The National Telecommunications and Information Administration's new dashboard allows anyone to track how Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program Eligible Entities are progressing through the major milestones necessary to submit their Initial Proposal by the December 27, 2023 due date. The dashboard shows a check mark when an Eligible Entity has achieved one of the eight enumerated milestones. Those milestones include sharing a pre-submission draft of Volume 1 with NTIA for guidance and feedback, releasing Volume 1 for public comment and submitting Volume 1 for NTIA approval. The remaining milestones on the dashboard are the same actions for Volume 2. The dashboard also notes whether NTIA has approved each volume, although initial proposals do not need approval before the December deadline. The NTIA has still urged states and territories to submit their Volume 1 for approval as soon as they can, as upon Volume 1 approval and submission of Volume 2, a state or territory can commence their challenge process. NTIA will update the dashboard weekly; to view Initial Proposals that have been released for public comment, visit here. 

It’s my understanding that the annual Agriculture Reauthorization Bill includes new money for the ReConnect grant program that is administered by the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), which is part of the Department of Agriculture. The ReConnect grants only fund areas that are remote and include a test that gives priorities to grant areas that are the farthest distance from towns and cities. There have been changes in the broadband industry that have made it harder each year to define a ReConnect grant area. The RUS grant rules favor grant requests that cover large contiguous areas. You can cobble together grant service areas that include multiple different geographic pockets of homes and businesses, but this involves a lot more paperwork. It’s getting quickly harder to find big contiguous unserved areas. This started with the CAF II reverse auction and really came to fruition with the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). RDOF often chops rural areas into small pieces and leaves behind scattered pockets of homes that are not easy to aggregate into a grant like ReConnect. This chopping up of grant areas continued as States and counties have been awarding broadband grants, often for grant areas that cherry-pick the densest pockets of homes. This not only breaks up the remaining unserved areas, but it also makes it harder to justify somebody asking for a grant to serve the areas that are left over.

1. Broadband is essential: A lot has changed since the previous Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality. A devastating pandemic reaffirmed the essential nature of broadband access to protect the health and economic security of all Americans.
2. Abdicated oversight: The 2017 FCC approach was not “light touch.” It was a complete abdication of authority.
3. Targeted approach: Chairwoman Rosenworcel’s approach is targeted, not heavy-handed.
4. Pandemic lessons: Comparing anecdotal evidence of broadband reliability during the pandemic between the U.S. and Europe is like comparing apples to oranges.
5. Broadband outage oversight: Title II would bolster FCC authority to require internet service providers to address internet outages.
6. Judicial track record: The record shows that the FCC’s ability to adopt net neutrality protections can pass judicial muster. If final rules are challenged in court, challengers will have to grapple with the fact that the D.C. Circuit has previously upheld the FCC taking that same course of action.
7. The investment myth: Restoring the FCC’s oversight authority over broadband networks would not delay new broadband investments and innovation.
8. Broadband network security: Without broadband oversight, the FCC is unable to monitor and respond to critical national security threats.
9. Consumer data protection: Net neutrality protections would increase the tools the FCC has available to protect consumer data and respond to evolving consumer threats.
10. Our work continues: The FCC is doing a lot more than just focusing on net neutrality.

The Utah Broadband Center (UBC) has important updates about significant progress on its Broadband Access Grant projects. The Broadband Access Grant is an American Rescue Plan Act-funded grant that set aside $10 million to help households and businesses impacted by COVID-19.  The UBC awarded the grant to subgrantees All West Communications, Box Elder County Government and CentraCom Interactive.  Beehive Broadband placed 36,000 feet of fiber In Mantua, installed 72 handholes for splice enclosures, and completed 100 percent of all aerial pole attachments. Meanwhile, All West Communications installed all 4.38 miles of engineered fiber in Croydon, installed the main FDC cabinet, and attached 12 homes to the network in preparation for internet activation. These projects will connect over 800 residences in rural Utah with 1Gbps symmetrical broadband service by the end of the year. The grant program has significantly improved the broadband outlook in rural Utah and given residents hope they will soon join the ranks of served broadband subscribers.

In an era where every click, tap or keystroke leaves a digital trail, Americans remain uneasy and uncertain about their personal data and feel they have little control over how it’s used. This wariness is even ticking up in some areas like government data collection, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted May 15-21, 2023. According to the study, Americans – particularly Republicans – have grown more concerned about how the government uses their data. The public increasingly says they don’t understand what companies are doing with their data. Additionally, most believe they have little to no control over what companies or the government do with their data. There is bipartisan support for more regulation of what companies can do with people’s data. Some 72% of Americans say there should be more regulation than there is now; just 7% say there should be less. Support for more regulation reaches across the political aisle, with 78% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans taking this stance.

The Federal Trade Commission has issued its latest report to Congress on protecting older adults, which highlights key trends based on fraud reports by older adults, and the FTC’s multi-pronged efforts to combat the problem through law enforcement actions, rulemaking, and outreach and education programs. The report finds that older adults reported losing more than $1.6 billion to fraud in 2022. The report’s analysis shows that older adults filed the largest number of reports about online frauds—where consumers were first exposed to the fraud via social media, the web, or online ads. The largest median losses, however, were reported by older adults on fraud that started with a phone call. The impact of scams where older adults were contacted on social media also increased; the median reported loss from this type of scam jumped from $460 in 2021 to $800 in 2022. The report also details the FTC’s outreach and education efforts through such programs as the Pass it On campaign, which focuses on providing fraud prevention resources to older adults so they can help protect their communities by sharing the information and materials with family and friends. It also details the FTC’s ongoing efforts to implement the Stop Senior Scams Act of 2022.