications from 22 companies for a proposed $825 million total investment, including $649,000 in requested funding and $176 million in matching funds.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-MO), in partnership with Missouri Farm Bureau President Garrett Hawkins, directed a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, urging it to rightfully return defaulted funding through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to Missouri to expand broadband and rural internet access. The letter follows the recent reveal that the RDOF will not connect 85,000 Missouri service locations, and Missouri will lose approximately $177 million in federal investment. Attorney General Bailey urges “that action be taken by the FCC to rightfully return previously