Universal Broadband

Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s is a magnum opus of broadband policy for the forthcoming decade. While there are dozens of important insights offered by the paper, perhaps the most important, are those focused on solutions to connect students who lack broadband access at home. According to estimates, 70% of teachers reportedly assign homework that requires internet access. Yet, according to the FCC’s 2019 Broadband Deployment Report, 39.8% of homes do not subscribe to high-speed broadband.

The House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications and Technology advanced nine bills in a markup session Nov 14. Eight of the bills moved with little controversey:

In recent weeks, members of the U.S. Congress have announced a number of broadband-related bills that aim to ensure that local communities have a better chance of delivering high-speed Internet to their residents. But would these acts, if passed, lead to meaningful results? Government Technology spoke to a number of leaders and experts about the implications of three particular pieces of legislation. Their differing opinions highlight the great complexity of the broadband issue.

More than $300 million has been funneled to New Mexico in recent years to boost broadband access for schools, hospitals and other institutions, but many rural areas remain unserved, a report says. Legislative analysts outlined their findings in the report for state lawmakers, saying New Mexico lags when it comes to high-speed internet and efforts to address access are disjointed and scattered across multiple agencies. Boosting broadband has been a longstanding challenge for New Mexico.

The telecommunications industry lost and consumers won in a Connecticut Superior Court decision that gives cities and towns the right to use existing utility infrastructure within their borders to create municipal networks that deliver cheap, fast internet service to homes and businesses.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB), in conjunction with the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force and the Office of Economics and Analytics, authorize $13,468,201.20 in Connect America Fund Phase II (Auction 903) support for winning bids. An Auction 903 support recipient is required to complete construction and begin commercially offering service to 40 percent of the requisite number of the locations in a state by the end of the third year of funding and to an additional 20 percent in each subsequent year, with 100 percent by the end of the sixth year. T

Despite raking in hundreds of millions in government broadband subsidies, Frontier Communications has failed time and time again to bring reliable, high-speed connectivity to the rural communities it serves. Instead of investing in network upgrades, Frontier has neglected its rural infrastructure to the detriment of its subscribers and the company’s own financials, with its worsening service quality paralleling its plummeting stock value.

Broadband policy has emerged as a way for Democrats running for President to appeal to primary voters. They emphasize their commitment to "Net Neutrality," often in its most extreme form (i.e., public utility regulation). They also promise expansive (and expensive) government-funded construction of broadband infrastructure. Neither, however, constitutes effective policy.

Rural communities must often get creative if they want to bring broadband to their residents, and sometimes their hands are tied due to state restrictions or a lack of favorable legislation. Smaller municipalities in New Hampshire, however, may soon have the option of forming a multi-town district for the purpose of establishing a broadband system. State Sen.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted the ambitious National Broadband Plan in 2010, laying out a policy framework meant to end the connectivity gap over the decade.