Internet/Broadband

As might be expected when there is $42.5 billion in grant funds available, we are probably not done with the rules for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program grants. There are several areas where heavy lobbying is occurring to change some of the rules established by the National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA) in the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the grants.

This paper documents home Internet access, types of Internet access, connection speeds, and prices for basic home Internet in tribal areas of the United States. It finds that the share of households with Internet access is 21 percentage points lower in tribal areas than in neighboring non-tribal areas.

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) helps low-income families and individuals ease the financial burden of making tough choices between paying for groceries and other household necessities or paying for high-speed internet service. The funds that the ACP provides for eligible households to afford high-speed internet access can help level the playing field for low-income families and individuals by increasing their access to educational, employment, and entrepreneurship opportunities; civic engagement; telehealth services; and more.

A glut of major tech policy bills await action as Congress' summer recess looms — and anything that doesn't pass by then is unlikely to pass at all in a midterm election season. The ambitious tech agenda this Congress started out with 18 months ago is getting squeezed out by other legislative priorities, including gun control, the Jan. 6 investigation, and the economy. Here's what's in the queue:

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau seeks comment on a petition filed by the National Lifeline Association (NaLA) seeking clarification of the Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB) and Enforcement Bureau (EB) Chiefs’ authority to suspend a participating provider’s Affordable Connectivity Program enrollments and hold a participating provider’s funding based on the “adequate evidence” standard , or in the alternative, reconsideration of the removal rule (47 C.F.R. § 54.1801(e)(2)).

As of June 2022, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) has been live for six months, providing monthly discounts on the internet bills and device costs of over 12.4 million households in the United States.

On June 16, the Biden Administration directed the Director of the White House Gender Policy Council and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs to lead an initiative to address online harassment and abuse, specifically focused on technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and to develop concrete recommendations to improve prevention, response, and protection efforts through programs and policies in the United States and globally.

Many utilities have a long-standing relationship with fiber networks for monitoring and controlling their power distribution grids and it’s one that is increasingly proving valuable to the communities they serve both in terms of improving electric services and generating measurable economic benefits to their customers. “The cost of power outages to our communities is tremendous,” said Katie Espeseth, Vice President of New Products at EPB and FBA Power Utilities Roundtable Chair. “The cost of power outages to Chattanooga was nearly $100 million a year.

On June 15, Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel sent Sen Maria Cantwell (D-WA) a letter providing an update on the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act. "Congress charged the Federal Communications Commission with developing a Reimbursement Program to assist with the removal, replacement, and disposal of equipment that could pose a risk to the security of our nation’s communications networks," said Rosenworcel.

The Federal Communications Commission reminds all facilities-based providers of fixed or mobile broadband internet access service of their duty to timely file complete and accurate data in the Broadband Data Collection (BDC) on a biannual basis. Providers may begin submitting their data on June 30, 2022, and must complete their submissions no later than September 1, 2022.