Level of Government

How much broadband will Americans get for the $75 billion that Congress committed in 2021? That’s enough money to equip an additional 17 million households with broadband, taking the US to 99 percent broadband coverage, according to a Federal Communications Commission staff paper and data from the Census Bureau.

A federal effort to map out and better understand who in America has decent internet and who does not is already getting challenged by those in the know, including the Colorado Broadband Office, which has submitted 13,000 challenges of the data. The map is just two weeks old. And the state isn’t done challenging the data collected by the Federal Communications Commission, said Brandy Reitter, executive director of the state’s broadband office. “Thirteen thousand is a lot but likely doesn’t include all missing locations,” Reitter said.

The Federal Communications Commission's recent restrictions on five Chinese telecoms’ technologies — adopted on Nov. 25, 2022 — could impact state and local governments in ways previous bans haven’t. “Up until now … the federal agencies have been prohibited from buying this kind of technology, but it's still been widely available to state and local governments, to private companies, individuals,” said Jack Corrigan, research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET).

Cox Communications has filed a formal protest over Escambia County’s (FL) decision to select the Escambia River Electric Cooperative for a rural broadband project.

The 117th Congress is nearing its end. There are still several broadband policy issues and related matters for Congress to sort out. Meanwhile, the current Congress has few working days left in 2022—and still needs to pass a budget for 2023—and it's unclear how much legislation will reach President Biden's desk when Republicans gain the House majority in January. Here are two policy matters to watch for the remaining days of this Congress:

Two and a half years after it was announced that New York City would spend $157 million to build municipal broadband infrastructure in poor neighborhoods, city officials have quietly canceled the plan. The now-nixed broadband expansion was the second phase of the 2020 Internet Master Plan, a massive endeavor launched during the de Blasio administration that aimed to connect 1.2 million New Yorkers to free or low-cost, high-speed internet.

The Federal Communications Commission voted recently to implement consumer broadband labels. The pricing information alone must be giving shivers to the marketing folks at the biggest broadband providers. The requirement that I think will be the most controversial is the requirement to disclose the typical broadband speed and latency. Some providers will have a real dilemma with the speed disclosure. Some of the dilemmas include the following:

I added US territories as recipients of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) allocation dollars based on their number of unserved locations in addition to the minimum fixed allocation (see). The upshot is Puerto Rico has 212,70 unserved locations, 18% of its total, and an estimated $874 million allocation, which is significant. The other territories don’t change the numbers materially because we don’t see them as having unserved locations.

The Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA) commits 26 awards totaling more than $4 million in funding and support to community, regional and tribal organizations through the Regional & Tribal Broadband Partners and Get Ready Community Support programs. These initiatives will support community-driven broadband solutions that ensure universal connectivity, strengthen and grow the number of partners thinking about digital equity and inclusion, and create increased alignment and coordination between communities, regions, and the state.

In the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race, then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R-GA) highlighted, "With 25 percent of rural residents without access to high-speed internet, bringing this access to all of Georgia is a fundamental component of our plan to strengthen rural Georgia." In a plan he called A New Day for Rural Georgia, Kemp committed to improving healthcare, education, and economic growth facilitated by access to broadband.