Analysis

The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) shared the results of an advertising campaign that CETF developed and Los Angeles County (CA) joined as co-branded partner, resulting in outstanding growth in enrollments. CETF launched advertising in the first 3 weeks in December 2021, and saw Emergency Broadband Benefit sign-ups increase by 43 percent month over month.

The Pew Charitable Trusts sent a memo to state broadband offices that are participating in its technical assistance program, the broadband education and training initiative, that discussed how states can use line extension programs to subsidize “curb-to-home” connections—the final segments of infrastructure needed to connect each individual home or business to a broadband network. Pew looks at how three states have implemented programs to address last-mile expansion, including the rules and procedures they employ to award funds to households, property owners, or internet service providers.

As 2021 turned into 2022, the Federal Communications Commission transformed the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program into the Affordable Connectivity Program. Congress created the Affordable Connectivity Program through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and provided the FCC $14.2 billion to subsidize broadband service for low-income households. Broadband providers will receive up to $30/month (or up to $75/month if the household is on Tribal Land) for providing service to low-income households.

Pew Charitable Trusts assesses broadband grant scoring metrics, with side-by-side comparisons of the metrics used by Indiana, Minnesota, and Virginia. These three states represent both relatively well-established state broadband grant programs as well as
programs that updated their scoring systems in 2020 and 2021. Major points include:

The Pew Charitable Trusts provides information on the “challenge processes” in state broadband grant programs, with key features from a variety of states. Summary points include:

The Federal Communications Commission just announced increased testing for internet service providers (ISPs) accepting funding from FCC High-Cost programs, which includes the Connect America Fund (CAF) II and Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). The new rules include the following:

The Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) Reverse Auction was completed a little more than a year ago to much fanfare and spilled ink, and though we’ve seen irregular updates over the last twelve months, we thought it worth the time to round up what we know so far in an effort to see where we’re at and determine what is likely to come. The RDOF was built to award up to $20.4 billion in grants over 10 years using competitive reverse auctions generally won by the lowest bidder.

Nielsen recently published some statistics about the way that we watch video that shows a continuing trend of migration from traditional video to watching video online. One of the most striking statistics is the total volume of online video. December 2021 saw an aggregate of 183 billion minutes of online video viewing, and even that number is likely small since there are many uses of video on the web that are not likely counted in the total.

In the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Congress allocated around $65 billion to connect Americans to broadband internet and gave the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) a leadership role in guiding states on how to spend the funds. Now, it will be up to the NTIA and the states to ensure that congressional goals become a reality. This Request for Comment by the American Action Forum raises important questions about the appropriate path forward, and these comments aim to guide the NTIA to maximize the efficiency of each tax dollar spent.