Joan Engebretson

As the Federal Communications Commission's Affordable Connectivity Program gets set to end at the end of May, at least three internet providers touted alternative low-cost offerings, including some available only to low-income households. During the ACP’s 29-month existence, numerous providers have offered a $30 service for low-income customers so that service is essentially free when the ACP discount is applied, and some of the providers plan to continue to offer the $30 services. With a few exceptions, however, service will no longer be free.

Alabama-based Dragonfly Internet was created in 2023 when ITC Holding Company bought a local fixed wireless provider and opted to change the name. Since then, Dragonfly has been upgrading the fixed wireless equipment that the previous company had deployed and expanding to unserved and underserved areas using a mixture of fixed wireless and fiber. “Our preference is to use fiber where we can,” CEO David Hartin said. “But there will be communities where fixed wireless will make a lot of sense to do.

The City of Cabot, Arkansas, is getting a high-speed broadband network that the city will own and that will be operated by Connect2First, the broadband unit of local power company First Electric Cooperative Corporation. Unlike many broadband buildouts these days, the network will be built without any government funding.

Over a quarter of states are expected to be able to have enough Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding to get broadband to all their unserved and underserved areas and still have money left. At the other end of the spectrum, some states are struggling to meet national goals of making broadband available to everyone and to deploy fiber to the maximum extent possible.

Service providers shouldn’t let reporting requirements or a requirement to offer low-cost service stop them from applying for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding, said Evan Feinman, BEAD program director for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The requirement to offer a low-cost service has become a particularly big concern as funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is set to run out. Many providers had seen the FCC $30-a-month ACP benefit for low-income customers as a means of meeting that requirement.

Blink and it’s easy to miss Google Fiber news. In March, the company offered progress reports on multiple GFiber markets, including some that hadn’t been previously announced. On March 11, the company said it was working in Pocatello and Chubbuck, Idaho. On March 18, the company noted that service was available in an apartment and condo building in Hillsborough, North Carolina, which is near Duke University.

Consolidated Communications’ latest public-private broadband partnership news is a bit different from some of the other public-private partnerships we’ve seen since federal legislators began making funding available for broadband buildouts during the COVID pandemic. The deal, pending completion of a challenge process, involves the town of Francestown, New Hampshire and funding from the state’s Broadband Matching Grant Initiative (BMGI). That program provides matching funds for projects that otherwise would be too costly for the network operator to undertake.

April will officially be the last full month for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) due to insufficient funding. The FCC will let providers know soon about the amount to expect per customer in May, leaving the providers with a choice to make. Should they end their participation in the program after April? Should they pass on a partial benefit to customers for May and require the customers to pay the extra portion?

The thinking behind the $42.5 billion BEAD rural funding program was that individual states were better positioned than the federal government to understand their local needs and tailor state-level rules accordingly, and we are seeing a lot of variation from state to state. A case in point: Two Midwestern states—Minnesota and Missouri—have mapped out two somewhat different paths for administering the BEAD program.

The US is at risk of experiencing a new type of rural/urban digital divide, said stakeholders at the RTIME conference. “Latency is becoming the new currency,” said Brent Legg, executive vice president of Connected Nation, a non-profit focused on carrier neutral internet exchange points. The root of the problem is that only 57 US cities have internet exchange points, requiring providers serving customers outside those areas to transport traffic to one of those 57 cities to exchange traffic with the network operator and/or content provider at the opposite end of the connection. This adds late