Research

Utah continues working to close the state's digital divide. On June 20, 2023, the Utah Broadband Center released its draft State Digital Equity Plan in conjunction with its Digital Connectivity Plan. Both plans will help guide the allocation of federal funding to the state for broadband access and adoption expansion over the next five years. Here, we take a look at Utah's digital equity plan.

Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) generated snickers and some jeers when he tweeted his excitement about the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding for Alabama. Even Twitter thought it necessary to add the context that Sen Tuberville voted against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that is providing this funding.

I finished updating the number of Served, Underserved, and Unserved based on the National Broadband map with updates and corrections as of June 15, 2023. Those numbers are available in this tab of the spreadsheet.

Twenty-seven states are expected to see larger allocations in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program based on the updated Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Map in comparison with earlier estimates based on older data, according to a new analysis conducted by researchers at Cartesian for provider association ACA Connects. The other 23 states will see less funding, according to the updated estimates.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s (IIJA) $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program holds out tremendous opportunity to close the broadband availability gap.

The Federal Communications Commission announced an important update to its Mapping Broadband Health in America platform to incorporate maternal health data, enabling policymakers, public health experts, clinicians, researchers, innovators, and other public and private stakeholders to better explore the intersection of broadband and maternal health.

Across the country, states are making critical decisions about how to leverage $80 billion in federal broadband infrastructure funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). With the right planning, these funds could ensure that high-speed internet service will finally reach every single home and business in the country, which has been one of Common Sense Media's top priorities for years.

The Wi-Fi signal is weak outside the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Anacostia, a historic African-American section of Washington, DC. It is one of Monica Sanders’s final stops on an overcast December afternoon. Sanders, an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, isn’t just checking Wi-Fi speeds.

The US is a country is covered in cable broadband. More than 86% of the country has access to at least one cable or fiber broadband service according to Federal Communications Commission maps. Only 5% of locations among the 50 states and DC have access to three or more cable or fiber (I’ll call them wired) internet service providers (ISP). Thirty-two percent of locations have access to two wired offerings. And 49% have access to only one wired offering. Importantly, 13.5% of locations have access to zero wired offerings.