Level of Government

The State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) provided under President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act continue to play a crucial role in allowing county governments to stabilize their budgets, respond to the pandemic, and invest in their communities.

As of February 2023, all states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have received their digital equity planning grants from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). At the Office of Educational Technology (OET), our priority is to support states as they include the voices, needs, and assets of the education community in their digital equity plans. Therefore, in 2022, OET launched the Digital Equity Education Roundtables Initiative and published Advancing Digital Equity for All, which identifies barriers faced by learners in adopting reliable, high-speed

One of the most interesting aspects of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants is that the funding is intended to make sure that everybody gets broadband. There is one section of the grant rules that talk about how the funding can be used to serve areas as small as a single home:

The House Communications and Technology Subcommittee in the 118th Congress has new leadership and members. Below we offer a brief look at the broadband priorities for this key panel.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of broadband internet connectivity became glaringly obvious for many people. As offices, schools, and businesses closed and stayed shuttered for weeks and in some cases months, many people worked or learned remotely – and continue to do so. Now is a critical time to address the issue of community broadband deployment in New York – and at the same time, enable the transition to clean energy.

Cell network coverage maps have always been dubiously accurate in the US, and even the ones released by the Federal Communication Commission in 2021 come with a ton of asterisks. A company called Ranlytics is hoping to make a much more accurate picture by attaching equipment to some of the mail trucks that are already driving to many locations in the US to deliver parcels and letters.

The Federal Communications Commission recently opened a docket, at the prompting of federal legislation, that asks for examples of digital discrimination. The big cable companies and telecoms are all going to swear they don’t discriminate against anybody for any reason, and every argument they make will be pure bosh. If people decide to respond to this FCC docket, we’ll see more evidence of discrimination based on income. We might even get some smoking gun evidence that some of the discrimination comes from corporate bias based on race and other factors.

The Idaho Broadband Advisory Board (IBAB) has awarded $26.3 million in funding from the Idaho Broadband Fund for two middle-mile broadband infrastructure projects in Idaho. After opening the request for proposals on December 22, 2022, the board moved efficiently to award eligible broadband projects, prioritizing projects focusing on expanding or extending middle-mile. The board awarded $20 million to the Idaho Regional Optical Network (IRON) and the Intermountain Infrastructure Group (IIG) for a 198-mile public/private partnership project from Grangeville to Star.

The Arkansas Legislature's Joint Budget Committee approved the state Department of Commerce's request to use $53.3 million in federal American Rescue Plan funds for eight broadband grant projects and $2 million for broadband administrative expenses. The proposed broadband grant projects are in Ashley, Baxter, Chicot, Clark, Columbia, Hot Spring, Logan and Lonoke (AR) counties.

Low-income multifamily communities or those with a high percentage of unserved residents are now eligible to receive broadband deployment funding from Congress, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) reaffirmed this eligibility.  Each state is now building out its programs and establishing criteria that build upon federal priorities and requirements. This is a critical next step in ensuring the total and efficient disbursement of these funds.