Analysis

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 Federal Communications Commission's Universal Service Fund (USF) faces its third recent challenge June 14 in oral arguments before the Eleventh Circuit over Congress’ delegation authority. The lawsuits from Consumers’ Research seek to clarify limits on Congress’ authority to delegate power to executive agencies, and what powers agencies can leave to private actors. In 2022, the USF approved nearly $7.5 billion in non-COVID spending on accessible broadband service, funded by its increasing contribution factor.

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.

Fiber manufacturers are always trying to make it easier to deploy fiber. One of the most interesting trends is the increasing migration from 250-micron fiber to 200-micron fiber. For those not familiar with the metric system, a micron is one-thousands of a millimeter. A 250-micron fiber has a diameter of 0.25 millimeters, while a 200-micron fiber has a diameter of 0.2 millimeters. That may not sound like a big difference, but when each fiber is thinner, the overall size of a fiber bundle is smaller.

On June 13, 2023, the European Parliament voted to adopt its annual competition policy report.

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.

The latest Broadband Insights Report is out from OpenVault providing statistics on average broadband usage at the end of the first quarter of 2023. In looking over the latest statistics I’m starting to see some interesting trends. The average household used 560.5 gigabytes of broadband per month by the end of the quarter. That is the combination of 524.8.2 gigabytes of download and 35.7 gigabytes of upload.

Oh, the internet — today so many people are online almost constantly. And yet so many people in the US still have a tenuous connection to the internet. But here is the good news. The United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry, along with a huge number of allies from the civil rights and public interest communities, successfully persuaded Congress to adopt a new program. The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is a federal program designed to help low-income households pay for broadband internet service.

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) provides eligible households with a subsidy toward their internet bill. Looking at data can help us fill the gaps in ACP enrollment and push for its renewal in Congress. Several organizations have recognized this need and have created tools that enable us to make informed statements and decisions around ACP. Below is a review of these tools and some suggestions for the best tool for different uses:

How the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will allocate the 10% of the BEAD funding ($4.25 billion) set aside for high-cost locations has to be an estimate because the NTIA hasn’t shared guidance on how it plans to do that calculation. On a closer reading of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), I want to offer a possible — even likely — scenario where certain states get almost no funding in the high-cost allocation because their Unserved locations are dispersed and not concentrated.