Infrastructure

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development invested nearly $25 billion in loans and grants in fiscal year 2026. These investments are helping rural communities grow and maintain critical services that families, farmers, and businesses rely on every day. Rural Development invested $267 million (yes, 1% of the USDA's investment in rural America) to expand internet access to rural households, farms, businesses, and community institutions.

Governments spend billions of dollars to bring broadband to places that lack it. This report asks how much of the new service in the places six programs came from the subsidies, and how much would have arrived anyway. We compare the areas each program funded with similar areas it did not fund, track both over time, and call the difference the program’s effect. The main measure is access, whether a location can buy at least 100/20 Mbps from a wired or licensed wireless provider.

The AI race is already well underway at the largest network operators. But for smaller broadband providers, the questions are often more basic: Do we have the resources for this? Where is it on our list of priorities? Where do we even start? Lou Borelli is CEO of the National Content & Technology Cooperative (NCTC), a cooperative comprised of cable operators, ILECs, CLECs, and other independent broadband and pay-TV service providers.

Lumos announced that it has completed the acquisition of the fiber network built and operated by ALLO Fiber in Joplin (MO). The acquisition by Lumos provides a foundation for rapid and widespread expansion of fiber infrastructure across the community.

Throughout this year, I’ve been hearing the phrase “good enough broadband” to describe consumers willing to take slower, less robust broadband connections in order to save money. This is most commonly used when referring to fixed wireless access broadband, but I’ve seen big internet service provider executives using the phrase when talking about customers who leave fiber for any slower technology. This is not a new phenomenon.

There is ample evidence of jurisdictions adopting a variety of egregious permitting practices, spanning fees, requirements, timelines, and approvals. The pervasiveness of these practices, including across jurisdiction type and size/density, and the resulting economic harm to wireline deployment make them worth intervention. Our economic modeling identified the permitting practices with the greatest negative impact on wireline deployment.

The times they are a-changin' when it comes to landline telephone service.

Consumers' Research is a nonprofit consumer-education organization. Its members and the individual consumers with whom it works pay a "Federal Universal Service Charge" as a separate line item on their phone bills. That charge is a tax. It is now, by the Federal Communications Commission's own proposal, 42 percent of interstate telecommunications revenues for the fourth quarter of 2026—the highest contribution factor in the history of the Fund. The High-Cost program is the principal reason.

Spectrum announced completion of its multi-year rural construction initiative to expand its fiber broadband network, making Spectrum Internet services available to more than 1,300 homes and small businesses in Somerset County (MD). The expansion encompassed more than 133 miles of construction. Combined with state and County contributions totaling more than $10.3 million, total project investment, including more than $2.1 million from Spectrum, is more than $12.5 million.

While broadband advocates appear to broadly support the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's move to open up a supplemental funding round to reach remaining unserved Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program locations, it's also clear that many are